“Right behind you, there.”
He walked to the mast, and examined carefully around its base. There was nothing there, and even now I do not know to what that cross alluded, unless poor Schwartz—!
“Then this other one—forward, you call it, don’t you? Suppose we locate that.”
All expectation of the watchman having now died, we went forward on the port side to the approximate location of the cross. This being in the neighborhood where Mac had thought he saw something move, we approached with extreme caution. But nothing more ominous was discovered than the port lifeboat, nothing more ghostly heard than the occasional creak with which it rocked in its davits.
The lifeboat seemed to be indicated by the cross. It swung almost shoulder-high on McWhirter. We looked under and around it, with a growing feeling that we had misread the significance of the crosses, or that the sinister record extended to a time before the “she devil” of the Turner line was dressed in white and turned into a lady.
I was feeling underneath the boat, with a sense of absurdity that McWhirter put into words. “I only hope,” he said, “that the watchman does not wake up now and see us. He’d be justified in filling us with lead, or putting us in straitjackets.”
But I had discovered something.
“Mac,” I said, “some one has been at this boat within the last few minutes.”
“Why?”
“Take your revolver and watch the deck. One of the barecas—”