Nor was it a cry of distress, though uttered in a melancholy tone. It seemed to the ear of the lad—freshly awakened from his sleep—like words spoken in conversation.
But it could not be what he had taken it for! Improbable,—impossible! He had been deluded by a fancy; or it might be the mutterings of some ocean bird with whose note he was unacquainted.
Should he awake his companion and tell him of it? A pity, if it should prove to be nothing, or only the chattering of a sea-gull. His brave protector had need of rest. Ben would not be angry to be awaked; but the sailor would be sure to laugh at him if he were to say he had heard a little girl talking at that time of night in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps Ben might say it was a mermaid, and mock him in that sort of style?
No: he would not run the risk of being ridiculed, even by his best of friends. Better let the thing pass, and say nothing about it.
Little William had arrived at this resolution, and had more than half determined to treat the sound he had heard as an aurical delusion. He had even replaced his cheek upon the sail-cloth pillow, when the very same sound again fill upon his ear,—this time more distinctly heard, as if either the utterance had been clearer or the being that made it was nearer!
If it was not the voice of a girl,—a very young girl,—then the boy-sailor had never listened to the prattling of his younger sister, or the conversation of his little female playmates. If it was a young mermaid, then most assuredly could mermaids talk: for the sound was exactly like a string or series of words uttered in conversation!
Ben must be aroused from his slumber. It could not be an illusion. Either a talking mermaid, or a little girl, was within earshot of the raft.
There was no help for it: Ben must be aroused.
“Ben! Ben!”
“Ho—hah—ow—aw—what’s the row?—seven bells, I bean’t on the dog-watch. Hi, hi, oh! it’s you, little Will’m. What is’t, lad?”