up, Cole! The ship’s on fire!”
It was young Ready’s hollow voice, as cool, however, as though he were telling me I was late for breakfast. I started up and sought him wildly in the darkness.
“You’re joking,” was my first thought and utterance; for now he was lighting my candle, and blowing out the match with a care that seemed in itself a contradiction.
“I wish I were,” he answered. “Listen to that!”
He pointed to my cabin ceiling; it quivered and creaked; and all at once I was as a deaf man
The lanterns are trailed forward before they are put out; from the break of the poop we watch the vivid shifting patch of deck that each lights up on its way. The stars are very sharp in the vast violet dome above our masts; they shimmer on the sea; and our trucks describe minute orbits among the stars,