Bude had fallen into a deck-chair, his face buried in his hands, his arms rocking convulsively.
‘I say, old cock, pull yourself together,’ said Logan, and rushing down the companion stairs, he reappeared with a bottle of champagne. To extract the cork (how familiar, how reassuring, sounded the cloop!), and to pour the foaming beverage into two long tumblers, was, to the active Logan, the work of a moment. Shaking Bude, he offered him the beaker; the earl drained it at a draught. He shuddered, but rose to his feet.
‘Not a man alive on that doomed vessel,’ he was saying, when anew the still air was rent by the raucous notes of a megalophone:
‘Is your exhibit all right?’
‘Fit as a fiddle,’ answered Logan through a similar instrument.
‘Our exhibits are gone bust,’ answered Captain Noah Funkal. ‘Our professors are in fits. Our darkeys are all dead. Can your skipper come aboard?’
‘Just launching a boat,’ cried Logan.
Bude gave the necessary orders. His captain stepped up to him and saluted.
‘Do you know what these red fire-flies were that come aboard, sir?’ he asked.
‘Fire-flies? Oh, musæ volitantes sonoræ, a common phenomenon in these latitudes,’ answered Bude.