It was at this moment, and Barnaby True was holding to the back-stays, when a sudden, prolonged flash of lightning came after a continued space of darkness.  So sharp and heavy was this shaft that for a moment the night was as bright as day, and in that instant occurred that which was so remarkable that it hath afforded the title of this story itself.  For there, standing plain upon the deck and not far from the companionway, as though he had just come up from below, our hero beheld a figure the face of which he had seen so imperfectly once before by the flash of his own pistol in the darkness.  Upon this occasion, however, the whole figure was stamped out with intense sharpness against the darkness, and Barnaby beheld, as clear as day, a great burly man, clad in a tawdry tinsel coat, with a cocked hat with gold braid upon his head.  His legs, with petticoat breeches and cased in great leathern sea-boots pulled up to his knees, stood planted wide apart as though to brace against the slant of the deck.  The face our hero beheld to be as white as dough, with fishy eyes and a bony forehead, on the side of which was a great smear as of blood.

All this, as was said, stood out as sharp and clear as daylight in that one flash of lightning, and then upon the instant was gone again, as though swallowed up into the darkness, while a terrible clap of thunder seemed to split the very heavens overhead and a strong smell as of brimstone filled the air around about.

At the same moment some voice cried out from the darkness, “William Brand, by God!”

Then, the rain clapping down in a deluge, Barnaby leaped into the saloon, pursued by he knew not what thoughts.  For if that was indeed the image of old William Brand that he had seen once before and now again, then the grave must indeed have gaped and vomited out its dead into the storm of wind and lightning; for what he beheld that moment, he hath ever averred, he saw as clear as ever he saw his hand before his face.

This is the last account of which there is any record when the figure of Captain William Brand was beheld by the eyes of a living man.  It must have occurred just off the Highlands below the Sandy Hook, for the next morning when Barnaby True came upon deck it was to find the sun shining brightly and the brigantine riding upon an even keel, at anchor off Staten Island, three or four cable-lengths distance from a small village on the shore, and the town of New York in plain sight across the water.

’Twas the last place in the world he had expected to see.

IX

And, indeed, it did seem vastly strange to lie there alongside Staten Island all that day, with New York town in plain sight across the water and yet so impossible to reach.  For whether he desired to escape or no, Barnaby True could not but observe that both he and the young lady were so closely watched that they might as well have been prisoners, tied hand and foot and laid in the hold, so far as any hope of getting away was concerned.