The hours of daylight on the first day of the return voyage passed peacefully at deck-cricket, as far as Logan, Bude, and such of the officers and men as could be spared were concerned. At last night came 'at one stride,' and the vast ocean plain was only illuminated by the pale claritude that falls from the stars. Logan and Bude (they had not dressed for dinner, but wore yachting suits) were smoking on deck, when, quite suddenly, a loud, almost musical, roar or hum was heard from the direction of the distant island. 'What's that?' asked Logan, leaping up and looking towards Cagayan Sulu. 'The Berbalangs,' said Bude coolly. 'You are wearing the ring I gave you?' 'Yes, always do,' said Logan, looking at his hand. 'All the men have their pearls; I saw to that,' said Bude. 'Why, the noise is dwindling,' said Logan. 'That is odd; it seemed to be coming this way.' 'So it is,' said Bude; 'the nearer they approach the less you hear them. When they have come on board you won't hear them at all.' Logan stared, but asked no more questions. The musical boom as it approached had died to a whisper, and then had fallen into perfect silence. At the very moment when the mysterious sound ceased, a swarm of things like red fire-flies, a host of floating specks of ruby light, invaded the deck in a cluster. The red points then scattered, approached each man on board, and paused when within a yard of his head or breast. Then they vanished. A queer kind of chill ran down Logan's spine; then the faint whispered musical moan tingled in each man's ears, and the sounds as they departed eastwards gathered volume and force till, in a moment, there fell perfect stillness. Stillness, broken only by a sudden and mysterious chorus of animal cries from the _George Washington_. A kind of wail, high, shrieking, strenuous, ending in a noise as of air escaping from a pipe; a torrent of barks such as no known beast could utter, subsiding into moans that chilled the blood; a guttural scream, broken by heavy sounds as if of water lapping on a rock at uncertain intervals; a human cry, human words, with unfamiliar vowel sounds, soon slipping into quiet--these were among the horrors that assailed the ears of the voyagers in the _Pendragon_. Such a discord of laments has not tingled to the indifferent stars since the ice-wave swept into their last retreats, and crushed among the rocks that bear their fossil forms, the fauna of the preglacial period, the Ichthyosaurus, the Brontosaurus, the Guyas Cutis (or Ring-tailed Roarer), the Mastodon, and the Mammoth. 'What a row in the menagerie!' said Logan. He was not answered. Bude had fallen into a deck-chair, his face buried in his hands, his arms rocking convulsively.