midnight
The gunpowder functionary , he of the flannel cartridge , appeared . `` Gunner , send one of your mates into the maintop , and let him bum a blue light . '' The lurid glare blazed up balefully amongst the spars and rigging , lighting up the decks , and blasting the crew into the likeness of the host of Sennacherib , when the day broke on them , and they were all dead corpses . A -- stem of us , indistinct from the distance , the white Moro Castle reappeared , and rose frowning , tier above tier , like a Tower of Babel , with its summit veiled in the clouds , and the startled sea-fowl wheeling above the higher batteries , like snowflakes blown about in storm ; while , near at hand , the rocks on each side of us looked as if fresh splintered asunder , with the sulphurous flames which had split them still burning ; the trees looked no longer green , but were sicklied o'er with a pale ashy colour , as if sheeted ghosts were holding their midnight orgies amongst their branches-cranes , and waterfowl , and birds of many kinds , and all the insect and reptile tribes , their gaudy noontide colours merged into one and the same fearful deathlike sameness , flitted and sailed and circled above us , and chattered , and screamed , and shrieked ; and the unearthly-looking guanas , and numberless creeping things , ran out on the boughs to peer at us , and a large snake twined itself up a scathed stump that shot out from a shattered pinnacle of rock that overhung us , with its glossy skin , glancing like the brazen serpent set up by Moses in the camp of the Israelites ; and the cattle on the beetling summit of the cliff craned over the precipitous ledge to look down upon us ; and while every thing around us and above us was thus glancing in the blue and ghastly radiance , the band struck up a low moaning air ; the light burnt out , and once more we were cast , by the contrast , into even more palpable darkness than before . I was entranced , and stood with folded arms , looking forth into the night , and musing intensely on the appalling scene which had just vanished like a feverish dream -- `` Dinner waits , sir , '' quoth Mafame . `` Oh ! I am coming ; '' and kicking all my romance to Old Nick , I descended , and we had a pleasant night of it , and some wine and some fun , and there an end -- but I have often dreamed of that dark pool , and the scenes I witnessed there that day and night .