"Anything! So old Upjelly's dead, and poor little Lockhart!"
"He died for his country, as you and I may do to-night, old John. Shed the sentimental tear on some future occasion. What?"
His voice rose a little. Scarlett, who was on the look-out, had crept along the deck and touched Bernard on the shoulder.
"Come forrard, sir, if you please," the man said in a hoarse whisper. He could hardly get the words out, and at first I thought his teeth were chattering with cold, but it was not so.
We crept to the bows of the Hulk and peered over the broken, rotting taffrail. Two feet below was the beam of the signal lamp shining up the creek towards the sea. The snow had temporarily stopped in this part of the marsh and the moon was bright. Thirty Main stretched away ahead as far as we could see, two hundred yards long and a hundred wide, of black, gleaming steel. The tide was full at flood.
Scarlett handed my brother a pair of night-glasses. Bernard gazed through them for twenty seconds, and then they fell softly on the deck.
"Oh God!" he said in a low voice, "so it is that, and I never thought of it before! Fool! Fool!"
I stared out also, not daring to say a word. No man can see better at night than I. What was that? Something slowly floating down the centre of the creek, a black, oblong patch. Was it two or three duck swimming landwards with the tide?
Then the black patch lifted itself from the water. It seemed to have a long, narrow tail—the whole thing was curiously distinct in the moonlight. In a second I realised that something was being pushed up from below. I had never seen anything like it before. I experienced that hideous sensation in the pit of the stomach that comes to people who are face to face with the unknown and the unexpected for the first time in their lives. All this happened in half a minute. The black, oblong thing was now high in the air on the end of a pole which came straight up through the middle of the creek. Something else was rising, a black hump, which grew and grew, until a grey tower stood there;—stood there but moved slowly towards us—or did it begin to recede?
I heard Bernard's voice: "Stand by the lamp!"