Sometimes there were no paling planets and no rising sun, and a black sea, ridged with white, tossed under a low dark sky with dim rifts.
One morning, they saw the sun rise with a serenity and majesty which it rarely has outside of the theatre.

The dawn began over that sea which was like the rumpled canvas imitations of the sea on the stage, under long mauve clouds bathed in solemn light.

Above these, in the pale tender sky, two silver stars hung, and the steamer's smoke drifted across them like a thin dusky veil.

To the right a bank of dun cloud began to burn crimson, and to burn brighter till it was like a low hill-side full of gorgeous rugosities fleeced with a dense dwarfish growth of autumnal shrubs.

The whole eastern heaven softened and flushed through diaphanous mists; the west remained a livid mystery.