Page:Anderson--Isle of seven moons.djvu/170

158 heavy sea a full-rigged ship tossed, under reefed topsails and jib, with tall masts raking clouds and a ghostly moon. When the lightning flickered out, the red lanterns on her rail glowed, he would have sworn, with a supernatural fire. It wasn't paint but flame. Almost like a phantom ship, the Flying Dutchman of unholy memory, perhaps, she seemed actually to skim the waves, those devil s lights blinking on her port.

To the bewildered son it was uncanny, and even the prosaic and perfectly sober father, though he tried to dismiss it as an illusion, was impressed. And now the wind, increasing in violence, started the sleeping ghosts of the house. The sheeted rain lashed savagely at the window panes. The storm had returned in good earnest. A vivid flash stabbed the darkness, and, hard on the shaft, a series of others, and accompanying reverberations like the ruffling of tremendous drums above the storm, in such swift succession it was hard to tell whether the crashes followed or preceded the bolts.

In the dazzling illumination, the dimmed port lights, all the tones of the painting, faded into oblivion, until it became but a framed bit of midnight. It was only in the spaces between, when the lamplight was not paled into insignificance, that they could discern the colours at all.

There came an instant s lull, as if the warring forces of Nature were gathering all their powers for the spring. The final onslaught was presaged by a strange ball of fire caroming around the room, with a train of sparks like the fiery impedimenta of a convict from some subterranean cell. Then the whole room burst into a white searing dawn, such as the