‘There’s nothing up here for a voice to come out of, sir.’ ‘Then you had better come down, sir,’ called the captain; and I thought I could hear a little note of laughter below, as though two or three passengers had collected. Mr. Cocker’s vague form melted over the top; but I lingered a minute to survey the picture. My head was close against the maintopmast cross-trees, a height of some eighty or ninety feet above the line of the ship’s rail, with the distance of the vessel’s side from the water’s edge to add on to it. I lingered but a minute or two, yet in that brief space the shadowy night-scene, with the grand cathedral-like figure of the noble craft sailing along in the heart of it, was swept into me with such vehemence of impression that the scene lies upon my memory clear now as it then was in that far-off, that very far-off, time. Every sound on deck rose with a subdued thin tone, as though from some elfin world. There was a delicate throbbing of green fire in the black water as it washed slowly past the lazy sides of the _Countess Ida_, and upon this visionary, faintly-glittering surface the form of the great ship was shadowily depictured, with the glimmer of the deck of the poop dimly dashed with the illuminated squares of the skylights, and a point of scarce determinable radiance confronting the wheel where the binnacle light was showing. The ocean night-breeze sighed with a note of surf heard from afar in the quiet hollows of the canvas. There was sometimes a little light pattering of the reef-points, resembling the noise of the falling of a brief summer thunder-shower upon fallen leaves. The sea spread as vast as the sky, and you seemed to be able to pierce to the other side of the world, so infinitely distant did the stars close to the horizon look, as though _there_ they were shining over an antipodean land. ‘Aloft there, Mr. Dugdale!’ came dimly sounding from the deck; ‘do you hear anything more of the voice?’ ‘No,’ I answered; but the cry had broken the spell that was upon me, and down I went, looking narrowly about me as I descended. I had scarcely gained the poop when there was a commotion on the quarter-deck, and I heard the voice of the Chinaman exclaiming: ‘What sailor-man hab seen Prince? What sailor-man, I say, hab seen him? Him gone for lost, I say? Oh--ai--O; Oh--ai--O! Him gone for lost, I say?’ ‘Who in thunder is making that row?’ shouted Mr. Cocker, putting his head over the brass rail. The Chinaman stepped out from under the recess, and the cabin lights showed him up plainly enough. He wrung his hands and executed a variety of piteous gestures whilst he cried: ‘Oh sah, did you sabbe Prince? Him gone for lost, I say! Oh--ai--O! Oh--ai--O! Him gone for lost, I say!’ And here he rolled his eyes up aloft and over the bulwarks, and then made as if he would rush forwards. ‘Is that you, Handcock?’ said Mr. Cocker, addressing a stout man who stepped out of the cuddy at that moment.