For the boats of a small ship like the Bunting to board a heavily armed fighting dhow like the one they had been giving chase to, is no mean exploit even by day: by night such an adventure requires both tact and skill and determination as well.
But the thing has been done before, and it was going to be tried again now.
The captain himself went on deck.
There was already a faint glimmer of light from the rising moon on the south-eastern sky.
But the sea was all as silent as the grave; there was the rattling of the revolving screw and the noise of the rushing, bubbling, lapping waves as the vessel cleaved her way through them. Further than this, for the space of many minutes, sound there was none.
“In what direction did you say you heard the cries?” asked Captain Wayland of young Harry Milvaine.
“We are steering straight for it now, sir, and—”
Suddenly he was interrupted. From a point still a little on the port bow, and apparently a mile distant, came a series of screams, so mournful, so pleading, so pitiful, as almost to freeze one’s blood.
“Ah-h! Oh-h-h! Oh! Oh! Oo-oo-ok!”
The last cry was wildly despairing, and cut suddenly short, as I have tried to describe, by the letters “ok.”