“Deucedly well,” he answered; “often have they proved our match. I would rather have fought the combined fleets at Trafalgar than De Winter’s ships. Duncan’s was a more difficult, and, therefore, a more splendid victory than our nation seems to have realized. But the truth is, little Horatio’s flaming sun filled the national sky at that time with its own blazing light, and all was sunk in the splendor, though there were other suns; oh, yes, there were _other_ suns!” “Hark!” I cried, “we are hailed.” “Hailed?” he echoed in a whisper. We listened. A figure came out of the darkness forward and said in a low voice, “There’s something hard by, hailing us.” Greaves and I went to either rail and searched the thick and silent darkness, over which hovered a faint star or two, pale and dying. I strained my ears. I could hear no sound of oars, not the least noise of any kind to tell that a vessel was near us. I looked for a sparkle of phosphorus, for any blue or white gleam of sea-glow, such as the stroke of an oar, whether muffled or not, will chip out of the water in those parts. The hail was repeated. It was the same hail I had before heard. It sounded like “Ship there!” and seemed to proceed out of the blackness over the larboard bow. Galloon barked sharply and furiously. “Silence, you scoundrel!” hissed Greaves at the dear old brute, and the dog instantly ceased to bark. “Do you see anything, Fielding?” “Nothing, sir,” I answered, crossing the deck. “The cry seemed to me to come from off the water on the larboard bow, and if it is our friend of to-day or any other ship, she is _there_.” He went forward and I lost his figure in the blackness. All hands were now wide awake. The gloom was so deep betwixt the rails that nothing was to be seen of the men, but I gathered from their voices that they were moving briskly here and there to look over the side and to peer into the smoky gloom over the bows. I went right aft, and first from one quarter and then from the other of the brig I stared and hearkened, straining my vision against the blackness till my eyeballs ached, straining my hearing against the incommunicable hush upon the ocean until I felt deaf with the sound of the beat of the pulse in my ear. Oh, it was such a night of wonderful silence that, had the full moon been overhead, the imagination might have heard the low thunder of the orb as it wheeled through space. Greaves arrived aft. “Is that you, Fielding?” “Yes, sir.” “I can see nothing, and the sea is as silent as a graveyard o’ night. Is that hail some piratic trick? I tell you what: the words might have been English, but they were not delivered by an English throat. I shall make no answer. There is nothing to be done but to watch for fire in the water; should it show, to hail _then_, and to let fly if the answer is not to our liking.” He called for Yan Bol. The Dutchman’s deep voice responded, but even while he approached us the hail was repeated. “There again!” cried I.