He trudged forward, and presently returned with Cutbill and another seaman. The three of them went below, leaving Crimp to get the gangway rigged and lighted. A couple of globular lamps, such as might be used for riding lights, were suspended against the bulwarks, and between them a seaman rested a grating of the length of a stretcher. The moon was rising at this moment on our starboard beam, an arch of blood defining the indigo-black line of the horizon there that on either hand of her went melting out into a blending of starladen sky, with the dark and gleaming ocean brimming to the yacht, vast as the heavens themselves looked. Presently up through the hatch rose the figures of Captain Finn and the two men, swaying under the weight of the canvas-shrouded form they bore. The watch on deck came aft and gathered about the gangway, where they glimmered like visionary creatures to the dull, yellow shining of the lamps. Face after face seemed to come twisting and wriggling out of the dusk--visions of hairy salts, rendered lifelike and actual by the dull illumination that glanced upon their shadowy lineaments. The wind filled the rigging with melancholy noises, there was a yearning sob in the sound of the water as it washed aft, broken and hissing serpent-like from the bow. The canvas rose dark, but it was now gathering to its loftier cloths a faint, delicate, pinkish tinge from the red moonbeam, though in a few minutes, when the planet had lifted her ill-shapen face clear of the black line of brine, all would be of a snow-white softness above us, and a sparkling line of bulwark-rail and glittering constellations in the skylight glass and a wake of floating and heaving silver rolling fan-shaped to us.