The cook laid his hand on my shoulder. "Boy," he gasped out, "don' you heah
dat yeh screechin'?"
"No," said I.
"Listen!"
We sat for a long time silent, and presently we heard one more very distant
gunshot.
Neither Blodgett nor I had heard anything else, but the cook insisted that
he had heard clearly the sound of some one far off shrieking and wailing in
the night. "Ah heah dat yeh noise, yass, sah. Ah ain't got none of dem
yamalgamations what heahs what ain't."
He was so big and black and primitive, and his great ears spread so far out
from his head, that he reminded me of some wild beast. Certainly he had a
wild beast's keen ears.
But now Blodgett raised his hand. "Here's wind," he said.
And wind it was, a fresh breeze that seemed to gather up the waning
strength of the light airs that had been playing at hide and seek with our
ropes and canvas.
At daybreak, cutting the cable and abandoning the working bower, we got
under way on the remainder of our voyage to China, bearing in a generally
northwesterly course to avoid the dangerous waters lying directly between
us and the port of our destination.
As we hauled at halyard and sheet and brace, and sprang quickly about at
Roger's bidding, I found no leisure to watch the dawn, nor did I think of
aught save the duties of the moment, which in some ways was a blessed
relief; but I presently became aware that David Paine, who seemed able to
work without thought, had stopped and was staring intently across the heavy
seas that went rolling past us.
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