Instantly there arose a hubbub of protesting voices, one of which, louder than the rest, could be heard exclaiming:
“You chump! what d’ye mean by sayin’ that? Don’t ye know the difference between starboard and port? It was away off here to port that the sound came from.”
But this assertion in turn was contradicted by the first speaker and his adherents, so that in less than a minute a strenuous argument was proceeding on the forecastle, both parties to which, it seemed to me, were in the wrong.
“Ay, ay, there ye are,” commented Kennedy. “Nobody knows where the sound came from. ’Twas the banshee, me bhoy, that’s what ut was; and some Oirishman aboard this good ship is goin’ to lose the number of his mess shortly.”
“Oh, nonsense!” I exclaimed. “You surely do not believe that—”
I had got so far with my protest when again the blood-curdling cry rang out over the dark water, this time sounding more distant than before. Once more a clamorous dispute arose on the forecastle as to the direction from which the sound proceeded, for, curiously enough, no two individuals seemed quite agreed upon the point, while even I felt it impossible to make an authoritative statement as to whether the cry arose from ahead or astern. And, in the midst of the discussion, up came the saloon party, en masse, to enquire what was the matter.
I was, for some not very definite reason, glad that Kennedy did not again assert his banshee theory; he merely stated the facts of the case, leaving the others to draw their own conclusions. The boy, Julius, no sooner heard the chief mate’s statement than he was ready with an explanation. In a high-pitched tone of voice, which could be distinctly heard from one end of the ship to the other, he positively asserted that the cries were those of a sea bird, although I had never in my life heard a sea bird utter such terrible sounds, nor had the men forward, if one might judge by the low, contemptuous laughter from the forecastle with which the assertion was greeted. But although Kennedy demurred, the boy insisted that he was right; he knew all about it, and finally rushed off to his cabin for some book, a certain passage in which, he declared, would support his contention. And I seized the opportunity thus afforded to retire in good order to my own cabin.
When I went on deck again, at eight bells, the moon was just on the point of ruddily setting, while the cloud bank which I had noticed earlier in the evening hanging low over the land had risen until its upper edge was almost over our mast-heads, blotting out about half the stars. It was now so dark away to the eastward that nothing whatever could be seen, not even the faintest loom of the nearest islands; while, if it had not been for a faintly glimmering light here and there, we could not have told that there were any craft of any kind in our neighbourhood. There had been no repetition of those strange, weird sounds that had startled us all earlier in the night, so Kennedy informed me; but he was still firmly convinced that they had emanated from the banshee, and when I laughingly tried to argue him out of his conviction he took me up rather sharply with the assertion that, had I been of Irish birth or extraction, I would know better than to make light of the matter. To my amazement, he seemed quite depressed and low-spirited at the mere mention of it, so I quickly dropped the subject and asked him if during his watch he had observed anything to confirm his earlier suspicion that we might possibly be attacked. He admitted that he had not, but added:
“I niver expected to see annything so long as the light lasted. It’s now that they’ll be beginnin’ to make a musther if those ginks mane comin’ off to us at all, so for the love o’ Mike keep your eyes skinned and your ears wide open all through your watch. We can keep them off aisily, if we only get warnin’ enough; but if by anny chance they can conthrive to creep up close enough to take us unawares and lay us aboard, they may take the ship through sheer force av numbers.”
“Why,” said I, “you talk as though you felt absolutely certain that an attack will be made upon the ship! I can’t understand you a bit to-night, and that’s a fact.”