The piece blazed and thundered, lighting up the fog like a volcanic upheaval with a wild crimson glare as though it was the night itself the powder flashed against. But stunning as the roar was, it was not so deafening but that I, for one, caught an echo stinging back through the thickness on the starboard hand like a slap of tall becalmed topsail against a mast.
'Hear it?' shouted a voice forward.
'We were answered yonder,' I cried, pointing.
'Ship ahoy!' at that instant came in a hoarse but clear, thin, far voice out of the blankness on the port bow.
'Good God, we are hailed!' cried Cliffe. 'Bland, answer. Your lungs have got more carrying power than mine.'
'Hallo!' shouted Bland, going to the side in a spring, and sending his voice in the direction of the hail in a deep, roaring, melancholy note.
'What ship's that?' came back distinct but remote, so wonderful was the hush, so burnished the swell. We made answer, and then roared Bland:
'What ship's that?'
'The "Helen MacGregor" of Hull, twenty months out. What's wrong with you, that you're firing guns?'