That same evening, I remember, we all sat on the quarterdeck till late
and--oddly enough--related each one his life's history up to date; and
then went down to the cabin for a game of euchre before turning in.
We had left Strokher on the bridge--it was his watch--and had forgotten
all about him in the interest of the game, when--I suppose it was about
one in the morning--I heard him whistle long and shrill. I laid down my
cards and said:
"Hark!"
In the silence that followed we heard at first only the muffled lope of
our engines, the cadenced snorting of the exhaust, and the ticking of
Hardenberg's big watch in his waistcoat that he had hung by the arm-hole
to the back of his chair. Then from the bridge, above our deck,
prolonged, intoned--a wailing cry in the night--came Strokher's voice:
"Sail oh-h-h."
And the cards fell from our hands, and, like men turned to stone, we sat
looking at each other across the soiled red cloth for what seemed an
immeasurably long minute.
Then stumbling and swearing, in a hysteria of hurry, we gained the deck.
There was a moon, very low and reddish, but no wind. The sea beyond the
taffrail was as smooth as lava, and so still that the swells from the
cutwater of the _Glarus_ did not break as they rolled away from the
bows.
I remember that I stood staring and blinking at the empty ocean--where
the moonlight lay like a painted stripe reaching to the horizon--stupid
and frowning, till Hardenberg, who had gone on ahead, cried:
"Not here--on the bridge!"
We joined Strokher, and as I came up the others were asking:
"Where? Where?"
And there, before he had pointed, I saw--we all of us saw--And I heard
Hardenberg's teeth come together like a spring trap, while Ally Bazan
ducked as though to a blow, muttering:
"Gord 'a' mercy, what nyme do ye put to' a ship like that?"
And after that no one spoke for a long minute, and we stood there,
moveless black shadows, huddled together for the sake of the blessed
elbow touch that means so incalculably much, looking off over our port
quarter.
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