ar--nothing but a sense of awe at the grandeur of the
storm, and it was with a feeling of eagerness that he waited for the
next flash. But a minute passed before there was a faint quivering
which slightly lit up the sea, to give place to blackness, silence and
darkness. Then there was another faint quivering light that seemed to
come from somewhere behind where he stood, and again he waited for one
of those vivid flashes that should show up the configuration of the
clouds shaped in mountain and valley and distant cave.

And many minutes must have passed, during which time Rodd listened in
the appalling silence for the distant soft and increasing rushing sound
of the coming rain, even as he had listened before in far-off Devon to
the coming of some summer storm.

"There will be wind too," he thought. "I wonder whether all is made
fast aloft; for a storm like this," he continued, in his ignorance,
"can't come without a tremendous wind and a rush of rain."

His next thought was that he would go on deck and see what the watch
were about; but he hesitated to stir, for the thought of the gorgeous
cloudscape he had seen fascinated him and held him to his place.

"I needn't worry about that," he thought. "Captain Chubb's sure to be
on deck. He wouldn't sleep like we do. If I go and open the cabin door
it will wake uncle up. Hah! It's quivering again. The storm can't be
over like this. Now there's another big flash coming."

He had hardly formed the thought when from quite up in the zenith down
into the depths of the sea the arch of heaven seemed to open out in a
sharp jagged line of vivid blue light, shutting again instantaneously,
and the boy knelt gazing before him in wonder, for there, about a mile
away, with every spar and yard and rope standing out black against the
blue light, was the picture--the model, it seemed to him to be--of a
tall-masted brig sitting motionless upon the water; and then it was
gone.

"Why, that must have been the one we saw," thought Rodd, and he strained
his eyes again as he listened for the roar of the thunder that should
have succeeded the vivid zigzag flash of electricity; but it did not
come, and he waited and waited in the darkness in vain, trying to grasp
how it could be that a storm should come to an end in so strange and
unsatisfactory a way according to his lights, and why there should be
neither rain nor wind.

He waited, trying hard now to pierce the black darkness, but