“I heard it,” she answered. “And then I thought—perhaps it might be just ringing inside my head—”
“I’ll step on deck. There is nothing in sight,” he replied, willing to humor her.
They went out together and held fast to a railing. In a vessel as small as this, the sea was very near and clamorous. Stolidly Captain Truscoe waited and listened, but he could hear no distant bell.
“You imagined it,” he shouted in Teresa’s ear. “Dishes and glasses banging about in the pantry, possibly.”
“It is not ringing now,” said she. “Yes, it may have been imagination. It was a strange thing to hear. It frightened me.”
“Better go back to bed. The sea is quieting. I’ll be shoving her along soon.”
She hesitated and then went aft to the cabin, the captain escorting her. As yet there was no sign of dawn in the watery obscurity of the sky.
“If you hear a bell, you will call me?” she asked.
“Sure thing, Miss Fernandez. Hope you get to sleep. Your berth is the most comfortable place to be.”
Troubled sleep came to her nor did she hear the phantom bell again. The sea was turning gray outside the ports when she felt the engines pick up speed. Rolling heavily, the yacht swung off to resume the course to Panama. To Teresa it seemed fantastic that she should have paid such serious heed to the fancied message of the galleon bell. It was a warning of another kind, that her nerves were all jangled. The hallucination ought to be dismissed.