While he looked, there came a sound over the water. It was a long, plaintive cry of immense volume, but hardly distinct enough to be heard unless the listener gave his attention. It was like a wild minor chord of a harp, long continued and sustained, rising and falling over the dark blue heave of the swells where the light air darkened and streaked the ruffled surface. Farther away to windward, the ocean took on a deeper blue, and the air filled the sails more steadily for a few minutes.
Tim stood gazing into the distance, his eyes bright and his lips parted, but there was an expression of peace and tranquillity upon his freckled face that I had never noticed before.
“It’s the calling, Heywood, Heywood,” he whispered. “It’s the great calling of the millions who have gone before. Listen!”
I heard it. The sad, wailing notes coming from miles and miles away to windward over that smooth sea, with the freshening breeze, made an impression upon me I could not throw off. It vibrated through my whole being, and was like the voice of great loneliness calling from the vast world of sea and sky. It was not like the hum of the trade in the rigging or the snore of a gale under the foot of a topsail, nor like the thunderous roar of the hurricane through the rigging of a hove-to ship. The melancholy sadness of the long-sustained wail was musical to a degree. I sat there listening.
Of course, it must have been caused by the wind over the surface of the sea at a great distance, or by different currents of air in passing, but the effect upon the imagination was like that which might be caused by the prolonged cry of a distant host from the vastness of sunlit waste. It pervaded my whole being, and enforced listening to its call, seeming to draw my soul to it as if out in that sparkling world of rippling wavelets lay the end of all strife and the great eternal peace.
Tim stretched forth his arm. His eyes held a strange look in them, and he moved to the rail as though in a dream.
“I am coming, May, coming,” he whispered.
Before I realized what had happened, he had gone over the side. Then I jumped to my feet with a yell, and bawled out: “Man overboard!” at the same time heaving the end of a gun-tackle over the taffrail. The cry and noise of my rush brought the entire watch to the side, and the captain and Hawkson to the quarter-rail. The barque was barely moving, and Tim was alongside. But he refused to take the end of the line. There was an exclamation beside me at the taffrail, and Renshaw leaned his elbows upon the rail and looked over at the sinking sailor. Their eyes met for an instant, and Tim made a grab for the line. He was hauled up quickly, and went forward without a word of excuse to the captain and Hawkson’s inquiries as to how he happened overboard.
It was a strange occurrence, and I pondered over it that evening while the barque rolled slowly toward the islands under a bright moon, and our watch stretched themselves upon the main-hatch to smoke and spin yarns. Tim avoided me.
The next morning we found ourselves close to New Providence Harbour, the white water of the Great Bahama bank stretching away on all sides.