"'Where's the Third Mate?' said Captain Evans, suddenly emerging from the dark doorway. 'He isn't in his cabin.'
"'He went ashore with the pilot in the cutter, Sir,' said Mr. Bloom. 'I did think of blowin' the whistle, only it occurred to me it might disturb the baby.'
"To this piece of extreme consideration Jack offered no reply. He walked along as far as the engine-hatch and then, putting his fingers in his mouth, blew a shrill blast that echoed and reëchoed between the cliffs. Men began to move about the ship, and a sailor appeared with a hurricane-lamp. A faint cry came out of the intense shadow of the western shore and Jack answered it with a stentorian 'Cutter ahoy!' that boomed and reverberated over our heads and trailed away into a wild racket of distant laughter.
"'Don't shout so loud, man,' I suggested, when a cry once more came out of the shadow and we could see a faint glow as of a lantern in a boat moving toward us.
"'Just been havin' a little look round, I dessay,' remarked Mr. Bloom with a bland tolerance of youthful folly which I remember irritated me intolerably. Jack kept his gaze fixed on the slowly moving glow.
"'There's something wrong,' he remarked, soberly, ignoring Mr. Bloom at his elbow.
"'Oh, I don't think so, Captain. Only a ...'
"'I tell you there's something wrong!' snarled Jack, turning on him suddenly. 'Stand by at the ladder there,' and the man with the hurricane-lamp said, quietly, 'Right, Sir.' Jack returned his gaze to the boat, which was approaching the edge of the shadow. How he knew, I don't pretend to explain. I take it he had a flair, as the French say, the sort of flair most of us acquire in our own profession and take for granted, but which always appears uncanny in another. And it was remarkable how the conviction that there was something wrong seized upon the ship and materialized in a line of shadowy figures leaning on the bulwarks and projecting grotesquely illuminated faces into the light of the lamp on the gangway.
"'Mr. Siddons there?' called Jack, quietly, as the boat came into view in the moonlight. The man at the tiller sang out 'No, Sir,' as he put the rudder over and added, 'way 'nuff. Catch hold there!' and another figure stood up in the bows and laid hold of the grating.
"'Stand by,' said Jack coming down to the after deck. 'Come up here, you,' he added, addressing the man who had spoken. The man, one of the sailors, came up.