In this fashion,
we reached the top. The man who had been stationed there with the
blue-lights, had gone. Afterwards, I found that he went down on deck as
soon as they were finished. There was no sign of the man with the flare
on the starboard craneline. He also, I learnt later, had slid down one
of the backstays on to the deck, only a very short while before we
reached the top. He swore that a great black shadow of a man had come
suddenly upon him from aloft. When I heard that, I remembered the thing
I had seen descending upon Plummer. Yet the man who had gone out upon
the port craneline--the one who had bungled with the lighting of his
flare--was still where we had left him; though his light was burning now
but dimly.
"Come in out of that, _you!_" the Old Man sung out "Smartly now, and get
down on deck!"
"i, i, Sir," the man replied, and started to make his way in.
The Skipper waited until he had got into the main rigging, and then he
told me to get down out of the top. He was in the act of following,
when, all at once, there rose a loud outcry on deck, and then came the
sound of a man screaming.
Pages:
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182