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Updated: May 26, 2025
Everybody knows nowadays that a corposant is nothing whatever but an electrical phenomenon, and therefore merely an indication that the atmosphere is surcharged with electricity. As to whether it travels up or down, that, in my opinion, is mere chance or accident, call it which you will." "Have you ever seen any of those things before, sir?" inquired the mate.
There was fever between the decks; there was fever in black hearts; of dark nights a corposant burned now at this masthead, now at that. Mariner and soldier knew the story of the shadowy figure keeping company with the stars there above them on the poop-royal. Did he keep company only with the stars and with the boy, his familiar?
We were off the yard in good season, for it is held a fatal sign to have the pale light of the corposant thrown upon one's face. As it was, the English lad did not feel comfortably at having had it so near him, and directly over his head.
They were all watching it carefully, for sailors have a notion that if the corposant rises in the rigging it is a sign of fair weather, but if it comes lower down there will be a storm. Unfortunately, as an omen, it came down, and showed itself on the top-gallant yard-arm.
Within the next half-hour the wind had increased so greatly in strength that I began to think there really might be something in Saunders's theory after all, and I was inwardly debating whether I should haul the fore-sheet to windward and heave the schooner to, or whether it would be better to up helm and run before it until the weather should moderate a bit, when a third corposant suddenly appeared, this time on the boom-foresail gaff-end.
Some ten minutes or a quarter of an hour after the second corposant had vanished we felt a faint movement in the atmosphere which caused our small spread of canvas to flap heavily once or twice; then came a puff of hot, damp air that lasted long enough to give the schooner steerage-way; and when this was on the point of dying, a scuffle of wind swept over us that careened the schooner to her bearings, and before she had recovered herself the true breeze was upon us, with a deep, weird, moaning sound that was inexpressibly dismal, and that somehow seemed to impart a feeling of dire foreboding to the listener.
Adams, the mate, and learned that the object which gave me such a fright was not of very unfrequent occurrence during a gale of wind. It was known among seamen by the name of CORPOSANT, or COMPLAISANT, being a corruption of "cuerpo santo," the name it received from the Spaniards.
I looked, and saw a corposant, as it is called at sea, a St. Elmo's fire, burning at the end of the crossjack-yard. The yard lay square, and the polished sea beneath gave back the reflection so clearly that the mystic fire lay like a huge glow-worm on the black mirror.
With the disappearance of the corposant there was nothing whatever to betray the presence of a strange sail in our vicinity; for now, strain my eyes as I would, I could not be at all certain that I saw anything, although there were times when the same vague, shapeless blot of deeper darkness that had previously attracted my attention seemed to loom up momentarily out of the Stygian murkiness ahead.
While this was happening, the corposant on the bowsprit-end also let go its hold and came floating inboard along the spar, causing a regular stampede of the watch, who incontinently came rushing aft as far as the mainmast, to get out of the way of their uncanny visitor, which, however, vanished as it reached the knightheads.
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