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In the midst of the spoon-drift we see, or we think we see, "La Junon" gliding like a phantom-ship towards the river mouth. The lightning seems to work its way into our eyes, the air-shaking thunder rolls and roars around our very ears; the oars are taken in utterly useless, the storm-wind sweeps the boat before it at full speed as though it had been a bit of straw.
Meanwhile the Avenger, alias the Foam, had steered direct for the shore, into which she apparently ran, and disappeared like a phantom-ship. The coast of this part of the island, where the events we are narrating occurred, was peculiarly formed.
Blake and Raleigh and Frobisher and Dampier may be known no more. The poetry and the mystery of the sea may perish altogether, as they have in part. Out of the past looks a bronzed and manly face; along the deck of a phantom-ship swings a square and well-knit form. I hear, in memory, the ring of his cheerful voice.
No one on board had the least idea that the tide had swept them so near the rock, and the ringing of the anvil was the first warning they got of their danger. The lookout on board instantly sang out, "Starboard har-r-r-d-! beacon ahead!" and Ruby looked up in surprise, just as the Smeaton emerged like a phantom-ship out of the fog.
Meanwhile the Avenger, alias the Foam, had steered direct for the shore, into which she apparently ran and disappeared like a phantom-ship. The coast of this part of the island, where the events we are narrating occurred, was peculiarly formed.
From the hold of the phantom-ship the unseen crew echo his prayer: "Eternal void, receive us!" He is leaning against a rock, absorbed in sombre meditation, when Daland, emerging from the cabin to take a look at the weather, becomes aware of the looming neighbour. He rouses the sleep-drunken mate.
Nevertheless, despite calm weather and propitious gale, the disaffection among the crew waxed apace by reason of the great black ship that dogged us, some holding her to be a bloody pirate and others a phantom-ship foredooming us to destruction.
Such firing, such signals, such tacking and running across each other now prevailed, that our captain resolved to run from it; and the evening had scarcely spread her sombre curtains over the western ocean, and the golden clouds begun to change their brilliant robes of day for those of murky night, when our crew "up helm," and stole away from the motley fleet, plying every sail, and scudding through the blue waters like some aerial car or phantom-ship, smoothly gliding over the silvery deep.
He turned to the sea again what phantom-ship was this that appeared in mid-air, and apparently moving when there was no wind? He heard the sound of oars; the huge vessel turned out to be only the boat of the Gometra men going out to the lobster-traps.
In that soft afternoon, standing in mournful groups upon the small deck, why did they seem to me to be seeing the sad shores of wintry New England? That phantom-ship could not be the May Flower! I gazed long upon the shifting illusion. "If I should board this ship," I asked myself, "where should I go? whom should I meet? what should I see?
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