"Hush," said I, as a strange sound fell upon my ear.
"What is it?" asked the others, listening.
"A cry!—did you not hear it?"
"No,—nonsense!" said they, together.
"It was a cry that came from somewhere."
"I did hear something," said Will White; "but it was a sheave creaking in a block aloft, I think."
"No, no," said I, pausing just by the capstan, as a terrible foreboding seized me; "it came from the cabin."
"There is no one there but the Captain, Hislop, and the boy Bill, who sleeps in the steerage, and they are all three sound enough by this time," said Lambourne.
"But the sound was from the cabin," I persisted, hastening aft.
At that moment another cry, loud and piteous,—a cry that sank into a hoarse moan, echoed through the brig, "piercing the night's dull ear," and ringing high above the welter of the sea alongside, the bubble at the stem and stern, or the hum of the wind through the taut rigging.