“Are you awake, Captain Blyth?” demanded Manners sharply.
No answer, and both men listen as well as they can through the awful roar and shriek of the gale, hoping to hear the measured breathing of the sleeper. But no such sound is heard; and after listening breathlessly for a few seconds Manners bounds out of his berth, and fumbling about for the matches, finds them at last and strikes a light. The skipper’s berth is empty and undisturbed; it has evidently not been slept in that night.
Manners and Nicholls—the latter having also turned out—look blankly at the bunk and then at each other, the same dreadful suspicion dawning upon them both at the same instant.
“Good heavens!” gasped Manners. “It cannot be that - and yet it looks like it—is it possible, Tom, that the skipper has not returned—that he is at sea on the raft in this awful gale?”
“I’m blest if it don’t look uncommon like it, sir,” is Nicholls’ reply, uttered in a tone of desperate conviction. “Tell ye what ’tis, sir,” he continued, as he hastily proceeds to don a garment or two, slipping his bare feet into his shoes as he does so, “I’m off down to the creek to see if the punt is there. If she ain’t, you may depend on’t she’s ridin’ at the raft’s moorin’s—if she ain’t swamped—and that the raft’s at sea, with the poor skipper aboard of her. The Lord have mercy on him if it is so, that’s all I says.”
“Stop a moment; I will go with you,” says Manners, also hastily dressing; “but before we go we had perhaps better inquire of Mr Gaunt or the doctor whether they know anything about him; they are certain to be awake.”
A minute later the two men are groping their way along the wall of the court-yard toward the door of Gaunt’s room, in which they can perceive a light. Manners knocks, and instantly receives the response:
“Yes. Who is there?”
“Manners and Nicholls, sir. Do you know anything about the captain, Mr Gaunt? He is not with us, and his bunk has not been slept in to-night.”
“Stay where you are, I will be out in a moment,” is the reply. And almost in the short space of time named Gaunt emerges.