‘God help them!’ said the mate. ‘But there are sailors who’ll show them what to do should it come to a sudden call.’ Will came from his job. The gripes of our boat were then noiselessly cast adrift. ‘Jump in, Marian! Jump in, Johnstone!’ said Tom. Will and I sprang into the boat and sat low, and in a moment or two the dark side of the ship swarmed upward as we descended. The boat splashed when she floated. Some fellow at that instant halloed long and dismally. The melancholy, dreadful cry was re-echoed by the sails, and the voice was as that of a strong man mortally wounded and yielding up his ghost in a death shout. ‘Some beast shrieking in a dream,’ said Will. As he spoke, the figures of Tom and the mate leaned to the falls, and they came down the tackles into the boat, hand over hand. The blocks were quickly unhooked, and Mr. Bates, with the boat-hook in his hand, poled us under the huge, dark counter of the _Childe Harold_. Three oars were noiselessly thrown over and paddled us clear of the ship. Scarcely were we gone ten lengths when again we heard that strange, wild, melancholy, halloing cry. Tom said, ‘Is not that a man there on the fo’c’s’le?’ ‘Yes,’ said Will; ‘he is reeling and waving. He’ll be overboard if he doesn’t mind his eye.’ The fellow let fly a sudden yell. ‘Curse him!’ cried Tom. ‘He sees us. Give way now.’ ‘There he goes!’ cried Mr. Bates. A cry like the scream of a gull came across the silent sea, and we heard the plunge and splash of the wretch. Mr. Bates and Will tilted their oars as though to put back. ‘Pull!’ cried Tom fiercely. ‘Won’t you return to pick him up?’ said the mate. ‘Pull!’ hissed Tom. ‘Return to that ship? Pull! Break your backs! A suicide in delirium. Let them all leap! There’s the peace of God over the side; there’s the devil’s own hell within board. Pull!’ He strained at his own oar with fury; the others plied with all their might. The boat buzzed over the smooth surface, the smudge of the craft for which we were making was dead-on-end over the bow. The moon hung low, large, and red; the situation of our boat put the convict ship right over against the satellite, and the vessel was painted upon the red surface of the orb. Never did the ocean offer a more impressive night-piece. An awful horror went into the ship out of the fancy of the man drowning alongside. Her sails showed as though cut out of black paper against the moon; her rigging ran in fine black lines; the ship looked to be afloat in vapour, so smoky was the obscurity which moved over the face of that black, greasy calm in folds like smoke. There was no more halloing; so still was the breast on which the vessel lay that never a sound of the flap of canvas, the jar of a wheel chain, the clank of a topsail-sheet came from her. Slowly she receded to the impulse of our oars; then sliding out of the sphere of the moon, she glimmered dimly and hovered like a pale cloud rising off the edge of the sea.