“I left him down below in a kind of trance. Where's my boat?”
“Your boat is hanging astern. And my opinion is that you are as uncivil as I've proved you to be untruthful. Egzz-actly.”
Carter stumbled toward the taffrail and in the first step he made came full against somebody who glided away. It seemed to him that such a night brings men to a lower level. He thought that he might have been knocked on the head by anybody strong enough to lift a crow-bar. He felt strangely irritated. He said loudly, aiming his words at Shaw whom he supposed somewhere near:
“And my opinion is that you and your skipper will come to a sudden bad end before—”
“I thought you were in your boat. Have you changed your mind?” asked Lingard in his deep voice close to Carter's elbow.
Carter felt his way along the rail, till his hand found a line that seemed, in the calm, to stream out of its own accord into the darkness. He hailed his boat, and directly heard the wash of water against her bows as she was hauled quickly under the counter. Then he loomed up shapeless on the rail, and the next moment disappeared as if he had fallen out of the universe. Lingard heard him say:
“Catch hold of my leg, John.” There were hollow sounds in the boat; a voice growled, “All right.”
“Keep clear of the counter,” said Lingard, speaking in quiet warning tones into the night. “The brig may get a lot of sternway on her should this squall not strike her fairly.”
“Aye, aye. I will mind,” was the muttered answer from the water.
Lingard crossed over to the port side, and looked steadily at the sooty mass of approaching vapours. After a moment he said curtly, “Brace up for the port tack, Mr. Shaw,” and remained silent, with his face to the sea. A sound, sorrowful and startling like the sigh of some immense creature, travelling across the starless space, passed above the vertical and lofty spars of the motionless brig.