"But the ship. The Laughing Lass, man. She's vanished. No one has seen her since."
"You are wrong there," said Darrow. "I have seen her."
In a common impulse the little circle leaned to him.
"Yes, I have seen her. I wish I had not. Let me bring my story back to the cave on the island. After the volcanic gases had driven me to the refuge, I sat near the mouth of the cave looking out into the darkness. That was the night of the 7th, the night you saw the last glow. It was very dark, except for occasional bursts of fire from the crater. Judge of my incredulous amazement when, in an access of this illumination, I saw plainly a schooner hardly a mile off shore, coming in under bare poles."
"Under bare poles?" cried Slade.
"The halliards must have disintegrated from some slow action of the celestium. It could be destructive: terrifically destructive. You shall judge. There was the schooner, naked as your hand. Possibly I might have thought it a hallucination but for what came after. Darkness fell again. I supposed then that Handy Solomon's crew were managing--or mismanaging--the Laughing Lass without the aid of their leader, whom I had satisfactorily buried. I hoped they would come ashore on the rocks. Yes I was vengeful ... then.
"Of a sudden there sprang from the darkness a ship of light. You have all seen those great electric effects at expositions. Someone touches a button ... you know. It was like that. Only that the piercingly brilliant jewelled wonder of a ship was set in the midst of a swirl of vari-coloured radiance such as I can't begin to describe. You saw it from a distance. Imagine what it was, coming close upon you that way--dead on, out of the night. A living glory, a living terror...."
His voice sank. With a shaking hand he fumbled amid his cigarette papers.
"It came on. A human figure, glowing like a diamond ablaze, leaped out from it; another shot down from the foremast. I don't know how many I saw go. It was like a theatric effect, unreal, unconvincing, incredible. The end fitted it."
Darrow's eye roved. It fell upon a quaintly modelled ship, hung above the door.