I believe I could see Muffin’s figure still leaning over the rail. Had he heard the voice? As I passed the skylight I looked down and perceived him standing with drooped head and folded arms before Wilfrid in the cabin. My cousin appeared to be giving him some instructions. Advancing yet a little I discovered that what I had taken to be the valet’s figure was merely a coil of rope on a pin, the outline of which was blackened up and enlarged to the proportions and even the posture of a human shape by the illusive character of the obscurity made by the shrouds just there. I threw my half-finished cigar overboard.
‘Enough to make a man feel as if he’d like to be turned in,’ said Crimp. ‘It’s gone blooming cold, han’t it?’
‘It’s the most puzzling thing that ever happened to me,’ said I; ‘but of course if we were in the secret we should find nothing wonderful in it. In the West Indian waters, you know, there is a fish to be caught that talks well enough to put a ship about. Who’s to tell in a midnight blackness of this sort what amazing marine thing may not rise to the surface and utter sounds which an alarmed ear would easily interpret into something confoundedly unpleasant?’
‘What did it say?’ inquired Crimp.
‘Why, after the laugh, “that yacht’s cursed,” then another laugh. So it seemed to me,’ said I, with my eyes going blind against the blackness whence the noise had proceeded.
‘That’s just what I heard,’ said Crimp gruffly, ‘exactly them words. Two ears ain’t a going to get the same meaning out of what’s got no sense in it to start with.’
‘Pooh!’ I exclaimed, mentally protesting against an argument that was much too forcible to be soothing, ‘what could it have been, man, if it were not, say, some great bird, mayhap, flapping past us unseen, and uttering notes which, since they sounded the same to you and me, would have sounded the same to the whole ship’s company had they been on deck listening?’
‘Beats all my going a-fishing anyhow,’ growled Crimp, going to the rail and looking over.
‘Well, take my advice and don’t speak of it,’ said I; ‘you’ll only get laughed at, especially as the fellow at the wheel heard nothing.’