“Fish,” said the mate, drily. “Found there’s no more water, and it’s going to die.”
“Mr Rimmer,” cried Lane, “what nonsense!”
“Nonsense? Why, I’ve many a time heard fish sing out when they’ve been dragged on board.”
“That was a bird,” said Lane, as he shaded his eyes to try and pierce the gloom around them. “There it goes again.”
For the cry was repeated, and then answered from behind them, and followed directly after by a piping whistle and a chirp.
“We’re ashore with birds all about us,” said Oliver Lane decisively. We were carried right in by that earthquake wave, and the water has retired and left us stranded.
“Have it your own way, gentlemen,” said the mate. “It’s all the same to me whether my ship’s left stranded at the bottom of a dry sea or right away on land. She’s no use now—that’s plain enough.”
Just then the darkness closed in again, and save for the murmur of voices in the obscurity, the stillness was terrible. So utterly dark did it become that anything a yard away was quite invisible, and once more, suffering one and all from a sensation of dread against which it was impossible to fight, the occupants of the deck stood waiting to encounter whatever was next to come.
Oliver Lane was at the age when a youth begins to feel that he is about to step into a fresh arena—that of manhood, but with a good deal that is boyish to hold him back. And in those moments, oppressed and overcome as he was by the long-continued darkness, he felt a strong disposition to search out a hand so as to cling to whoever was nearest, but he mastered the desire, and then uttered a sigh of satisfaction, for Drew, his companion, suddenly thrust a hand beneath his arm and pressed towards him.
“Company’s good,” he whispered, “even if you’re going to be hanged, they say; let’s keep together, Lane, for I’m not ashamed to say I’m in a regular stew.”