'Well,' said the mate, with the note of a stout heart in his voice, 'only a sailor is able to tell a man what ladies really can go through. Low-class females, emigrants and the like, cave in quickly; they are the shriekers. They cannot bear terror, and it kills them on rafts and in boats. But your thoroughbred lady is always the one that I've seen, heard of, and read of, who has shown a lion's heart and the coldness of a stone head in shipwreck. If Miss Vanderholt be in the boat, you'll find that she'll have suffered less than the men.'
A faint smile stirred the lips of Captain Parry; but he grew quickly grave again, with the distress of his imaginations. At that moment a hoarse cry in the skylight made them spring to their feet.
'There's a big ship a-bearing down upon us!'
The mate rushed up the steps, followed by Captain Parry. The ghostly sheen of the moon still clouded as with steam the thickness of the night, and the scene of heaven and sea was mystical with elusive distance, with the soft near flash of the surge, and the windy chaos of the horizon.
On the bow, not half a mile distant, was a large pale shape. The night-glass made her white-hulled, with canvas to her trucks. The schooner was thrown into the wind. It was clearly the intention of the stranger to speak the Mowbray. Through the small scattering hiss of the sea on either hand you might have heard the low, constant thunder of the bow-wave of the ship as she washed through the brine, making a light for herself with her sides and white heights, but showing no lights. On a sudden the human silence was broken by a short, gruff command, weak with distance. The sound might then be heard of yards being swung; ropes crowed in blocks, parrels creaked on masts, and in a few minutes a large white ship, with the fires of the sea dripping at her cutwater, lay abreast of the schooner, all way choked out of her by the backed topsail.
'Schooner ahoy!'
'Hallo!' shouted Mr. Blundell, sending his voice far into the darkness over the ship's rail, whence the hail had proceeded.
'What's wrong with you that you are sending up rockets and burning flares?'
'We are in search of a boat. Have you met with a boat containing eight men and a lady?'