There was no standing all this, especially as Flamingo followed him close, and standing behind him, a little to one side--on his starboard quarter as he himself would have said--made signs to him in the glass to advance, on which the sailor made a tipsy bolt of it, and was a second time brought up by the brass rods--nor was he convinced of his mistake until he felt the cold surface of the plate glass with his great paw. Twig now kindly interfered and got the poor skipper away, and bestowed on a sofa, and dancing recommenced with redoubled energy. The fiddlers scraped with all their might, the man who played the octave flute whistled like a curlew, and the tabor was fiercely beaten, rumpti, tumpti, while the black ballet-master sung out sharp and shrill his mongrel French directions, his _chassées_ and his _balancées_ to massa dis, and misses dat, indicating the parties by name; who thereupon pricked up their ears, and looking as grave as judges, pointed their toes, and did, or attempted to do, as they were bid. But, as I was overheated, I strolled into the piazza fronting the sea, where the lights by this time had either burned out, or had been removed--it was very dark. I walked to the corner farthest from the noise of the dancers, and peered through the open _jealousies_, or blinds, on the scene below. The moon was in the second quarter, and by this time within an hour of her setting. She cast a long trembling wake of faint greenish light on the quiet harbour below, across which the land wind would occasionally shoot in catspaws, dimming and darkening the shining surface (as if from the winnowing of the wings of passing spirits of the air), until they died away again, leaving their whereabouts indicated by streaks of tiny ripples, sparkling like diamonds in the moonbeams. Clear of the bay, but in shore, the water continued as smooth as glass, although out at sea there seemed to be a light air still, the last faint breathings of the dying sea-breeze. The heavy clouds that had emptied themselves on our devoted heads in the early part of the night, had by this time settled down in a black, wool-fringed bank in the west, the fleecy margin of which the moon had gloriously lit up, and was fast approaching. The stars overhead, as the lovely planet verged towards her setting, sparkled with more intense brightness in the deep blue firmament; more profoundly dark and pure, one would have thought, from the heavy squalls we had recently had. There was only another person in the piazza beside myself, and he was looking steadily out on the ocean. He was about ten yards from me, and in the obscurity I could not well distinguish his figure.