“It was a good bit like the voice of a man cut in two by a shark. That’s what it minded me of.”
“By golly! you speak de troof. It wa jess like that,—jess like the lass s’riek ob Massa Grow.”
“And yet,” continued the sailor, after a moment’s reflection, “’t warn’t like that neyther. ’T warn’t human, nohow: leastwise, I niver heerd such come out o’ a human throat.”
“A don’t blieb de big raff can be near. We hab been runnin’ down de wind ebba since you knock off dat boat-hook. We got de start o’ de Pandoras; an’ dar’s no mistake but we hab kep de distance. Dat s’riek no come from dem.”
“Look yonder!” cried little William, interrupting the dialogue. “I see something.”
“Whereaway? What like be it?” inquired the sailor.
“Yonder!” answered the lad, pointing over the starboard bow of the Catamaran; “about three cables’ length out in the water. It’s a black lump; it looks like a boat.”
“A boat! Shiver my timbers if thee bean’t right, lad. I see it now. It do look somethin’ as you say. But what ul a boat be doin’ here,—out in the middle o’ the Atlantic?”
“Dat am a boat,” interposed Snowball. “Fo’ sartin it am.”
“It must be,” said the sailor, after more carefully scrutinising it. “It is! I see its shape better now. There’s some un in it. I see only one; ah, he be standin’ up in the middle o’ it, like a mast. It be a man though; an’ I dare say the same as gi’ed that shout, if he be a human; though, sartin, there warn’t much human in it.”