‘Well, Sir Wilfrid, since, as Mr. Monson says, there’s nothen to hear and nothen therefore to cause ye any agitation, I dorn’t doubt that a wisit from you would please the sailors and calm down their minds. I’m bound to say they’re oneasy—yes, I’m bound to say that.’
‘Come, then,’ cried my cousin, and he strided impetuously into the darkness, followed by the skipper.
I gave Miss Laura my arm and we started on a little walk. The awning was furled and the dew everywhere sparkled like hoar frost. The quiet night wind sighed in the rigging, and the yacht, a point or two off her course, and every sheet flat aft, softly broke through the black quiet waters with dull puffs of phosphor at times sneaking by like the eyes of secret shapes risen close to the surface to survey us. The sheen of the binnacle light touched a portion of the figure of the fellow at the wheel, and threw him and a segment of the circle whose spokes he held, out upon the clear, fine, spangled dusk in phantasmal yellow outlines, dim as the impression left on the retina by an object when the eyelid is closed upon it.
My fair companion and I talked of the incidents of the day. One thing was following another rapidly, I said. ’Twas like a magic-lantern show; scarcely had one picture faded out when something fresh was brightening in its room.
‘What manner of sound could it be,’ she asked, ‘that the sailors have interpreted into cursings and dreadful warnings?’
‘It was no fancy on my part anyway,’ said I, ‘let me put what face I will on it to Wilfrid. If what the men profess to hear be half as distinct as what I heard, there must be some kind of sorcery at work, I’ll swear.’
I led her to the starboard quarter, where I had stood with Crimp, and repeated the story. The darkness gave my recital of the incident the complexion it wanted; a tremor passed through her hand into my arm. It was enough to make a very nightmare of the gloom, warm as it was with the dew-laden southerly breathing, and delicate too with the small fine light trembled into it by the stars, to think of a hail sounding out of it from a phantasm as shapeless as any dye of gloom upon the canvas of the night. Ten minutes passed; I then discerned the figures of Wilfrid and Finn coming aft. My cousin’s deep breathing was audible when he was still at a distance.
‘Well, what news?’ I called cheerily.
Wilfrid drew close and exclaimed, ‘It is true. I have heard it.’