Читать книгу Round the Galley Fire онлайн

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At the appointed time, therefore, the sailors came along to rig up the lanterns, as many as they had, sidelights, cabin-lamps, and the like. Any departure from regular routine delights Jack, and his grin is never broader nor his whispered jokes more explosive than at such times. Besides, he was to dance presently, and he tumbled through the preparations like a man in a hurry to enjoy himself. The sun went down—a mass of glorious splendour—flinging up the glass-smooth water until the western horizon all that way looked to be twenty leagues distant, and shedding a haze of purple gold far to the eastward of the zenith that tinted the mighty expanse of ocean with a delicate crimson which yielded fast to the eager stride of the tropical night, though darkness was in the east, and the large tremulous silver stars were sparkling upon its deep ebony bosom, and the white snow-like moon was floating in the pure deep shadows in the south and whitening the water with a slender stream of icy light, when the west was still ardent with the fires of the vanished day-beam.