the end of a sultry calm day, wasted in drifting helplessly in sight
of his destination, Lingard, taking advantage of fitful gusts of wind,
approached the shores of Wajo. With characteristic audacity, he held on
his way, closing in with a coast to which he was a stranger, and on a
night that would have appalled any other man; while at every dazzling
flash, Hassim's native land seemed to leap nearer at the brig--and
disappear instantly as though it had crouched low for the next spring
out of an impenetrable darkness. During the long day of the calm, he had
obtained from the deck and from aloft, such good views of the coast,
and had noted the lay of the land and the position of the dangers so
carefully that, though at the precise moment when he gave the order to
let go the anchor, he had been for some time able to see no further
than if his head had been wrapped in a woollen blanket, yet the next
flickering bluish flash showed him the brig, anchored almost exactly
where he had judged her to be, off a narrow white beach near the mouth
of a river.

He could see on the shore a high cluster of bamboo huts perched upon
piles, a small grove of tall palms all bowed together before the blast
like stalks of grass, something that might have been a palisade
of pointed stakes near the water, and far off, a sombre background
resembling an immense wall--the forest-clad hills. Next moment, all this
vanished utterly from his sight, as if annihilated and, before he had
time to turn away, came back to view with a sudden crash, appearing
unscathed and motionless under hooked darts of flame, like some
legendary country of immortals, withstanding the wrath and fire of
Heaven.

Made uneasy by the nature of his holding ground, and fearing that in one
of the terrific off-shore gusts the brig would start her anchor, Lingard