“That wouldn’t effect very much, for we shouldn’t be able to see any great distance, and I don’t suppose an ordinary craft’s lights make much of a show half a mile away.”
“It isn’t likely we’d— Look there!” Ned cried excitedly, interrupting himself as the boat was swung around by the swell just as she was sliding down from the crest of a wave and the interior was momentarily exposed to view.
Both Vance and Roy had seen the same thing which had attracted Ned’s attention so suddenly, and they were very pale.
“What did you make out?” the former asked, as if distrusting his own eyes.
“A dead man,” Ned replied solemnly.
“That is what I thought I saw,” Roy added.
During several moments neither of the party spoke.
It seemed like an ill omen to have this craft with its freight of death borne by an unseen force directly to the place where they had been cast by the wickedness of man and the fury of the elements.
The boat with her ghastly crew was coming straight for them as if steered by the lifeless man, and no course could have been more true had she been fully manned.
“It’s either some sailor who has lost his vessel at sea and been drifting around until he starved to death, or one who was in this boat when the collision——”