When we were called again for the four to eight watch on deck, I learnt
that one of the men in the Mate's watch had seen a light, soon after we
had gone below, and had reported it, only for it to disappear
immediately. This, I found, had happened twice, and the Mate had got so
wild (being under the impression that the man was playing the fool) that
he had nearly came to blows with him--finally ordering him off the
look-out, and sending another man up in his place. If this last man saw
the light, he took good care not to let the Mate know; so that the
matter had ended there.
And then, on the following night, before we had ceased to talk about the
matter of the vanishing lights, something else occurred that temporarily
drove from my mind all memory of the mist, and the extraordinary, blind
atmosphere it had seemed to usher.
IX
_The Man Who Cried for Help_
It was, as I have said, on the following night that something further
happened. And it brought home pretty vividly to me, if not to any of the
others, the sense of a personal danger aboard.
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