“The strangest cry I ever heard, long-drawn-out, wild—eerie’s the word for it, I guess,” Frank Merrill said. As he spoke, he peered off into the darkness. “If it were possible, I should say it was a woman’s voice.”
The three men walked away from the camp, looked off into every direction of the starlit night. Nowhere was there sign or sound of life.
“It must have been gulls,” said Honey Smith.
“It didn’t sound like gulls,” answered Frank Merrill. For an instant he fell into meditation so deep that he virtually forgot the presence of the other two. “I don’t know what it was,” he said finally in an exasperated tone. “I’m going to sleep.”
They walked back to camp. Frank Merrill rolled himself up in a blanket, lay down. Soon there came from his direction only the sound of regular, deep breathing.
“Well, Honey,” Billy Fairfax asked, a note of triumph in his voice, “how about it?”
“Well, Billy,” Honey Smith said in a baffled tone, “when you get the answer, give it to me.”
Nobody mentioned the night’s experience the next day. But a dozen times Frank Merrill stopped his work to gaze out to sea, an expression of perplexity on his face.
The next night, however, they were all waked again, waked twice. It was Ralph Addington who spoke first; a kind of hoarse grunt and a “What the devil was that?”
“What?” the others called.