Another man of the watch asserted the same thing. Tom Llanyard got his night-glass, and swept the obscurity ahead with it, but in vain.
Intensely dark was the night—intensely black the sea through which the yacht was running. The gurgle and wash of the billows could be heard at the bows and under the counter, but nothing was seen of them. There was no phosphorescent gleam—no pale streak of foam to catch the eye or define the presence of the deep, and the imaginative mind of Alison felt in its fullest sense all the mystery of the hidden miles of water that were around her; while the keen and ceaseless watch kept by those on deck impressed her with a curiously mingled sense of security and danger—security in the skill and courage of the crew; danger in the knowledge that there were shoals and sands about her, and a sea alive with vessels.
Suddenly out of the darkness there came two wavering flames, then a row of red round lights, all in a line, as a steamer swept past, looming huge and dark, with a cloud of red sparks streaming to leeward from her unseen funnel, and the commotion her screw propeller and the pulsing her engines made in the water passed away with her, and there seemed to be a deeper darkness all around the Firefly as she faded into the obscurity astern.
'That was the light you saw?' said Tom to the look-out man forward.
'It was not, sir,' replied the sailor, confidently, 'for there it is again!'
At some undefinable distance a light, like that of a lantern, flickering, feeble, and lambent, seemed to dance for a moment on the waves, and then disappeared.
Suddenly a shout went from stem to stern.
'Something right ahead—something large and black, Captain Llanyard!' cried the look-out man.
'Hard a-port—the helm—hard a-port,' thundered Llanyard, 'or we'll be slap into her!'
Lord Cadbury and Sir Ranald now came rushing on deck, and quitting the arm of Tom, who had now other work to do, Alison clung fearfully to her father, whose arm went instinctively round her.