"Not being asleep, however, a sudden stir on deck, an hour or two after that, brought me out of my cot, to look through the scuttle in the side. The brig had hauled her wind from aft on to her starboard quarter, making less way than _before_ it, of course; I heard the captain's voice near the after-hatchway, too; so accordingly I slipped on my clothes, and went quietly up. The _Podargus_ was running through the long broad swells usual thereabouts, with her head somewhere toward north-east; the officers all up, the whole of the crew in both watches clustered beyond the brig's fore-course, and the captain evidently roused, as well as impatient; though I couldn't at first make out the reason of her being off her course. As soon as she fell off a little, however, to my great horror I could see a light far ahead of us, right in the gloom of the clouds, which for a moment you'd have supposed was the moon rising red and bloody, till the heave of the sea betwixt us and it showed how both of us were dipping: and now and then it gave a flaring glimmer fair out from the breast of the fog-bank, while the breeze was sending a brown puff of smoke from it now and then to leeward against the clouds; through which you made a spar or two licking up the flame, and a rag of canvas fluttering across on the yard. "Twas neither more nor less than a ship on fire--no doubt the vessel seen abeam of us that evening--a sight at which Captain Wallis seemingly forgot his hurry to make St Helena, in the eagerness shown by all aboard to save the poor fellows. Suddenly there was another wild gleam from the burning craft, and we thought it was over altogether, when up shot a wreath of fire and smoke again, then a fierce flash with a blue burst of flame, full of sparks, and all sorts of black spots and broken things, as if she had blown up while she heaved the last time on the swell. Everything was pitch dark next minute in her place, as if a big blot of ink had come instead; the brig-of-war herself rolling with a flap of her headsails up against the long heavy bank of cloud that blocked the horizon. 'Keep her away, sirrah!' shouted Captain Wallis, and the _Podargus_ surged ahead as before, all of us standing too breathless to speak, but counting the heads of the waves as they flickered past her weather-beam. 'God's sake!' exclaimed the captain at last, 'this is terrible, Aldridge. If I had only overhauled her, as I meant at first, we might have helped them in time; for no doubt the fire must have been commenced when we noticed her yawing yonder a couple of hours ago, sir.' 'I think not, sir,' said his lieutenant; '_we_ were against the clear; and if they'd been in danger _then_, she'd have fired a distress-gun. There couldn't have been much powder aboard, sir--more likely rum, I think!'