We stood at the rail. We did not speak; we stood watching. It was so
still that the drip of steam from some loosened pipe far below was
plainly audible, and it sounded in that lifeless, silent grayness
like--God knows what--a death tick.
"You see," said the mate, speaking just above a whisper, "there's no
mistake about it. She is moving--this way."
"Oh, a current, of course," Strokher tried to say cheerfully, "sets her
toward us."
Would the morning never come?
Ally Bazan--his parents were Catholic--began to mutter to himself.
Then Hardenberg spoke aloud.
"I particularly don't want--that--out--there--to cross our bows. I don't
want it to come to that. We must get some sails on her."
"And I put it to you as man to man," said Strokher, "where might be your
wind."
He was right. The _Glarus_ floated in absolute calm. On all that slab of
ocean nothing moved but the Dead Ship.
She came on slowly; her bows, the high, clumsy bows pointed toward us,
the water turning from her forefoot. She came on; she was near at hand.
We saw her plainly--saw the rotted planks, the crumbling rigging, the
rust-corroded metal-work, the broken rail, the gaping deck, and I could
imagine that the clean water broke away from her sides in refluent
wavelets as though in recoil from a thing unclean. She made no sound. No
single thing stirred aboard the hulk of her--but she moved.
We were helpless.
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