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The air was filled with fire-flies, whose light sparkled thickly against the dark background of the copsewood; but these did not prevent her from distinguishing a brighter flash, like the snapping of a lucifer-match, that appeared among them. Her signal was answered! She lowered the handkerchief, and, taking out a small key, applied it to the lock of the gate.
Beecher has effected, we must not go to Exeter Hall and follow its enthusiastic audience as they are swayed hither and thither by his arguments and appeals; we must not count the crowd of admiring friends and sympathizers whom he, like all personages of note, draws around him: the fire-fly calls other fire-flies about him, but the great community of beetles goes blundering round in the dark as before.
We can see the outlines of the trees clearly. It is a wonderful evening for fire-flies. No one knows why on some nights they appear like this in countless thousands, and on other nights, apparently the same, there is not one to be seen. It looks almost as if they had parties and agreed to do their best on certain occasions.
I had, of course, kept my own secret, and was entirely alone. The great Southern fire-flies were out, not haunting the low ground merely, like ours, but rising to the loftiest tree-tops with weird illumination, and anon hovering so low that my horse often stepped the higher to avoid them.
Then, hand in hand they crossed the bridge and struck into the wilderness again; climbing slopes still warm and odorous, passing through dells full of chilly damps, along meadows spangled with fire-flies, and haunted by sonorous frogs; over rocks crisp with pale mosses, and between dark firs, where shadows brooded, and melancholy breezes rocked themselves to sleep.
"That's done it, sir," whispered Peter. "I saw two quite plain." "I saw quite fifty, Pete," whispered back Archie. "Boats, sir! Stuff fire-flies!" "Do you mean to say that you saw boats?" "That's right, sir. Just a glimpse tied up, not half-a-dozen yards out in the river. Come on, sir; I'll lead; only keep hold of hands and be ready to step down into the water.
After dinner we sat in the long wicker chairs out in the garden beneath the palms, taking our coffee in the flower-scented air, with the myriad fire-flies dancing about us. At table Charlie had been in his best mood, telling me all the gossip of Florence, but out in the garden, with his face in the shadow, he seemed to become morose and uncommunicative.
"Yes, of course; ladies always are," said the Captain cheerily, "when they are sitting up waiting. Now, now, be cool. There are scores of things that might have happened in a little expedition like this. First of all, they may have stopped to watch the fire-flies." "Oh yes, but not so late." "Well, no; but they may have gone much farther than they intended.
"He's a cute chap that," remarked Joe, with a sarcastic smile; "I don't feel quite easy about gettin' away. He'll bother the life out o' us to get all the goods we've got, and, ye see, as we've other tribes to visit, we must give away as little as we can here." "Ha! you is right," said Henri; "dat fellow's eyes twinkle at de knives and tings like two stars." "Fire-flies, ye should say.
I have here two pledges that I shall yet slay Moby Dick and survive it." "Take another pledge, old man," said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up like fire-flies in the gloom "Hemp only can kill thee." "The gallows, ye mean. I am immortal then, on land and on sea," cried Ahab, with a laugh of derision; "Immortal on land and on sea!" Both were silent again, as one man.
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