"Don't be a fool," he says, quite crusty; but I stuck out as there was, and then he crept forward too, and stood listening. "Now then," he says, "where's your hailin' now? Why, it was the--" "Help!" came a faint cry from somewhere ahead, and Bob stopped short with his mouth open, and his hand over his eyes, gazing out to sea. "Say, mate," he says, ketching hold of my arm, and whispering in my ear, with his mouth quite close--"say, mate, let's get back; 'taint nat'ral." Well, feeling a bit queer after hearing that wild cry from somewhere off the water, and knowing that nothing could live in the sea then on, we thought it was what Alick Frazer, another of our chaps, called "No canny," and we crept back along the bulwarks to where t'other two stood, and "I say, bo," says Bob to Alick, "you can hear 'em drowning out there now;" and Bob was obliged to shout it all. "Ah!" says Alick, "and so we shall every storm night as comes, laddie; and I'll no stay in the ship if we do." "Help!" came the cry again off the water--such a long low cry, heard in the lull, that it seemed to go through us all, and we stood there trembling and afraid to move. "'Tain't human," says Alick--"it's a sperrit;" but somehow or other we all went up to the ship's head again, and stood trying to make something out as the light turned round. All just in front of us was dark, for it was some little way out before the light struck the water; but we could see nothing; and shaking our heads, we were about going back again, when a sea came aboard with a rush, and made us hold on for dear life; and then directly after came very faintly the cry, "Help!" so close at hand that it seemed on board. "Why, there's a chap on the chain?" cried Bob Gunnis excitedly. "Look here, mates," he cried; and there right below, and evidently lashed on to the big mooring cable, we could make out a figure, sometimes clear of the water, and sometimes with it washing clean over him. "Ahoy!" I sings out; but there was no answer, and during the next minute as we stood there no cry for help came, for it seemed the poor fellow was beat out. "Well," I says, "we must fetch him aboard somehow." "Ah!" says Bob Gunnis, "that's werry easy said, mate; p'raps you'll go down the cable and do it."