Suddenly, a strong light, a fierce blaze, as if the ocean had thrown up
one immense pyramid of flame, to dispel the darkness and divide the
clouds, sprang into the heavens! and then a peal, loud as the straggling
thunder! The cliff shook beneath their feet--the sea-birds started from
their nests, and flew, and screamed, and wheeled in the air! From behind
the different points and crags along the shore rushed forth the
smugglers, who had lain to, watching the time when it would have been
prudent for them to put off their boats and join the ship, as Dalton had
directed. The old death-dresser forsook the corpse, and standing on the
highest crag, her long hair floating backwards on the breeze, her arms
tossing from the effects of terror and astonishment, looked like the
sibyl whose spells and orgies have distracted nature by some terrible
convulsion. The cliffs and strand at the moment formed a picture that
Salvator would have gloried in conveying to his canvass--the line of
coast now rising boldly from the ocean, each projecting point catching
the glaring blaze, and seeming itself on fire--the caverns overhung by
creeping plants, revelling in gorgeous colours from every changing light
that touched their beauties:--then the wild figures clasping by the
rocks, panting with terror and excitement--the sibyl on her
pinnacle--the gigantic frame of Roupall, rendered still more gigantic to
the eye by the position in which he stood, breathless, with the written
parchment in his hand, yet unable to move or direct Dalton's attention
to it. The Skipper, still like a monument of stone, but called to
animation by astonishment and dismay, while the light played with the
grace and brilliancy of lightning on the bright mountings of his
pistols. Still the flames towered brightly to the heavens, while each
fresh explosion separated their condensed effect, and sent a portion of
them higher in the clouds, or hissing over the variegated and sparkling
sea, which rolled to the shore in masses of glowing fire.
"Read! read!" at length exclaimed Roupall, thrusting the parchment into
the hand of the Buccaneer. "Read! read!" he repeated, for Dalton heeded
him not.
"Read what?" said the Skipper, in a voice which entered the heart of all
who heard it; "do I not read--do I not read--black, bitter, burning
treachery?--It is my own ship--I know every spar that flits like a
meteor through the air. My heart was never crushed till now."
"Read--I will read it, if I can," said Springall, who had joined the
party. With some difficulty he succeeded in making audible its contents.