And then she sat down near the edge of the raft, where, with her head resting on her hands, she remained lost in thought.
An incident sufficiently unpleasant occurred today. For nearly an hour Owen, Flaypole, Burke, and Jynxstrop had been engaged in close conversation and, although their voices were low, their gestures had betrayed that they were animated by some strong excitement. At the conclusion of the colloquy Owen got up and walked deliberately to the quarter of the raft that has been reserved for the use of the passengers.
“Where are you off to now, Owen?” said the boatswain.
“That’s my business,” said the man insolently, and pursued his course.
The boatswain was about to stop him, but before he could interfere Curtis was standing and looking Owen steadily in the face.
“Ah, captain, I’ve got a word from my mates to say to you,” he said, with all the effrontery imaginable.
“Say on, then,” said the captain coolly.
“We should like to know about that little keg of brandy. Is it being kept for the porpoises or the officers?”
Finding that he obtained no reply, he went on—
“Look here, captain, what we want is to have our grog served out every morning as usual.”
“Then you certainly will not,” said the captain.
“What! what!” exclaimed Owen, “don’t you mean to let us have our grog?”
“Once and for all, no.”
For a moment, with a malicious grin upon his lips, Owen stood confronting the captain; then, as though thinking better of himself, he turned round and rejoined his companions, who were still talking together in an undertone.
When I was afterwards discussing the matter with Curtis I asked him whether he was sure he had done right in refusing the brandy.
“Right!” he cried, “to be sure I have. Allow those men to have brandy! I would throw it all overboard first.”
XXXIV
—No further disturbance has taken place amongst the men. For a few hours the fish appeared again, and we caught a great many of them, and stored them away in an empty barrel. This addition to our stock of provisions makes us hope that food, at least, will not fail us.
Usually the nights in the tropics are cool, but today, as evening drew on, the wonted freshness did not return, but the air remained stifling and oppressive, whilst heavy masses of vapour hung over the water.
There was no moonlight; there would be a new moon at half-past one in the morning, but the night was singularly dark, except for dazzling flashes of summer lightning that from time to time illumined the horizon far and wide. There was, however, no answering roll of thunder, and the silence of the atmosphere seemed almost awful, For a couple of hours, in the vain hope of catching a breath of air, Miss Herbey, André Letourneur, and I, sat watching the imposing struggle of the electric vapours. The clouds appeared like embattled turrets crested with flame, and the very sailors, coarse-minded men as they were, seemed struck with the grandeur of the spectacle, and regarded attentively, though with an anxious eye, the preliminary tokens of a coming storm. Until midnight we kept our seats upon the stern of the raft, whilst the lightning ever and again shed around us a livid glare similar to that produced by adding salt to lighted alcohol.
“Are you afraid of a storm, Miss Herbey?” said André to the girl.
“No, Mr. André, my feelings are always rather those of awe than of fear,” she replied. “I consider a storm one of the sublimest phenomena that we can behold—don’t you think so too?”
“Yes, and especially when the thunder is pealing,” he said; “that majestic rolling, far different to the sharp crash of artillery, rises and falls like the long-drawn notes of the grandest music, and I can safely say that the tones of the most accomplished artiste have never moved me like that incomparable voice of nature.”
“Rather a deep bass, though,” I said, laughing.
“That may be,” he answered; “but I wish we might hear it now, for this silent lightning is somewhat unexpressive.”
“Never mind that, André,” I said; “enjoy a storm when it comes, if you like, but pray don’t wish for it.”
“And why not?” said he; “a storm will bring us wind, you know.”
“And water, too,” added Miss Herbey, “the water of which we are so seriously in need.”
The young people evidently wished to regard the storm from their own point of view, and although I could have opposed plenty of common sense to their poetical sentiments, I said no more, but let them talk on as they pleased for fully an hour.
Meantime the sky was becoming quite overclouded, and after the zodiacal constellations had disappeared in the mists that hung round the horizon, one by one the stars above our heads were veiled in dark rolling masses of vapour, from which every instant there issued forth sheets of electricity that formed a vivid background to the dark grey fragments of cloud that floated beneath.
As the reservoir of electricity was confined to the higher strata of the atmosphere, the lightning was still unaccompanied by thunder; but the dryness of the air made it a weak conductor. Evidently the fluid could only escape by terrible shocks, and the storm must ere long burst forth with fearful violence.
This was the opinion of Curtis and the boatswain. The boatswain is only weather-wise from his experience as a sailor; but Curtis, in addition to his experience, has some scientific knowledge, and he pointed out to me an appearance in the sky known to meteorologists as a “cloud-ring,” and scarcely ever seen beyond the regions of the torrid zone, which are impregnated by damp vapours brought from all quarters of the ocean by the action of the trade-winds.
“Yes, Mr. Kazallon,” said Curtis, “our raft has been driven into the region of storms, of which it has been justly remarked that anyone endowed with very sensitive organs can at any moment distinguish the growlings of thunder.”
“Hark!” I
