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A Romance
"As he spoke there was a roar aloft unlike any other sound, and then the galley was struck by the furious blast, bending her beneath the instantaneously foaming sea, while a drift of ocean spray rushed over her deck like a cataract. The galley shook and quivered beneath the shock; and, before she could recover herself, or her crew could regain their control over her, a flash of blue quivering flame ran along her deck, and then burst at the foot of the foremast, bringing it, and its ponderous yard, a wreck over the side. The crash of thunder that followed this vivid and fatal flash or meteor — for four seamen were killed— astonished and bewildered the galley's crew ; but Paoli, with his energetic officers and pilot, roused them into action, and, in a few seconds, they got the galley to scud before the blast.
Another peal of thunder, more appalling than the last, changed the direction of the tempest like magic. A kind of whirlwind fell upon the waters, driving them in all directions like snow-drift into the air. The heavens, at the same time, were one vast sheet of flame, disclosing to review the before calm sea — tossed and agitated by the war of the elements. In vain the labouring ship recovered from one. shock — to be met by the capricious hurricane in an opposite direction."