Usually the nights in the tropics are cool, but to-day, as the evening drew on, the wonted freshness did not return, but the air remained stifling2 and oppressive, while heavy masses of vapor3 hung over the water.
There was no moonlight; there would be a new moon at half-past one in the morning, but the night was singularly dark, except for dazzling flashes of summer lightning that from time to time illuminated4 the horizon far and wide. There was, however, no answering roll of thunder, and the silence of the atmosphere seemed almost awful.
For a couple of hours, in the vain hope of catching5 a breath of air, Miss Herbey, Andre Letourneur, and I, sat watching the imposing6 struggle of the electric vapors7. The clouds appeared like embattled turrets8 crested9 with flame, and the very sailors, coarse-minded men as they were, seemed struck with the grandeur10 of the spectacle, and regarded attentively11, though with an anxious eye, the preliminary tokens of a coming storm. Until midnight we kept our seats upon the stern of the raft, while the lightning ever and again shed around us a livid glare similar to that produced by adding salt to lighted alcohol.
"Are you afraid of a storm. Miss Herbey?" said Andre to the girl.
"No, Mr. Andre, my feelings are always rather those of awe12 than of fear," she replied. "I consider a storm one of the sublimest13 phenomena14 that we can behold—don't you think so too?"
"Yes, and especially when the thunder is pealing," he said; "that majestic15 rolling, far different to the sharp crash of artillery16, rises and falls like the long-drawn notes of the grandest music, and I can safely say that the tones of the most accomplished17 artiste have never moved me like that incomparable voice of nature."
"Rather a deep bass
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