Even Ulysses looked a bit startled as they all stood stiff, like chiselled figures, staring inland. There, before their eyes, not three hundred yards away, on a little hill, a dark figure was jumping about, whirling and waving its hands.
“Holy Moses!” said one.
“Gawd forgive me sins!” breathed another.
“It’s a phantom of the seas—a nigger phantom,” wailed the mate.
The figure was certainly a dark man, and perfectly nude; he was quite visible, for the moon was just coming up over the horizon to the south-west, sending ghostly fires on the wreck’s broken masts and torn rigging and canvas.
“It’s Macka!—gone mad! He’s got Gabrielle Everard somewhere back there in those palms!” gasped Hillary.
“No!” said Samuel Bilbao before he had recovered from his astonishment and realised the obvious absurdity of the young apprentice’s remark.
“Why, it’s a maniac Kanaka!” said Bilbao, who had started coolly to walk up the shore so that he could discern the features of the leaping figure, that was still waving its hands and behaving generally like a frenzied lunatic.
“What the ’ell’s the matter with ye?” roared Bilbao.
Still the figure danced, and only the echoes of Ulysses’ big voice and the screech of disturbed cockatoos in the banyans responded.