"Palpable marsh miasmata; the yellow fever in visible perfection," quoth Lieutenant Sprawl.
Through this mist, the glowing sun, now near his setting, suddenly became shorn of his golden hair, and obliged us with a steady view of his red bald globe; while his splendid wake, that half an hour before sparkled on the broad rushing of the mighty stream, converting its whirling eddies into molten gold, was suddenly quenched under the chill pestilential fen-damp; and every thing looked as like the shutting in of a winter's night in Ould Ireland as possible, with a dash of vapour from my own river Lee, which has mud enough to satisfy even a Cork pig, and that is saying a good deal. Had we only had the cold, the similitude would have been perfect.
The sun set; and all hands, men and officers, carried on in getting themselves put to rights as well as they could, after a day of such excitement and stirring incidents. None of the wounded, I was rejoiced to find, were likely to slip through our fingers; but the fate of the poor fellows who were missing--What was it? Had they been fairly shot down, or sabred on the spot, or immolated afterwards--after the scenes we had witnessed, what might it not have been? The surgeon's mate, who constituted part of our appointment, was a skilful fellow in his way, and I had soon the gratification to see all the men who had been hurt properly cared for. As for my own wound, thanks to the profuse hæmorrhage, the sensation was now more that of a stunning blow than any thing else; and, with the exception of the bandage round my head, I was not a great deal the worse, neither to look at, nor indeed in reality. Old Davie Doublepipe, Dick Lanyard, and myself, had dived into the small cabin; and having taken all the precautions that men could do in our situation, we sat down, along with Pumpbolt the master, the two reefers, who had come in the frigate's boats, and little Binnacle, to our salt junk and grog.
"A deuced comfortable expedition, Brail, my darling, we have had this same day," _quod_ Dick.
"Very," responded Benjamin Brail, Esquire. "But, here's to you, my man, _Dum vivimus vivamus_--so spare me that case bottle of rum."
However, we were too awkwardly placed to spend much time over our frugal repast, as the poets say; so presently we were all on deck again. How beautiful, and how different the scene. A small cool breath of wind from the land had again rolled away the impure air from the bosom of the noble river, and every thing overhead was once more clear and transparent. The bright new risen moon was far advanced in the second quarter, and cast a long trembling wake of silver light on the water, sparkling like diamonds on the tiny ripples, while the darkened half of the chaste planet herself was as perfectly visible, as if her disk had been half silver and half bronze. Her mild light, however, was not strong enough to quench the host of glorious stars that studded the cloudless firmament. On either hand, the black banks were now clearly defined against the sky; the one shore being lit up by the rising moon, and the other by the last golden tints of the recently set sun.