Bligh's eyes were lidded, as if in contemplation of his inner ecstasy.
His head was thrown back, and his brows worked up and down tormentedly.
His wide mouth remained open as his hymn was suddenly interrupted on the
long-drawn note. From somewhere in the shimmering mists the note was
taken up, and there drummed and rang and reverberated through the strait
a windy, hoarse, and dismal bellow, alarming and sustained. A tremor rang
through Bligh. Moving like a sightless man, he stumbled forward from the
head of the quarter-deck steps, and Abel Keeling was aware of his gaunt
figure behind him, taller for the steepness of the deck. As that vast
empty sound died away, Bligh laughed in his mania.

"Lord, hath the grave's wide mouth a tongue to praise Thee? Lo, again--"

Again the cavernous sound possessed the air, louder and nearer. Through
it came another sound, a slow throb, throb--throb, throb--Again the
sounds ceased.

"Even Leviathan lifteth up his voice in praise!" Bligh sobbed.

Abel Keeling did not raise his head. There had returned to him the memory
of that day when, before the morning mists had lifted from the strait, he
had emptied the pipkin of the water that was the allowance until night
should fall again. During that agony of thirst he had seen shapes and
heard sounds with other than his mortal eyes and ears, and even in the
moments that had alternated with his lightness, when he had known these
to be hallucinations, they had come again. He had heard the bells on a
Sunday in his own Kentish home, the calling of children at play, the
unconcerned singing of men at their daily labour, and the laughter and
gossip of the women as they had spread the linen on the hedge or