and prodigious than any that had preceded it, came
swelling through the nostrils of the sea-cook,--it was only then that
the young girl was awakened.

Becoming aware of what had awakened her, she would have gone to sleep
again; but just as she was about re-composing herself upon her
sail-cloth couch, a sight came before her eyes that caused her not only
to remain awake, but filled her with a feeling of indescribable awe.

On the instant of opening her eyes, the sky, hitherto dark, had become
suddenly illumined by lightning,--not in streaks or flashes, but as if a
sheet of fire had been spread for an instant over the whole canopy of
the heavens.

At the same time the surface of the sea had been equally lighted up with
the vivid gleam; and among the many objects drifting around the raft,--
the remnants of the wreck, with which the eyes of the little Lalee had
now become familiarised,--she saw, or fancied she saw, one altogether
new to her.

It was a human face and figure, in the likeness of a beautiful boy, who
appeared to be kneeling on the water, or on some slight structure on a
level with the surface of the sea!

The lightning had revealed other objects beside him and over him. A
pair of slender sticks, standing some feet apart, and in a perpendicular
position, with some white strips suspended between them, in the gleam of
the lightning shone clear and conspicuous.

It is not to be wondered at that the little Lalee should feel surprise
at an apparition,--so unexpected, in such a place, and under such
circumstances. It is not to be wondered at that her first impulse
should be to rouse her companion out of his snoring slumbers.

She did so upon the instant, and without waiting for another flash of
lightning either to confirm her belief in what she had seen, or convince
her that it was only an apparition,--which her fancy, disturbed by the
dreams in which she had been indulging, had conjured up on the instant
of her awaking.

"Wha's dat you say?" inquired Snowball, abruptly awakened in the middle
of a superb snore; "see something! you say dat, ma pickaninny? How you
see anyting such night as dis be? Law, ma lilly Lally, you no see de
nose before you own face. De 'ky 'bove am dark as de complexyun ob dis
ole nigga; you muss be mistake, lilly gal!--dat you muss!"

"No, indeed, Snowball!" replied Lalee, speaking in gumbo Portuguese, "I
am not mistaken. It wasn't dark when I saw it. There was lightning;
and