The wind scanted as the day advanced, and we were further hindered by a heavy, long-drawn swell off the port bow. There was no chance of our reaching the island before dark within communicating distance. At sunset the huge mass of towering rock was about two leagues away, and even then a most wonderful sublime sight. Bodies of orange-coloured mist clung to the mountain, whose snow-crowned peak, piercing the sun-touched vapour, gleamed in a soft rose in the delicate evening blue. We saw no vessel under the island or upon the sea-line. The lofty land swiftly darkened into the liquid dusk when the sun sank, and over it, where it stood invisible, hung the stars of the Southern Cross. The cabin barometer promised fair weather; the brig flapped onward through the darkness, bowing deeply to the swell; but somewhere between eight and nine, Tom considering we should need the offing we then had, the three backed the yards on the main, and the vessel was brought to a stand. The lighter sails were clewed up and furled, and the mainsail snugged by its gear. Whilst Tom and the others were aloft and I was at the wheel, I heard a strange hissing noise close to. It was like a locomotive blowing off steam. The rolling of the brig depressed the bulwarks and gave me a sight of the sea, and I spied, at the distance of a pistol-shot, the great black body of a whale, with a jet of water, bright with phosphorus, sparkling plume-shaped out of it. Tom from aloft called down to me to look, but the monster sank almost immediately, and if it reappeared I neither heard nor saw it. This trifling incident somehow wonderfully accentuated the vastness and solitude of the ocean to the mood that was then upon me. I strained my eyes in the direction where I guessed the island to be and pictured myself upon it, gazing upon the dark plain of the deep, sensible that, saving two adjacent rocks, no land was to be come at for hundreds and hundreds of leagues. The shadow of the mighty ocean mountain was upon my spirits, not in a depressing or a despondent weight, but with an influence that subdued and awed me. I thought of that part of London in which I had dwelt, the streets filled with the noise of people in motion, the lighted shops, the ceaseless rattle of wheels, the docks complicated as a giant cobweb with rigging and masts pointing in silence into the gloomy river sky, the flash of lanterns on the water, the starry lines of lamps on either bankside, of my house at Stepney; and I beheld my father and mother again with my mind’s eye, and Mr. Stanford’s strange, sickly child; my unloved dead sister; I thought of my aunt’s cheerful house near the Tower, the pleasant, hospitable rooms above the offices, the piano at which I had sung, the supper-table round which we had gathered; and then I searched the dark distance for the shadow whereon I was to dwell, and said to myself, if there should be a clergyman there, by this time to-morrow I may be Tom’s wife.