but on the day of which I am
now writing there were indications of an impending change. The wind
gradually died down to a light, fitful air that came in flaws, first
from one quarter of the compass and then from another, lasting but a few
minutes, with lengthening intervals of calm between them, while huge
piles of black, thunderous-looking cloud gradually heaped up along the
northern horizon until they had overspread the whole sky. The
barometer, too, exhibited a tendency to fall; but the decline was so
slight that I was of opinion it meant no more than perhaps a sharp
thunder-squall, particularly as there was no swell making; moreover
there was a close, thundery feeling in the stagnating air, which
increased as the day grew older. It was not, however, until about an
hour after sunset, and just as we were sitting down to dinner in the
cuddy, that the outbreak commenced; which it did with a sudden, blinding
flash of lightning that darted out of the welkin almost immediately
overhead, instantly followed by a deafening crash of thunder that caused
the Indiaman to tremble to her keel; the sensation being not unlike what
one would expect to feel if the craft were being swept rapidly along
over a sandy bottom which she just touched.

This first flash was soon followed by another, not quite so near at
hand, then by another, and another, and another, until the lightning was
playing all about us in such rapidly succeeding flashes that the whole
atmosphere was luminous with a continuous quivering of ghastly blue-
green light, while the heavens resounded and the ship trembled with the
unbroken crash and roll of the thunder. The spectacle was magnificent,
but it was also rather trying to the nerves; the lightning being so
dazzlingly vivid that it was positively blinding, while I had never
heard such awful thunder before, even in the West Indies. Several of
the lady passengers, indeed, were so unnerved by the storm that they
retreated from the table and shut themselves into their cabins. Even
young Dumaresq, who had hitherto appeared to be irrepressible, was
subdued by the awful violence of the turmoil that raged around us. He
was admitting something to this effect to me when he was cut short by a
blaze of lightning that seemed to envelop the whole ship in a sheet of
flame; there was a rending shock, violent enough to suggest that the
Indiaman had come into violent collision with another vessel--although
we were fully aware