end before--"

"I thought you were in your boat. Have you changed your mind?" asked
Lingard in his deep voice close to Carter's elbow.

Carter felt his way along the rail, till his hand found a line that
seemed, in the calm, to stream out of its own accord into the darkness.
He hailed his boat, and directly heard the wash of water against her
bows as she was hauled quickly under the counter. Then he loomed up
shapeless on the rail, and the next moment disappeared as if he had
fallen out of the universe. Lingard heard him say:

"Catch hold of my leg, John." There were hollow sounds in the boat; a
voice growled, "All right."

"Keep clear of the counter," said Lingard, speaking in quiet warning
tones into the night. "The brig may get a lot of sternway on her should
this squall not strike her fairly."

"Aye, aye. I will mind," was the muttered answer from the water.

Lingard crossed over to the port side, and looked steadily at the sooty
mass of approaching vapours. After a moment he said curtly, "Brace up
for the port tack, Mr. Shaw," and remained silent, with his face to
the sea. A sound, sorrowful and startling like the sigh of some immense
creature, travelling across the starless space, passed above the
vertical and lofty spars of the motionless brig.

It grew louder, then suddenly ceased for a moment, and the taut rigging
of the brig was heard vibrating its answer in a singing note to this