Here were we now under almost bare poles, in a dead calm; and yet had the skipper ordered both the fore and mizzen topsails to be furled, he would not have been doing more than was justified by the extraordinary character of the night--the strange and monstrous sub-swell of the ocean, the opacity of the heavens, the sinister and phenomenal breathlessness and heat of the atmosphere.
Duckling was below, lying at full length upon one of the cuddy benches, ready to start up at the first call. I glanced at him through the skylight, and wondered how on earth he kept himself steady on his back. I should have been dislodged by every roll as surely as it came. Perhaps he used his shoulder-blades as cleats to hold on to the sides of the bench; and to so wildly proportioned a man as Duckling, a great deal was possible.
The card was swinging in the binnacle as before, and just now the ship's head was north-west. With more canvas upon the vessel her position would have been perilous by the impossibility of guessing from what quarter the wind would come--if it came at all. Even to be taken aback under close-reefed topsails might prove unpleasant enough, should a sudden gale come down and find the ship without way on her.
The captain, who was on the starboard side of the wheel, called me over to him.
"How's her head now?" to the man at the helm.
"Keep a brisk look-out to the south'ard, sir," he said to me; "and sing out if you see the sky clearing."
I saw him, by the binnacle-light, put his finger in his mouth and hold it up. But there was no other air to be felt than the short rush first one way, then another, as the ship rolled.
Scarcely ten minutes had passed since he addressed me, when I saw what I took to be a ship's light standing clear upon the horizon, right astern.
I was about to call out when another light sprang up just above it. Then a small, faint light, a little to the westward of these, then another.
Owing to the peculiar character of the atmosphere these lights looked red, and so completely was I deceived by their appearance, that I halloed out--
"Do you see those lights astern, sir? They look like a fleet of steamers coming up."
But I had scarcely spoken when I knew that I had made a fool of myself. They were not ships' lights, _but stars_, and at once I comprehended the import of this sudden astral revelation.
