“Do you know where the ship is going to, and what she is going to do? Funny now, but I’ve never looked at the chart yet. I think I’ve eaten the lotus leaf.”
“’Spects you has, sah. I don’t know nuffin neider, sah. I’m jes’ like yourse’f, sah.”
“Well, I’ve been so happy and so—so—half asleep all the time; but now I’ll have a peep at the chart. Here we are—Guayaquil Gulf. Why, what a zig-zag course the tub has taken. Oh! here we are—Galapagos! Whatever are we going to do here? Ah! well, time will tell, and it’s nothing to me much.”
The day passed dreamily away, like all the other days; and night fell, and with it the wind. Before turning in Tom went on deck. Such a night of inky darkness and mysterious silence he could not remember ever experiencing. The blackness brooded over the sea—it was almost palpable, and the silence seemed to enter one’s very soul. Hardly a sound in board, no sound at all out yonder in the beyond. The men’s voices forward round the bow when they did speak sounded loud and strange. Tom even felt relieved when a sail flapped or a bolt creaked to some almost imperceptible roll of the ship. There was never a star in the sky to-night, and a mist that was not a mist appeared to completely envelop the ship.
Pebbles came aft quietly to where he could dimly see Tom’s figure in a ray of light streaming from the poop cabin.
He took Tom’s hand.
“Come with me,” he said, “and listen.”
He led Tom forward through the darkness to the bows.
“We’ve heard it again,” said one of the men in a half-suppressed whisper. “Listen! Away out yonder. It is coming this way; but what is it?”
They leant over the bows, “peering,” “keening” into the mysterious darkness.