Every block, crag, and knot in the huge crust of the rock, shone terribly bright for a minute or two, aloft from over the yard-ends, as she stood suddenly out into the fiery gleam of the sun going down many a mile away in the Atlantic. Then up leapt the light keener and keener to the very topmost peak, till you'd have thought it went in like a living thing behind a telegraph, that stood out against a black cleft betwixt two cliffs. We saw the evening gun off Ladder Hill flash upon the deep blue of the sky, seemingly throwing up the peak and flag-staff a dozen feet higher; and the boom of the gun sounding in among the wild hills and hollows within the island, as if one heard it going up to Longwood door. Scarce was it lost, ere a star or two were to be seen in the shadow on the other side, and you listened almost, in the hush following upon the gunfire, for an echo to it, or something stranger; in place of which the Hebe was already forging ahead in the dark to get well clear of the land, every wave bringing its own blackness with it up toward her forechains, then sparkling back to her waist in the seeth of foam as she felt the breeze; while St Helena lay towering along to larboard, with its ragged top blotting against the deep dark-blue of the sky, all filling as it was with the stars.
I had the middle watch that night; the ship being under short canvass, and slowly edging down to make the most leewardly point of the island, from which she was to beat up again at her leisure by the morning. All we had to do was to keep a good look-out, on the one hand, into the streak of starlight to seaward, and on the other along the foot of the rocks, as well as holding her well in hand, in case of some sudden squall through the valleys from inside. However, I shan't easily forget the thoughts that ran in my mind, walking the quarterdeck, with the frigate under charge, the first time I noticed Orion and the Serpent begin to wheel glittering away from over Diana's Peak--the others stealing quietly into sight after them, past the leech of our main-topsail: scarce an English star to be seen for the height of the island off our quarter; some of the men on one side of the booms humming a song about Napoleon's dream, which you'll hear to this day in ships' forecastles; another yarning solemnly, on the other side, about some old sweetheart of his--but all of them ready to jump at my own least word. In the morning, however, there we were, stretching back by degrees to go round the lee side of the island again; the haze melting off Diana's Peak as before, and the sea rolling in swells as blue as indigo, to the huge red lumps of bare crag; while the bright surges leapt out of them all along the frigate's side, and the spray rose at times to her figure-head.