Читать книгу Round the Galley Fire онлайн

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The setting orb carries the mind with it. The eye will seek the light, and it is a kind of instinct that makes a man watch the sinking of the moon at sea, when there is a deep repose in the air and nothing to hinder his thoughts from following the downward-sailing orb. Many a time have I watched her, and thought of the old home she would be shining upon; the loved scenes she would be making beautiful with her holy light. There is nothing in life that gives one such a sense of distance, of infinite remoteness, as the setting of the sun or moon at sea. It defines the immeasurable leagues of water which separate you from those you love with a sharpness that is scarcely felt at other times. It is the only mark upon the circle of the ocean, and courts you into a reckoning which there is something too vague in the bare and infinite horizon to invite. As one bell strikes the moon rests her lower limb upon the horizon, and her reflection shortens away from the ship’s side as the red fragment of disc sinks behind the black water-line. In a few seconds nothing but a speck of light that glows like a live ember is visible; and when that is quenched the faint saffron tinge that hung about the sky when the moon was setting dies out and the whole circumference of the ocean is full of the blackness of night.