"I don't know," I answered. "I've lost sight of it myself. It was a green light, about a couple of points on the port bow. It seemed fairly close."
"Perhaps their lamp's gone out," he suggested, after peering out pretty hard into the night for a minute or so.
"Perhaps," I said.
I did not tell him that the light had been so close that, even in the darkness, we should now have been able to see the ship herself.
"You're quite sure it was a light, and not a star?" he asked, doubtfully, after another long stare.
"Oh! no," I said. "It may have been the moon, now I come to think about it."
"Don't rot," he replied. "It's easy enough to make a mistake. What shall
I say to the Second Mate?"
"Tell him it's disappeared, of course!"
"Where to?" he asked.
"How the devil should I know?" I told him. "Don't ask silly questions!"