I spied Finn conversing with Crimp at the gangway; the lightning astern was as moonlight sometimes, and I could see both men looking aloft and at the weather in the south and consulting. In a few minutes they came our way. ‘What is it to be, Finn?’ said I. ‘Well, sir,’ he answered, ‘this here swell that’s slowly a-gathering means wind. It will be but little more, though, than an electric squall, I think--a deal of fire and hissing and a burst of breeze, and then quietness again with the black smother spitting itself out ahead. The barometer don’t seem to give more caution than that anyway, sir. But there’s never no trusting what ye can’t see through.’ He turned to Crimp. ‘Better take the mainsail off her, Jacob,’ said he, ‘and let her slide along under her foresail till we see what all that there yonder sinnifies.’ The order was given; the sailors tumbled aft; the great stretch of glimmering, ashen cloths, burning and blackening alternately as they reflected the tempestuous flares withered upon the dusk as the peak and throat halliards were settled away; the sail was furled, the huge mainboom secured, and the watch went forward softly as cats upon their naked feet. Ha! what is that? Right ahead, on a line with our bowsprit, there leapt from the black breast of the sea, on the very edge of the ocean, if not past it, a body of flame, brilliant as sunshine but of the hue of pale blood. It came and went, but whilst it lived it made a ghastly and terrifying daylight of the heavens and the water in the north, revealing the line of the horizon as though the sun’s upper limb were on a level with it till the circle of the sea could have been followed to either quarter. ‘_That_ was not lightning,’ cried Miss Laura in a voice of alarm. ‘Finn,’ I shouted, ‘did you see that?’ ‘Ay, sir,’ he cried with an accent of astonishment from the opposite side of the deck. ‘What in the name of thunder was it, think you?’ I inquired. ‘Looked to me like a cloud of fire dropped clean out of the sky, sir,’ he answered. ‘No, no,’ exclaimed the hoarse voice of the fellow who grasped the helm, ‘my eye was on it, capt’n. It rose up.’ ‘Listen,’ cried I, ‘if any report follows it.’ But we could hear no sound save the distant muttering of thunder astern. ‘It looked as though a ship had blown up,’ said Miss Laura. ‘I say, captain,’ I called, ‘d’ye think it likely that a vessel has exploded down there?’ ‘There’s been nothen in sight, sir,’ he answered. ‘And why? Because the atmosphere has been blind all day,’ I replied. ‘You’d see the light of an explosion when the craft herself would be hidden.’ ‘’Twarn’t no ship, sir,’ muttered the fellow at the wheel, considering himself licensed by the excitement of the moment to deliver his opinion. ‘I once see the like of such a flare as that off the Maldives.’ ‘What was it?’ inquired Miss Laura. ‘A sea-quake, miss.’ ‘Ha!’ I exclaimed, ‘that’ll be it, Finn.’