The sun sank and the darkness of the evening swept over the sea as swiftly as the shadow of a storm, but it proved a glorious dusk, fine, clear, glittering though dark, the sky like cloth of silver, flashful in places with a view of the cross of the southern hemisphere low down to make one contrast this heat and stillness and placid grandeur of constellations with the roaring of Cape Horn and the rush of the mountain-high surge, down upon which that divinely planted symbol was gazing with trembling eyes. Nothing sounded save the plashing of the fountains of water spouting from the sides of the galleon, and the soft, cat-like breathing of the black line of sea sliding up and down the beach. The men had made short work of filling the casks; and leaving them where they stood for the night, had clambered afresh to the forecastle. It was now too dark to deal with the porpoise; so we agreed to let the great thing rest till the morning. I and one or two of the others had tinder-boxes, and the means therefore of procuring a light, but we were without candles or lantern. This was a hardship in the absence of the moon that rose so late as to be worthless to us and that would be a new moon presently without light; though if I thought of _that_ it was only to hope in God’s name that the rise of the silver paring would find us safe on board some ship homeward bound. We were unable to distinguish more of one another than the vague outlines of our figures, and this only against the stars over the crested height of bulwark, for the sail we had spread as an awning deepened the gloom; the growths on the galleon’s decks were black, and the shadows lay very thick to the height of the rail where the spangled atmosphere glistened to the edge of the stretched sail overhead. The faces of Laura and her sister showed in a dream-like glimmer. Finn and I had made a little barricade of casks, cases, and the like betwixt the mattresses on which the ladies were to lie and the other part of the forecastle, that they might enjoy the trifling privacy such an arrangement as this could furnish them with. The men formed into a group round about the mattress where Johnson lay, and lighted the pipes which they had been fortunate enough to meet with in the seamen’s chests. As they sucked hard at the bowls the glowing tobacco would cast a faint coming and going light upon their faces. They subdued their voices out of respect to us, and their tones ran along in a half-smothered growl. Much of their talk was about the yacht, her loss, their drowned mates, and the like. I sat beside Laura, with Lady Monson seated at a little distance from her sister, and we often hushed our own whispers to listen to the men. Their superstitions were stirred by their situation. This galleon lay under the stars, a huge looming mystery, vomited but a little while since from the vast depths of yonder black ocean; and now that the night had come her presence, her