ng, outside which he
passed. Then, as he paused and the light grew steady, the two men on
the poop caught wavering glimpses of a long line of very faintly lighted
figures leaning over the larboard rail, from the after extremity of the
forecastle to the fore end of the poop, all eagerly scanning the
gleaming, oil-like surface of the water, while here and there one
pointed as though he believed he saw something. But although both
George and Dyer were straining their eyesight to the utmost they could
find nothing to reward their search, nay, even although at that moment a
flicker of sheet-lightning gleamed for an instant along the north-
western horizon. But the ship was at that moment swung with her head to
the south-west, consequently the lightning was on the wrong side of her
to afford any assistance. Moreover, it was no sooner come than it was
gone again, yet not so soon but that George, and perhaps half a dozen
others, raising their heads at the momentary illumination of the sky,
saw, suspended overhead, an enormous mass of black, impending cloud,
with jagged, ragged edges so wonderfully suggesting rent and tottering
rocks about to fall upon and crush the ship and all in her, that quite
involuntarily he uttered a low cry and cringed as though to escape an
expected blow. And at that precise moment, as the young captain cowered
and crouched, he felt a slight movement in the stagnant air about him,
very much as though a great wing had swept immediately over his head so
close that it had all but touched him, indeed he believed that it--
whatever it might have been--_had_ actually touched him, for unless his
imagination had begun to play tricks with him he could have sworn that
he felt the cap on his head move as though it had been grazed by some
passing object.

"What was that?" he gasped, starting back from the rail over which he
had been leaning, and flinging up his hand to his head. "Dyer, did you
see or feel anything?"

"I saw the sky for a second, if that's what you mean; and I don't at all
like the look o't; I've never see'd a sky quite like that avore--"
answered Dyer.

"No, neither have I," interrupted George; "and I like the look of it as
little as yourself. I believe it means that a hurricane is brewing.
But I was not referring to the sky. At the moment when that gleam of
lightning came I fancied that I felt something sweep through the air
just above my head, and--"

"Hush! hark! what be that?" inte