'Nothing in sight, sir.'
The mate ordered the man to come down on deck, and half an hour later, when darkness was on the face of the deep, and the last red scar had died out of the starless sky, the Mowbray was slopping softly through the creaming waters, under her mainsail and standing jib.
It was like being hove-to; but she had way, and when Captain Parry looked over the taffrail, he saw the cold, green lights of the sea revolving and sliding off in the short spread of yeast the nimble clipper carried with her.
It drew down a night ghastly with the pallor of the hidden moon. At about nine o'clock they burnt a flare; the crimson flames rose quivering, and the smoke drove, black as a thunder-cloud, betwixt the masts to leeward. The little ship stood out against the night fire-tinctured.
She looked, with her glowing yellow masts and fiery shrouds, to be built of flame. The night came in walls of blackness to this wild and beautiful vision, and the noise of the sea, and the sense of the infinity of the deep, that was running and seething out of sight, filled the glowing picture with an entrancing spirit of mystery. You would have said that she owed her life and light to the sea-gods.
Both Parry and the mate, whilst this flare was burning, repeatedly directed their night-glasses at the ocean, and, even whilst it burnt, a man came aft to the call of the mate and sent up a couple of rockets. The fireballs hissed, burst, and vanished in spangles, darting a lustre as of lightning across a little space of sky.
The flare crackled, leapt up, smouldered, and was extinguished by a bucket of water.
A couple of lanterns—bright globular glasses—were lighted, and hung up in the main rigging, one on each side. This brought the hour to about a quarter past ten. The sea was again searched, its ghastly face had stolen out, and the heads of the breaking billows under that thick and pallid sky were like flashes of guns in mist.
'If the lady isn't in this circle, Captain Parry,' said Mr. Blundell cheerfully, 'let's hope we'll find her in the next. If the boat's within ten miles of us they'll have seen our flare and those fireballs.'
'But we are moving through the sea,' said Captain Parry. 'If we make them a head wind, and continue to sail, how are they to fetch us?'