There was where the soot in the McCulloch's funnel had suddenly blazed up like the chimney of a blast furnace.

And over there on the lower edge of the black bulk of the island was where a little signal light had flared up and then died out, leaving every man on our ships tense with expectant dread, and all about us here had reigned a silence so penetrating that it in itself was harder to bear than the thunder and flash of guns.
And still we drifted on, nearer and nearer to Boca Chica, the northern passage into Manila Bay.

Dawn and light came slowly.

In poetry the dawn of the tropics may come up like thunder and the transition of darkness to light may be startling and sudden, but in my own experience the tropic dawn comes slowly and pervadingly.

First a faint grayness, gradually growing brighter until the sun shoots up joyous and golden in its glory, painting the skies with flaming banners and penciling the tips and edges of clouds with the fires of morning.