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
