The Gleam was a good way a--stern, as if to whip them
in, and to take care that no stray piccaroon should make a dash at any of
them. They slid noiselessly along like phantoms of the deep, every thing
in the air and in the water was so still--I crossed to the lee side of
the deck to look at them--The Wave, seeing some one on the hammock
nettings, sheered close to, under the Firebrand's lee quarter, and some
one asked, "Do you want to speak us?" The man's voice, reflected from the
concave surface of the schooner's mainsail, had a hollow, echoing sound,
that startled me.
"I should know that voice," said I to myself, "and the figure steering
the schooner."
The throbbing in my head and the dizzy feel, which had capsized my
judgment in the cabin, again returned with increased violence--"It was no
deception after all," thought I, "no cheat of the senses--I now believe
such things are."
The same voice now called out, "Come away, Tom, come away," no doubt to
some other seaman on board the little vessel, but my heated fancy did not
so construe it. The col real again overtook me, and I ejaculated, "God
have mercy upon me a sinner!"
"Why don't you come, Tom?" said the voice once more.
It was Obed's. At this very instant of time, the Wave forged a--head
into the Firebrand's shadow, so that her sails, but a moment before white
as wool in the bright moonbeams suffered a sudden eclipse, and became
black as ink.
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