I went to the companion way and called down to Colonel Bannister. ‘Halloa? What now? Who wants _me_?’ he shouted. ‘Tell the ladies, colonel,’ I sung down, ‘that the brig has been struck by lightning, and that our safety, so far as _she_ is concerned, is assured.’ I heard him roar out the news as I went to the side again, and a moment after up rushed the whole body of passengers to see for themselves. The decks were full of water, but nobody seemed to mind that. The ladies came splashing through it to the rail, some of them taking terrified peeps at the mass of winking blackness settling away down in the east, and dodging the play of lightning, as it were, with a sort of involuntary ducking of their heads and lifting of their fingers to their eyes. Old Keeling cried out: ‘Ladies, be good enough to take my advice and return to the cabin. We shall be having a strong blow of wind coming along in a few minutes.’ ‘Gott, she iss on fire!’ here shouted Hemskirk, pointing directly at the brig with a fat forefinger, whilst with the other hand he kept a binocular glass glued to his eyes. ‘Is it so then, sir!’ cried Mr. Prance to the skipper; ‘there is smoke rising from her fore-hatch.’ Mr. Cocker had replaced his telescope in the hencoop; I jumped for it, and in a trice had the lenses bearing upon the brig. There was an appearance of smoke, a thin bluish haze of it, as though mounting from a newly kindled bonfire, slowly going spirally into the motionless air; but almost at the instant of my first looking I thought I could witness something of a ruddy tinge flashing for a breath into this smoke, as if to a sudden leap of flame. Though the brig lay at the same distance that had separated her from us throughout the afternoon, the shrouded and heaped-up vaporous wall of firmament beyond her seemed to heave her as close again to us as she really was; and now quite easily by the aid of the glass I could see her decks as she rolled them our way dark with her people, many of them hacking and hewing at her rigging, as though to clear away the wreckage; others seemingly passing buckets along; others, again, running wildly and as it might seem aimlessly about, whilst with the regularity of a swing in action the beautifully moulded hull rolled quietly from side to side with a rhythmic oscillation of her one mast upon which the fragment of white trysail filled and hollowed as it beat the air, starting out upon the eye with a very ghastliness of pallor as it swelled to its cotton-like hue out of the shadow of its incurving, and hovered like some butterfly over the hideous dusky green of the swell. I replaced the telescope. ‘Here comes the wind!’ I heard Mr. Cocker sing out. ‘Ladies,’ cried old Keeling, ‘let me beg of you to step below.’