‘What else, your honour?’ exclaimed Finn, ‘the squeaking of rats ain’t unlike a sort o’ language. Put the noise they make along with the straining of bulkheads and the like of such sounds and let the boiling be listened to by a parcel of ignorant sailors, and I allow ye’ll get what might be tarmed a supernatural woice.’ Wilfrid burst into one of his great laughs, but immediately after said in a grave and hollow tone, ‘But you, Charles, have before heard something preternatural in the shape of a hail off yonder quarter, and from the dead man you found on the wreck.’ ‘Fancy, mere fancy,’ I said. ‘Gracious mercy! am I making this voyage to carry home with me a belief in ghosts? But I wish you’d go into the forecastle with Finn, Wilfrid, and listen for yourself. Make your mind easy: there’s nothing to be heard. A visit from you will pacify the men. They hold that you admit the truth of what they allege by declining to satisfy yourself by listening. Their temper is not of the sweetest. They should be soothed, I think, when it is to be so easily done.’ He hung in the wind and said in a hesitating way, ‘What do you think, Finn?’ ‘Well, Sir Wilfrid, since, as Mr. Monson says, there’s nothen to hear and nothen therefore to cause ye any agitation, I dorn’t doubt that a wisit from you would please the sailors and calm down their minds. I’m bound to say they’re oneasy--yes, I’m bound to say that.’ ‘Come, then,’ cried my cousin, and he strided impetuously into the darkness, followed by the skipper. I gave Miss Laura my arm and we started on a little walk. The awning was furled and the dew everywhere sparkled like hoar frost. The quiet night wind sighed in the rigging, and the yacht, a point or two off her course, and every sheet flat aft, softly broke through the black quiet waters with dull puffs of phosphor at times sneaking by like the eyes of secret shapes risen close to the surface to survey us. The sheen of the binnacle light touched a portion of the figure of the fellow at the wheel, and threw him and a segment of the circle whose spokes he held, out upon the clear, fine, spangled dusk in phantasmal yellow outlines, dim as the impression left on the retina by an object when the eyelid is closed upon it. My fair companion and I talked of the incidents of the day. One thing was following another rapidly, I said. ’Twas like a magic-lantern show; scarcely had one picture faded out when something fresh was brightening in its room. ‘What manner of sound could it be,’ she asked, ‘that the sailors have interpreted into cursings and dreadful warnings?’ ‘It was no fancy on _my_ part anyway,’ said I, ‘let me put what face I will on it to Wilfrid. If what the men profess to hear be half as distinct as what _I_ heard, there must be some kind of sorcery at work, I’ll swear.’