ning one portion of the piled-up masses and the
reflection in the glassy water with its transient radiance, while the
rest of the scene was by contrast thrown into the deepest, blackest,
most opaque shadow. Meanwhile the mutterings of the distant thunder had
gradually grown louder and drawn nearer, while sudden, vivid flashes of
forked or chain-lightning, golden, violet, or delicate rose-tinted,
darted at ever-lessening intervals from the lowering masses of intensely
black cloud heaped up along the western horizon.

We had been on deck perhaps half-an-hour, when a delicious coolness and
freshness began by almost insensible degrees to pervade the hitherto
intolerable closeness of the hot and enervating atmosphere, and, looking
away to the westward, we saw, by the quick, flickering illumination of
the lightning, a few transient cat's-paws playing here and there upon
the surface of the water. Gradually and erratically these evanescent
movements in the inert air stole down to the schooner, lightly rippling
the water round her for an instant, just stirring the canvas with a
faint rustle for a moment, and then dying away again. They were
succeeded by others, however, with rapidly increasing frequency, and
presently a faint blurr upon the glassy surface of the water to the
westward marked the approach of the true breeze.

"Sheet home your topsail, and hoist away!" shouted Ryan. "Up with your
helm, my man"--to the man at the tiller--"and let her go off
east-south-east. Sheet home your topgallant-sail, and man the
halliards. Lay aft here, some of you, to the braces, and lay the yards
square. Well there, belay! Main throat and peak-halliards hoist away.
Ease off the mainsheet. Rouse up the squaresail, Mr Dugdale, and set
it, if you please. Well there with the throat-halliards; well with the
peak; belay! Away aloft, one hand, and loose the gaff-topsail! Give
her everything but the studding-sails while you are about it, Mr
Dugdale; it will save the canvas from mildew if it does little else."

The breeze--a light air from about west--had by this time crept up to
us, and under its vivifying influence the schooner had gathered way, and
was soon creeping along at a speed of barely two and a half knots,
which, however, rose to three and finally to five as the wind freshened,
the sky meanwhile clearing as the heavy thunder-clouds drove away to
leeward before the welcome breeze, until the sky was once more cloudless
save for