“There!” he cried.
“A bell,” I explained. “There must be a ship near us. The sound is off abeam here,” and we stepped to the lee rail on the port side of the vessel.
The chimes of a bell tolling very slowly, as though for a funeral, could be heard with curious distinctness, so delicate a vehicle for the transmission of sound is smooth water.
“Therth a bell ringing out to port here, thir,” called out Kennet to the mate.
Mr. Johnson crossed over to our side, and listened.
“Yes, a bell sure enough,” said he presently, after peering earnestly into the gloom in the direction of the noise, “but I see nothing of a shadow to resemble a ship. Do you, young gentlemen? Your eyes should be keener than mine.”
We stared our hardest, and answered, “Nothing, sir.”
“Fetch my binocular glass, Rockafellar.”
He searched the sea narrowly through it, but there was no distinguishable smudge of any sort.
Black as the ocean was, there were stars hanging low over the horizon, and had there been a ship within five miles of us, the eclipse of those stars by her sails would have revealed her. But the tolling assured us that the bell could not be half-a-mile distant. It swung in long floating chimes across the water, and I cannot express the quality of mystery and awe which the strange noise put into the darkness of the night. It made one think of a church ashore, and a graveyard with its mouldering stones glimmering to the starlight.