sharp rain over us and in scarcely a minute had died down again. Its
short career sent every one interested scampering to take in the canvas
awnings, and left a breeze which when the captain arrived in a launch,
carrying some newspapers, blew them round him like a garment. He was
wearing a straw hat. He jammed it on with a will and hurried up the
rope ladder. With his return, we were at sea again, though not yet in
the open.

The evening was one of strange majesty. One saw clouds amassing in every
similitude of mountainous immensity and ascent, and wild lights everywhere
burning among them; but most of all, a tawny lion's colour mantled in a
great tract of the sky and below shone dim yet in a manner dazzling
from the darkening water. The heat of the day had been oven-like.
Lightnings began after a red weeping sunset, sheet lightnings often
veined with the fiercest forks of white flame, wreaths of golden fire,
volleys, cataracts, serpents; and these danced about the horizon until
daybreak, sometimes in silence, sometimes with deep but weary-sounding
thunderclaps. The light that these wanderers cast was often of an
intensity scarcely credible. A deluge of rain was always imminent, but
only towards dawn arrived.

The _Bonadventure_ had been, under these innumerable lights, making quiet
way down an avenue of buoys twinkling in their degree, and came into view
of the lightship beyond them. The pilot sounded the siren (for he was to
leave us here), and in reply to the second call of the siren the lamp of a
boat pulling out towards us appeared. It was good-bye to the pilot and
his bag, which on the end of a rope now caused a moment's interest; the
engines, stopped to let him depart, were started again, and the captain
fixed the ship's course. Mead's watch, as usually it was, shared by the
purser, engaged us in more recollections of the great war; and in the
glitter first of a swarm of dragon-flies, then presently the surly gleam
of the lightning, we talked on until midnight. I admired him for having
already forgotten all about his disappointment in the lottery, and begun
with new hopes according to his motto; _Quo fata vocant_.

XXI

The breakfast steaks were leathery past anticipations. The flies in
the cabin were thousands strong. But the _Bonadventure_ was homeward
bound, and a general spirit of liveliness prevailed. Conversation was
running much upon the value of the mark, for it was to Hamburg that we
were be