‘So ’tis said,’ I grumbled, sucking hard at my cigar to kindle it afresh.
‘Human syllables cannot be delivered save by human lips. What, then, could have spoken out of the darkness of the sea the other night?’
‘Does not Milton tell of airy tongues that syllable men’s names?’ said I gloomily.
‘Mr. Monson, I repeat that I wonder at you. How can you suffer your imagination to be cheated by some trick of the senses?’ she laughed. ‘Pray, be careful. You may influence me. Then what a morbid company shall we make? I am sure you would like me to believe in this mysterious voice of yours. But, happily, we Colonials are too young, as a people, to be superstitious. We must wait for our ruined castles, and our moated granges, and our long, echoing, tapestry-lined corridors. Then, like you English, we may tremble when we hear a mysterious voice.’
She started violently as she said this, giving my arm so smart a pull that it instantly brought me to a halt, whilst in a voice of genuine alarm she exclaimed, ‘Good gracious! what is that?’
Her face was turned up towards the weather yardarm of the square topsail, where, apparently floating a little above the studdingsail-boom iron, like to a flame in the act of running down the smoke of an extinguished candle ere firing the wick, shone a pendulous bubble of greenish fire, but of a luminosity sufficiently powerful to distinctly reveal the extremity of the black spar pointing finger-like into the darkness ahead, whilst a large space of the curve of the topgallant-sail above showed in the lustre with something of the glassy, delicate greenness you observe in a midsummer leaf in moonshine. The darkness, with its burden of stars, seemed to press to the yacht the deeper for that mystic light, and much that had been distinguishable outlines before melted out upon the sight.
‘What is it?’ exclaimed Miss Jennings in a voice of consternation, and I felt her hand tighten upon my arm with her fears thrilling through the involuntary pressure.
‘Figure an echoing corridor hung with aged tapestry stirring to cold draughts which seem to come like blasts from a graveyard, a noise as of the distant clanking of chains, and then the apparition of a man in armour, holding up such a lantern as that yonder, approaching you who are spell-bound and cannot move for horror.’ I burst out laughing.
‘What is that light, Mr. Monson?’ she cried petulantly.