Four very bright lights appearing just after sunset on Pamlico Sound

We had gone to the area past the Ferry dock and adjacent to the NC Teachers Building to watch the sunset over the sound on a mostly clear evening. At first, I thought I was seeing the setting sun’s reflection off of something in the distance, and I asked my partner if he saw it. His first impression was that it was the lights off of a giant crane, but the perspective was off…as there was no crane in the sound. There were no ferries, and the lights were too high to have been on a boat - especially since these were far in the distance ( our estimate ten miles). They didnt flicker per se, but did seem to intensify in brightness…but it was not dark out. Then they simply vanished. My cell phone could not capture what our eyes were seeing. And frankly, at the time it seemed so strange that I was uneasy. The fascinating thing is the four lights formed a curved vertically oriented line…and the lights held their position. They did not sink nor move. It looked like a brightly lit constellation- over the water in the distance. They were above the water line, but at that distance they would have had to have been on something quite large. We did not see any structure though. Their light intensity reminded me of a white airplane headlight in the sky when the plane is overhead, and was more intense than a satellite light.