cloud-zenith. The horizon drew in on us till it seemed scarcely half
a mile away. The Elsinore was embayed in a tiny universe of mist and
sea. The lightning played. Sky and horizon drew so close that the
Elsinore seemed on the verge of being absorbed, sucked in by it,
sucked up by it.

Then from zenith to horizon the sky was cracked with forked
lightning, and the wet atmosphere turned to a horrid green. The
rain, beginning gently, in dead calm, grew into a deluge of enormous
streaming drops. It grew darker and darker, a green darkness, and in
the cabin, although it was midday, Wada and the steward lighted
lamps. The lightning came closer and closer, until the ship was
enveloped in it. The green darkness was continually a-tremble with
flame, through which broke greater illuminations of forked lightning.
These became more violent as the rain lessened, and, so absolutely
were we centred in this electrical maelstrom, there was no connecting
any chain or flash or fork of lightning with any particular thunder-
clap. The atmosphere all about us paled and flamed. Such a crashing
and smashing! We looked every moment for the Elsinore to be struck.
And never had I seen such colours in lightning. Although from moment
to moment we were dazzled by the greater bolts, there persisted
always a tremulous, pulsing lesser play of light, sometimes softly
blue, at other times a thin purple that quivered on into a thousand
shades of lavender.

And there was no wind. No wind came. Nothing happened. The
Elsinore, naked-sparred, under only lower-topsails, with spanker and
crojack furled, was prepared for anything. Her lower-topsails hung
in limp emptiness from the yards, heavy with rain and flapping
soggily when she rolled. The cloud mass thinned, the day brightened,