“Well, master, when I hears that we was hailed, I came out of the bows, where I was lying down, and I listened, and I hears nothing; but by and by the hail comes, and I says to myself, ‘Aint I heard that woice before?’ and I stands listening till it sounds again. ‘It’s old Chaney,’ says I, and steps aft to the hen-coop, knowing in what part he lodges, and here he is, master. Shall I wring un’s neck?” “Cook,” exclaimed Greaves, “take that cock from Jimmy and put it back in its coop. Go forward, men, but keep your eyes lifting till this thickness slackens. That hail _may_ have come from a cock with the croup, as the lad says, but all the same, be vigilant till we can use our eyes. There may be something damnably close aboard even while I’m talking.” The men answered variously in their gruff voices, and the mob of them rolled forward and vanished in the deep obscurity. The lantern which had been brought on deck was again taken below, and all now being silent fore and aft, Greaves and I lay over the side, listening and straining our sight into the murkiness; but not a sound came off the sea. No sparkle anywhere showed the life of a lifted blade; no deeper dye of ink indicated the presence of anything betwixt us and the horizon. For an hour Greaves and I patrolled the deck, talking over the cock with the croup, over false alarms at sea; taling about the preternatural hush and sepulchral repose of the night; and then we talked of the voyage, of the island, of the ship in the cave; and on such matters did we discourse. And while we were conversing--an hour having passed since the incident of the croupy cock--we heard afar the tinkling and musical, fountain-like rippling of water brushed by wind, and a few minutes later, a pleasant breeze was cooling our cheeks, steadying our canvas, and propelling the brig, whose wake, as it streamed from her, trailed like a riband of yellow fire, while the wire-like lines which broke from her bows shone, as though at white heat, with the beautiful glow of the sea. The wind polished the stars and cleansed the atmosphere till you could see to the gloomy line of the horizon. By midnight the moon was shining, the heavens were a deep blue, and Greaves had gone below, satisfied that the brig was the only object in sight within the whole visible compass of the deep. Though it had been Yan Bol’s watch from twelve to eight, yet, while the captain and I remained aft, he had kept forward. Now that Greaves had gone below, and my watch would be coming round shortly, Yan Bol came along to the quarter-deck. “She vhas an oneasy time, Mr. Fielding,” he exclaimed in his trembling, deep voice, that made one think of thunder heard in a vault. “It was,” said I; “but the sea is clear, and there’s an end to the trouble.” “We should hov fought, by Cott,” said he, “had der needt arose. Ve did not like dot dis voyage should be stopped by a bloydy pirate. It vhas strange, Mr. Fielding, dot der cock should cry out in English.”