We had scarcely begun to settle down again, and regain the control of our nerves after this distinctly startling adventure, when the dense canopy of black cloud overhead was rent asunder by a flash of lightning, steel-blue, keen, and dazzlingly vivid, that seemed to strike the water within a dozen fathoms of us, while simultaneously we were deafened by a crackling crash of thunder of such appalling loudness and violence that one might have been excused for believing that the very foundations of the earth had been riven asunder.  So tremendous was the concussion of it that I quite distinctly felt the longboat quiver and tremble under its influence.  And the next instant down came the rain in a regular tropical, torrential downpour, causing the sea to hiss as though each individual drop of rain were red-hot, and starting us to work at once in both boats with the balers, to save our provisions from being ruined.  I happened to be looking away in a westerly direction when the flash came, and despite its dazzling vividness I caught a momentary glimpse of the pirate brig in that direction, and not more than a mile distant from us. None of the others in the boats appeared to have seen her, for no one said a word; and I only hoped that no eye on board her had happened to be turned toward us at the moment, or they could not have failed to see us; and she was altogether too near for my liking.  I said nothing, for it seemed unnecessary to disturb the men by informing them of her whereabouts; and I comforted myself with the reflection that when the squall should come--as come it now must in a very few minutes,--she, like ourselves, would be compelled to scud before it; and as she would run two feet to our one, she would soon run us out of sight.