We cooked our fish on a rock
named "Satan," about forty feet long and twenty broad, irregular in its
shape, and of uneven surface, with pools of water here and there, left by
the tide,--dark brown rock, or whitish; there was the excrement of
sea-fowl scattered on it, and a few feathers. The water was deep around
the rock, and swelling up and downward, waving the sea-weed. We built
two fires, which, as the dusk deepened, cast a red gleam over the rock
and the waves, and made the sea, on the side away from the sunset, look
dismal; but by and by up came the moon, red as a house afire, and, as it
rose, it grew silvery bright, and threw a line of silver across the calm
sea. Beneath the moon and the horizon, the commencement of its track of
brightness, there was a cone of blackness, or of very black blue. It was
after nine before we finished our supper, which we ate by firelight and
moonshine, and then went aboard our decked boat again,--no safe
achievement in our ticklish little dory. To those remaining in the boat,
we had looked very picturesque around our fires, and on the rock above
them,--our statures being apparently increased to the size of the sons of
Anak.
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