ise wherein
Hawsepipe had been placed in a position of actual authority, he was
anything but a tyro in the science of seamanship, and insisted on
_everything_ on board being done as thoroughly well as it was possible
to do it, and the schooner was soon ready for whatever might come.

The night grew hotter and hotter, and still the glassy calm continued.
The darkness was so intense, so opaque, that on placing my hand close
before my eyes, I was quite unable to see it; and the stillness of the
air was such that the flame of a lamp brought on deck burned straight up
and down, merely swaying a trifle with the heave of the ship upon the
long, sluggish swell.

This state of things continued until nearly four bells in the first
watch, when a startling phenomenon occurred. The curtain of vapour grew
more dense even than it had been before, entirely precluding the
possibility of any light penetrating from above; notwithstanding which,
the atmosphere very gradually became luminous with a ghastly, blue,
sulphurous light, until it was possible, not only to see distinctly
every object on board the schooner, but also to distinguish the gleaming
surface of the water for a distance on every side of some three miles or
so.

The faces of the men huddled together on the forecastle looked ghastly
and death-like in this unearthly light, and the hull, spars, rigging and
canvas of the schooner assumed such a weird and supernatural appearance
when illumined by it, that she might easily have been mistaken for a
cruiser from Phlegethon.

But this was not all. About half-an-hour after this singular luminosity
of the atmosphere first became apparent, and before the startled seamen
had recovered their self-possession, in an instant, without any
premonition whatever, there appeared at each mast-head and yardarm, at
the jibboom-end--in fact, at the end of every spar on board the
schooner--a globe of greenish-coloured light, about the size of an
ordinary lamp-globe, each of which wavered and swayed, elongated and
flattened, as the ship gently rose and fell over the glassy sea.

The men were now thoroughly terrified.

"See that, Tom?" exclaimed one. "What d'ye call all them things?"

"Why, they be Davy Jones' lanterns, _they_ be," returned Tom; "and right
sorry am I to see 'em."

"Davy Jones' lanterns?" echoed the questioner. "What--you don't mean as
them lights has been h'isted aboard here by the real old genuine Davy
hisself, eh?"

"T