Before retiring to my cabin I went up on deck to take a look round. It was a most glorious night, still a breathless calm, the heavens perfectly clear, save for a low cloud bank hanging over the land, the stars shining brilliantly, and a half-moon shedding a soft, mysterious radiance upon the scene powerful enough to enable us to distinguish with tolerable clearness the nearer islands and some half a dozen craft lying becalmed within two miles of us, inshore. The moon would set about midnight; yet even then we should still have the stars, if the night remained clear.
Kennedy was seated in a deck chair, with a powerful night glass reposing upon his knees, when I went up on the poop; and he informed me that although he had been keeping a careful watch upon matters inshore, he had seen nothing whatever of a suspicious character.
“But then,” he explained, “I didn’t expect to. If those Malays are as ’cute as I take them to be, and are cherishing designs against us, you may bet your bottom dollar that they’ll be careful not to do anything that would appear to us in the least suspicious. I may be a fool, but things look almost too quiet, ashore there, to be wholly satisfactory to me. I would rather see a little more movement, a fishing boat or two coming out, or something like that. Why, I’ve known cases where, a ship bein’ becalmed as we are, widin a few miles of the shore, the natives have come off in scores wid fruit and fish and curios to sell; but those chaps ashore there have kept most religiously away from us. Ah, well! that cloud yonder is risin’—slowly, I admit, still it’s risin’, and I hope it’ll bring a breeze wid it, if it’s only enough to give us steerage way. I don’t like things as they are, not the least little bit.”
“Why, man,” I exclaimed, “what is the matter with you to-night? If I didn’t know better I should be almost inclined to think you were afraid!”
“Afraid, is ut?” he laughed. “Begorra! what would I be afraid of, in such a ship as this, wid all those beautiful guns and what not to purtect us? No, Leigh, it’s not afraid I am, as you know well; and yet I have a curious feelin’—I can’t describe ut, but it’s a sort of feelin’ of—Howly Sailor!—what in the nation is that? Did ye hear it, boy?”
Hear it? I should think so; and so had every other individual on deck, if one might judge by the sudden silence that fell upon the men grouped about the fore deck, followed by an equally sudden fusillade of low, quick ejaculations and the swift rush of bare feet to the rails. It began as a low, weird moan, which rose rapidly to a sort of sobbing wail and culminated in a sharp, unearthly scream that sent cold shivers running down my spine and caused the hairs of my head to bristle upon my scalp. It seemed to come from the water almost immediately under our bows. I saw a little crowd of men spring up the ladder leading to the topgallant forecastle, rush to the rail, and peer eagerly down into the black water. Then one of them straightened up suddenly and hailed:
“Poop, there! did ye hear that strange cry, sir?”
“Ay, ay,” answered Kennedy, “I heard it right enough. D’ye suppose I’m deaf? What is ut, anyway, that’s makin’ it?”
There was a brief but animated confab on the forecastle, and then the voice that had hailed came back:
“Can’t see anything anywhere, sir; but the sound seemed to come from away yonder, on the starboard bow.”