And then listened.
No response. Nothing save the faint murmurings and railings of the gathering gale.
“Ship ahoy–oy!”
Hark! what was that? Did he, indeed, hear a faint answering halloo from away yonder in the direction of those weird lights, or was it merely that the wish was father to the thought?
“Sh–i–ip A—hoy–oy–oy!”
“Halloo!”
Quite unmistakable this time; and the skipper, in a perfect frenzy of excitement, repeats his hail time after time, waiting only long enough to receive the answer before hailing again. Presently a bright star suddenly appears under the faintly gleaming corposants. It is a ship’s lantern held up over the rail. A minute later a tiny spark appears close to the lantern, immediately bursting into a keen bluish glare from which a cloud of white smoke arises and flakes of blue-white flame drop now and then as a port-fire is burnt. By its brilliant though ghostly radiance the skipper can see, less than half a mile distant, a brig under nothing but close-reefed main-topsail and fore-topmast staysail—evidently fully prepared for the worst that can come to her in the shape of weather—with a little group of figures gathered about the port-fire, and a smaller group, consisting of two men only, abaft the main-rigging, all peering eagerly in his direction.
He sees one of the figures raise his arms; and presently there comes floating across the inky water:
“Halloo, there! Who hails?”
The skipper again raises his hands to his mouth, draws a mighty inspiration, and replies, as the readiest means of bringing succour to him: