Arrived at the extreme end of the poop, he stood gazing intently down into the black water, and presently he began muttering again.
“Yes,” he said, pointing down into the hollow of the swell as it came creeping up after the ship, “that is the spot where he went down; I saw him; I was standing near the bulwarks, and when he sprang my eyes followed him; I heard his dying cry; and I saw his last agonised upward look of despair as he went down with a plunge into the hollow between the waves, and the waters closed over his head for ever. For ever? Yes, surely—and yet—what is that white gleaming object there now, glaring up at me from beneath the water? It is—it is the face of the dead man. Ha! see he is beckoning to me. Then it was his voice I heard calling to me. Listen—what was that? Did you call, Thomson? He will not answer; he is tired of calling; but the white ghastly face is still there, and—see—there too is the beckoning hand. It is my summons, and I must obey.”
At that moment the weird plaintive scream of a sea-bird came floating down out of the grey shadows of the dawn, and Walford, starting violently, stood for a moment in an attitude of rapt attention. The cry was repeated; he glared wildly round him for an instant, and then, screaming hoarsely “I come—I come!” sprang over the guard-rails and into the sea.
Chapter Ten.
A Strange Rencontre.
We left the Aurora, as the reader will remember, at the moment when, by the merest hair’s breadth, she was enabled to avoid what must have been a terribly disastrous collision with the ill-fated Princess Royal on the day when the hurricane burst with such destructive effect upon the outward-bound fleet.
Deprived of her fore-topsail, the little barque was soon left astern by her two unwelcome neighbours, and—the fleet rapidly dispersing, now that it was no longer possible to regulate the speed of the several craft which composed it—by nightfall her crew found themselves, comparatively speaking, alone, there being only some twenty sail in sight from the deck.
That night was a most anxious one for Captain Leicester, the gale being heavier and the sea considerably higher than he had ever before witnessed; the Aurora, however, proved to be a capital little sea-boat, riding over the great liquid hills light and dry as a gull; and when at length the morning broke, revealing only two sail in sight, George felt so easy in his mind that he did not hesitate to go below and seek in his comfortable berth an hour or two of that rest which he so greatly needed.