“Merciful God! who spoke?” hoarsely cried the second lieutenant. And well he might. The words were uttered in a sound scarcely above a whisper, in so low a tone, indeed, that but for Smellie’s startled ejaculation I should almost have been inclined to accept them as prompted by my own excited imagination; yet I saw in an instant that every man in the boat had heard them and was as much startled as myself. Who had uttered them, indeed? Every man’s look, as his horrified glance sought his neighbour’s face, asked the same question. Nobody seemed to have recognised or to be able to identify the voice; and the strangest thing about it was that it did not appear to have been spoken in the boat at all, but from a point close at hand.
The men had, with one accord, laid upon their oars in the first shock of this new surprise, and before they had recovered themselves the first cutter had ranged up alongside.
“Did anyone speak on board you, Armitage?” asked Smellie.
“No, certainly not,” was the reply.
“Did you hear anyone speak on board the second cutter then?” followed.
“No; I heard nothing. Why?”
“No matter,” muttered the second lieutenant. Then, in a low but somewhat louder tone:
“Give way, launches; someone has been trying to play a trick upon us.”
The men resumed their work at the oars; but an occasional scarcely heard whisper reaching my ears and suggesting rather than conveying such fragmentary sentences as “Some of us doomed”—“Lose the number of our mess,” etcetera, etcetera, showed that a very unfortunate impression had been made by the strange incident.
As we proceeded the second lieutenant began to consult his watch, and at last, turning to me as he slipped it back into his fob, he whispered: