“Nonsense. It wouldn't have handled us that way.”
“Well, what was it? Listen! For God's sake keep quiet there forward!”
Wilbur looked over the side into the water. The ripples were still chasing themselves away from the schooner. There was nothing else. The stillness shut down again. There was not a sound.
VI. A SEA MYSTERY
In spite of his best efforts at self-control, Wilbur felt a slow, cold clutch at his heart. That sickening, uncanny lifting of the schooner out of the glassy water, at a time when there was not enough wind to so much as wrinkle the surface, sent a creep of something very like horror through all his flesh.
Again he peered over the side, down into the kelp-thickened sea. Nothing—not a breath of air was stirring. The gray light that flooded down from the stars showed not a break upon the surface of Magdalena Bay. On shore, nothing moved.
“Quiet there, forward,” called Moran to the shrill-voiced coolies.
The succeeding stillness was profound. All on board listened intently. The water dripped like the ticking of a clock from the “Bertha Millner's” stern, which with the rising of the bow had sunk almost to the rail. There was no other sound.
“Strange,” muttered Moran, her brows contracting.