Sentence:  She was, as you know, to the west-ward of us, and the sunset was making a great flame of red light to the back of her, so that she showed a little blurred and indistinct by reason of the <WSD>halation</WSD> of the light, which almost defeated the eye in any attempt to see her rotting spars and standing rigging, submerged, as they were, in the fiery glory of the sunset. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  The action of light surrounding some object as if making a halo.