"A brig! I thought you were something bigger," went on the voice from
the sea with a tinge of disappointment in its deliberate tone. "I am
coming alongside--if--you--please."

"No! you don't!" called Lingard back, sharply. The leisurely drawl of
the invisible speaker seemed to him offensive, and woke up a hostile
feeling. "No! you don't if you care for your boat. Where do you spring
from? Who are you--anyhow? How many of you are there in that boat?"

After these emphatic questions there was an interval of silence. During
that time the shape of the boat became a little more distinct. She must
have carried some way on her yet, for she loomed up bigger and nearly
abreast of where Lingard stood, before the self-possessed voice was
heard again:

"I will show you."

Then, after another short pause, the voice said, less loud but very
plain:

"Strike on the gunwale. Strike hard, John!" and suddenly a blue light
blazed out, illuminating with a livid flame a round patch in the
night. In the smoke and splutter of that ghastly halo appeared a white,
four-oared gig with five men sitting in her in a row. Their heads were
turned toward the brig with a strong expression of curiosity on their
faces, which, in this glare, brilliant and sinister, took on a deathlike
aspect and resembled the faces of interested corpses. Then the bowman
dropped into the water the light he held above his head and the
darkness, rushing back at the boat, swallowed it with a loud and angry
hiss.