“What do you hear?” I asked.
“Hush! listen now!” he answered, in a breathless voice.
I strained my ear, but nothing was audible to me but the wash of the water against the boat’s side.
“Don’t you hear it, Mr. Royle?” he cried, in a kind of agony, holding up his finger. “Miss Robertson, don’t you hear something?”
There was another interval of silence, and Mary answered: “I hear a kind of throbbing.”
“It is so!” I exclaimed. “I hear it now! it is the engines of a steamer.”
“A steamer? Yes! I hear it! where is she?” shouted the boatswain, and he jumped on to the thwart on which I stood.
We strained our ears again.
That throbbing sound, as Mary had accurately described it, closely resembling the rhythmical running of a locomotive-engine heard in the country on a silent night at a long distance, was now distinctly audible; but so smooth was the water, so breathless the night, that it was impossible to tell how far away the vessel might be; for so fine and delicate a vehicle of sound is the ocean in a calm, that, though the hull of a steamship might be below the horizon, yet the thumping of her engines would be heard.
Once more we inclined our ears, holding our breath as we listened.