Neither Blodgett nor I had heard anything else, but the cook insisted that he had heard clearly the sound of some one far off shrieking and wailing in the night. "Ah heah dat yeh noise, yass, sah. Ah ain't got none of dem yamalgamations what heahs what ain't."
He was so big and black and primitive, and his great ears spread so far out from his head, that he reminded me of some wild beast. Certainly he had a wild beast's keen ears.
But now Blodgett raised his hand. "Here's wind," he said.
And wind it was, a fresh breeze that seemed to gather up the waning strength of the light airs that had been playing at hide and seek with our ropes and canvas.
At daybreak, cutting the cable and abandoning the working bower, we got under way on the remainder of our voyage to China, bearing in a generally northwesterly course to avoid the dangerous waters lying directly between us and the port of our destination.
As we hauled at halyard and sheet and brace, and sprang quickly about at Roger's bidding, I found no leisure to watch the dawn, nor did I think of aught save the duties of the moment, which in some ways was a blessed relief; but I presently became aware that David Paine, who seemed able to work without thought, had stopped and was staring intently across the heavy seas that went rolling past us. Then, suddenly, he cried in his deep voice, "Sail ho!"
Hazily, in the silver light that intervened between moonset and sunrise, we saw a junk with high poop and swinging batten sails bearing across our course. She took the seas clumsily, her sails banging as she pitched, and we gathered at the rail to watch her pass.
"See there, men!" old Blodgett cried.
He pointed his finger at the strange vessel. We drew closer and stared incredulously.
On the poop of the junk, beside the cumbersome rudder windlass, leaning nonchalantly against the great carved rail, were Captain Nathan Falk and Chief Mate Kipping. That the slow craft could not cross our bows, they saw as well as we. Indeed, I question if they cared a farthing whether they sighted us that day or not. But they and their men, who gathered forward to stare sullenly as we drew near, shook fists and once more shouted curses. I could see them distinctly, Falk and Kipping and the carpenter and the steward and the sail-maker and the rest—angry, familiar faces.