Chapter 10 CHAPTER IV.

SUNSET.

"Light is amid the gloomy canvas spreading,

The moon is whitening the dusky sails,

From the thick bank of clouds she masters, shedding

The softest influence that o'er night prevails.

Pale is she, like a young queen pale with splendor,

Haunted with passionate thoughts too fond, too deep;

The very glory that she wears is tender,

The very eyes that watch her beauty fain would weep."

Not a breath from the lungs of ?olus. The sun went down like a globe of fire; but just as it touched the horizon it flattened out into an oval disk, and, sinking behind a dead, slate-colored cloud, shot up half a dozen broad rose and purple bands, expanding as they mounted heavenward, and then fading away in pearly-tinted hues in the softening twilight until it mingled in the light of the half moon nearly at the zenith. There lay the island, too, now all clear again, with the blue tops of the mountains marked in pure distinct outline, and falling away from peak to peak on either hand, till the sea flashed up in sluggish creamy foam at the base. The man-of-war birds came floating in from seaward, high up, like black musquitoes, with their pointed wings wide spread and heading toward the land, but now with never a quiver to their silent pinions. A school of porpoises, too, broke water from the opposite direction, and, crossing and recrossing each other's track, came leaping and puffing over the gentle swells until they struck the brig's wake, when they wheeled around her bows, dashed off on a swift visit to the corvette, and then, closing up in watery phalanx, went gamboling, leaping, and breaking water again to windward. Presently, along the eastern horizon, the banks of clouds, which had been lying dead and motionless all the sultry day, seemed to be imbued with life, and, separating in their fleecy masses, mounted up above the sea, and soon spread out, like a lady's fan, in all directions.

"Ho! ho!" shouted Captain Blunt, clapping his hands, "what said I, Madame Rosalie, when we saw the sun setting up his lee backstays a while ago? A breeze, eh? Come, Mr. Binks, be wide awake! We shall be bowling off the knots before the watch is out."

The mate caught the enthusiasm of the skipper, and, jumping up on the break of the deck cabin, he sang out,