I held by a backstay, Cliffe standing beside me, and rolled my eyes around the sallow blindness, till all of a moment I heard a very faint moan like the noise of a sea running into a cave: it sounded afar, and yet not far either, as though something stood between the cause of it and us.
Cliffe heard nothing, though he grimaced in the direction I indicated, and dropped his head on his shoulder to hearken.
About this time the mate came up from his dinner. I asked him to listen, suspecting that the noise I had heard was the sound of sea upon ice. After a pretty good spell of silence the three of us listening with all our might, Bland said:
'Sometimes if ice is near and can't be smelt or seen, it may be heard. If you fire off this gun,' said he, putting his hand upon the brass piece, 'and ice is by, it'll answer.'
'Try it,' said I.
He promptly went below and returned with the necessary ammunition; where our powder was kept I never inquired. He and Cliffe loaded the gun, the skipper snapping grimace after grimace with nervous excitement.
'Are you all ready?' said I.
Bland said 'Yes,' and then shouted to the men forward to stand by to listen for an echo and note its bearings. The forms of the seamen loomed in mere smudges in the fog as they lurched to the rolling bulwarks to hearken.
'Fire!' cried I.