midday sun
Oh , Tom , at the moment I heard them announced , my dear old mother flitted before my mind 's eye , with the bright , well-scoured , large brass pans in the background , as she superintended her handmaidens in their annual preservations . '' After the fruitless interview , we weighed , and sailed for Port au Prince , where we arrived the following evening . I had heard much of the magnificence of the scenery in the Bight of Leogane , but the reality far surpassed what I had pictured to myself . The breeze , towards noon of the following day , had come up in a gentle air from the westward , and we were gliding along before it like a spread eagle , with all our light sails abroad to catch the sweet zephyr , which was not even strong enough to ruffle the silver surface of the landlocked sea , that glowed beneath the blazing midday sun , with a dolphin here and there cleaving the shining surface with an arrowy ripple , and a brown-skinned shark glaring on us , far down in the deep , clear , green profound , like a water fiend , and a slow-sailing pelican overhead , after a long sweep on poised wing , dropping into the sea like lead , and flashing up the water like the bursting of a shell , as we sailed up into a glorious amphitheatre of stupendous mountains , covered with one eternal forest , that rose gradually from the hot sandy plains that skirted the shore ; while what had once been smiling fields , and rich sugar plantations , in the long misty level districts at their bases , were now covered with brushwood , fast rising up into one impervious thicket ; and as the Island of Conave closed in the view behind us to seaward , the sun sank beyond it , amidst rolling masses of golden and blood-red clouds , giving token of a goodly day to-morrow , and gilding the outline of the rocky islet -LRB- as if to a certain depth it had been transparent -RRB- with a golden halo , gradually deepening into imperial purple . Beyond the shadow of the tree-covered islet , on the left hand , rose the town of Port-au-Prince , with its long streets rising like terraces on the gently swelling shore , while the mountains behind it , still gold tipped in the declining sunbeams , seemed to impend frowningly over it , and the shipping in the roadstead at anchor off the town were just beginning to fade from our sight in the gradually increasing darkness , and a solitary light began to sparkle in a cabin window and then disappear , and to twinkle for a moment in the piazzas of the houses on shore like a will-of-the-wisp , and the chirping buzz of myriads of insects and reptiles was coming off from the island a-stem of us , borne on the wings of the light wind , which , charged with rich odours from the closing flowers , fanned us `` like the sweet south , soft breathing o'er a bed of violets , '' when a sudden flash and a jet of white smoke puffed out from the hill-fort above the town , the report thundering amongst the everlasting hills , and gradually rumbling itself away into the distant ravines and valleys , like a lion growling itself to sleep , and the shades of night fell on the dead face of nature like a pall , and all was undistinguishable . -- When I had written thus far -- it was at Port-au-Prince , at Mr S -- ` s -- Mr Bang entered -- `` Ah ! Tom -- at the log , polishing -- using the plane -- shaping out something for Ebony let me see . ''