made them and us, and a solitary white-sailing owl would every now and
then flit spectrelike from one green tuft, across the bald face of the
cliff, to another, and the small divers around us were breaking up the
black surface of the waters into little sparkling circles as they fished
for their suppers. All was becoming brown and indistinct near us; but
the level beams of the setting sun still lingered with a golden radiance
upon the lovely city, and the shipping at anchor before it, making their
sails, where loosed to dry, glance like leaves of gold, and their spars,
and masts, and rigging like wires of gold, and gilding their flags,
which were waving majestically and slow from the peaks in the evening
breeze; and the Moorish-looking steeples of the churches were yet
sparkling in the glorious blaze, which was gradually deepening into
gorgeous crimson, while the large pillars of the cathedral, then
building on the highest part of the ridge, stood out like brazen
monuments, softening even as we looked into a Stonehenge of amethysts.

We had not pulled fifty yards, when we heard the distant rattle of the
muskets of the sentries at the gangways, as they discharged them at
sundown, and were remarking, as we were rowing leisurely along, upon
the strange effect produced by the reports, as they were frittered away
amongst the overhanging cliffs in chattering reverberations, when the
captain suddenly sung out, "Oars!" All hands lay on them. "Look there,"
he continued--"There--between the gigs--saw you ever any thing
like that, gentlemen?" We all leant over; and although the boats,
from the _way_ they had, were skimming along nearer seven than five
knots--_there_ lay a large shark; he must have been twelve feet long at
the shortest, swimming right in the middle, and equi-distant from both,
and keeping _way_ with us most accurately.

He was distinctly visible, from the strong and vivid phosphorescence