'Twas what none but a seaman would have observed, and many a seaman wouldn't have done, so,--but a man-o'-war's-man is used to look out at all hours, in all latitudes,--and to a man that knew its meaning, _this_ would have been no joke, even out of sight of land: as it was, the thing gave me a perfect thrill of dread. High aloft in the heavens northward, where they were freest from the sun--now standing over the open horizon amidst a wide bright pool of light,--you managed to discern a small silvery speck, growing slowly as it were out of the faint blue hollow, like a star in the day-time, till you felt as if it _looked_ at you, from God-knows what distance away. One eye after another amongst the mates and crew joined Jacobs's and mine, with the same sort of dumb fellowship to be seen when a man in London streets watches the top of a steeple; and however hard to make out at first, ere long none of them could miss seeing it, as it got slowly larger, sinking by degrees till the sky close about it seemed to thicken like a dusky ring round the white, and the sunlight upon our seaward quarter blazed out doubly strong--as if it came dazzling off a brass bell, with the bright tongue swinging in it far off to one side, where the hush made you think of a stroke back upon us, with some terrific sound to boot. The glassy water by this time was beginning to rise under the ship with a struggling kind of unequal heave, as if a giant you couldn't see kept shoving it down here and there with both hands, and it came swelling up elsewhere. To north-westward or thereabouts, betwixt the sun and this ill-boding token aloft, the far line of open sea still lay shining motionless and smooth; next time you looked, it had got even brighter than before, seeming to leave the horizon visibly; then the streak of air just above it had grown gray, and a long edge of hazy vapour was creeping as it were over from beyond,--the white speck all the while travelling down towards it slantwise from nor'ard, and spreading its dark ring slowly out into a circle of cloud, till the keen eye of it at last sank in, and below, as well as aloft, the whole north-western quarter got blurred together in one gloomy mass. If there was a question at first whether the wind mightn't come from so far nor'ard as to give her a chance of running out to sea before it, there was none now,--our sole recourse lay either in getting nearer the land meanwhile, to let go our anchors ere it came on, with her head _to_ it,--or we might make a desperate trial to weather the lee-point now far astern. The fact was, we were going to have a regular tornado, and that of the worst kind, which wouldn't soon blow itself out; though near an hour's notice would probably pass ere it was on.