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Updated: May 19, 2025
As they heard the shriek of the fierce, whirling blasts, the rush and hiss of astonished waves whipped into terrible activity, the creaking of beams and timbers suddenly strained to their utmost capacity, the flap and rattle of sails furled with lightning rapidity, and, above all else, the increasing roar, indescribably awful, that was mingled of electricity set free into wide spaces and vapor pent into dire cloud-shapes driven by mighty winds, whose form no man can imagine, whose might only God can guess, they grew silent and gathered in groups, awestricken and still.
A moment before they had menaced black and sullen against the sky, but at the touch of the moon their very substance seemed to dissolve, leaving in the upper atmosphere the airiest, most nebulous, fragile, ghostly simulacrums of themselves you could imagine in the realms of fairy-land. They seemed actually to float, to poise like cloud-shapes about to dissolve.
Very gradually the brilliancy of the flashes, as well as their frequency and duration, increased, until, by two bells, the glimmer of some of them endured for perhaps as long as three seconds, during which the entire sky, with its enormous, fantastic cloud-shapes, from horizon to zenith, was lit up with a faint sulphurous blue glare, strongly suggestive of the idea that we were afloat in the heart of an enormous cavern, momentarily illuminated by the burning of a port-fire.
The story of the terrible idol with the golden eyes, the secret rites, the knight led from the penitential cell and buried at daybreak, the execution of the Grand Master at the stake, turned in his head fitfully; cloud-shapes that passed, floating, changing incessantly, suddenly disappearing, leaving him again Mike Fletcher, a strained, agonized soul of our time, haunted and hunted by an idea, overpowered by an idea as a wolf by a hound.
Nevertheless, the sunbeam had its cloud-shapes of gloom, and if Israel in his darker hours hungered for more human company, and wished that the little playfellow of the angels which had come down to his dwelling could only be his simple human child, he sometimes had his wish, and many throbs of anguish with it.
She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but, later in the day of earthly existence, might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind.
The change was so gradual that it was impossible to say just when it began, but within half an hour of our first perception of it the light had grown so strong that not only were we able to move about freely without running foul of things but, standing aft by the useless wheel and looking forward, every detail of the ship's hull, spars, sails, and rigging stood out clearly and sharply, like a silhouette cut out of black paper, against a background of shining oil- smooth water and dense masses of twisting and writhing cloud-shapes all reflecting the weird, mysterious ruddy light.
Though fully as weary as they he could not sleep for hours. He was dominated by a feeling that a crisis in his fate was at hand, and as he lay and looked at the stars every possible shape that that fate could take drifted across his mind, even as the endlessly-varying cloud-shapes swept now languidly, now hurriedly across the domed sky above him.
As the flush of victory deepened it reminded him of all that a life of effort meant. The myriad hues growing in the east were the symbol of human hope of success so hardly striven. The massing billows, fantastic cloud-shapes, rich in splendid habiliments, suggested the enthronement of joy supreme.
And said that blue became my darling best. But when, this morn, a spotless virgin vest And robe of white did the blue one displace, She seemed a pearl-tinged-cloud, and I was space! She filled my soul as cloud-shapes fill the West. "And so it is that, changing day by day Changing her robe, but not her loveliness Whether the gown be blue or white or gray, I deem that one her most becoming dress.
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