A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 147: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

144 A QUEER RACE. Cross, loomed large and silent under the vaulted sky, like some monstrous genie guarding hidden treasure, or a giant sentinel keeping watch over the sleeping island that nestled at its base. Westward, as well as northward and southward, the calm was complete, and anything more superb than the orb-gemmed heavens and the shining sea it were impossi- bie to imagine; but out of the mist and beyond the Painted Rocks were beginning to creep ominous shadows —shadows that swiftly took the form of clouds, and spreading pall-like over the sky, swallowed up the stars and turned the water to an inky blackness.” | ~ ‘It became so dark that I had to grope my way to the binnacle, intent on lighting the lantern, as without some- thing to denote our whereabouts the people who were coming to fetch us off would be unable to find the ship. There was a peculiar feeling in the atmosphere, too, that made me think it was strongly charged with electricity. My temples throbbed asif they would burst, when I pushed my hand through my hair I could hear it crackle. f I had reached the binnacle, and was feeling about for | the lantern, when a terrific peal of thunder crashed over the mountain, and along, vivid flash of forked lightning rent the clouds asunder, bringing every object which it illumined into sharpest relief. It did not last the hun- dredth part of a second, yet I saw everything—the creek, the sea, the tall masts of the Diana, the very leaves quivering on the trees—and the figure of a man cutting one of the ropes by which the ship was moored to the shore! CHAPTER XXIII. A TERRIBLE NIGHT. I saw it distinctly—a man hacking at the rope with a long knife; and if t:is back had not been turned toward me I should have seen his face—possibly recognized him. Yet I could hardiy believe my eyes. I thought they had deceived me, and tried to persuade myself that I was the victim. of an optical illusion. But my doubts were quickly and rudely dispelled. ‘The next moment the ship swung round, and the second rope, unable to withstand the strain, o# perhaps weakened by the slash of another Gom G JOO SH {