"Not if they can help it, I trow. It's Death brings 'em and he holds 'em tight.... Hearken to that now!"—and he stopped as though in doubt about going further.
And Wulfrey, listening intently, caught a faint thin sound of wailing far away in the distance. It rose and fell, shrill and piercing and very discomforting, though very far away.
"What is it?" he jerked.
"Spirits," breathed Macro, and his face was more scared and haggard even than before.
"Nonsense!" said Wulfrey, with an assumption of brusqueness for his own reassurance, for this dismal progress through the graveyard was telling sorely on him also, and the sounds that came wavering across the water were as like the shrieking of souls in torment as anything he could imagine. "There are no such things. Don't be a fool, man!"
"Man alive!—no spirits? The Islands are full o' them, an' this place fuller still. Yes, indeed!"
But it was obviously impossible to float about there for ever. The water was not nearly so cold as Wulfrey had expected, but the strain of the night and of the preceding days of semi-starvation had told on him, and he was feeling that he could not stand much more. He set off doggedly again towards the thickest agglomeration of dead shipping in front, and the mate followed him with a face full of foreboding.
They went in silence, paying no heed now to the things they passed on the way, though the apparently endless succession of dead ships and the parts of them was not without its effect on their already broken spirits.
"Gosh!" cried Macro of a sudden. "I touched ground or I'm a Dutchman! Ay—sand it is," and Wulfrey sinking his feet found firm bottom.
"Better keep the floats," suggested the mate. "Mebbe it's only the side of a bank we're on."