ings. And the voice, the wailing, sneering,
screaming laugh, '_Charley!_'--that was him right enough. My brother!

"I stepped along the gangway to the bridge, just as the Second Mate took
the telescope from his eye and laid it in the rack. He saw me and leaned
over the rail beckoning.

"'Say, Mister Chief, what the blazes was that?' he whispered.

"'Didn't you see it?' I asked. I knew he had been dozing on the lee side
of the chart-room.

"'See it! I _heard_ something!' he says. 'Was it you calling Charley?'
His name's Charley, you see; Charley Phillips.

"'No,' I said. 'I didn't see anything. You must have been asleep, Mr.
Phillips.'

"He looked at me, rather raw about the gills, took a look at the
Gunfleet Light and bent down again to me.

"'Did you _see_ anything?' He waved his hand towards the Essex coast.
'Yes,' I said. 'Green lights.'

"'Oh, that was the Harwich boat,' he says. 'I know that. She's gone.
Must have been going twenty-two knots.'

"'It was an aeroplane,' I said, whispering, 'flew past.'

"'_Eh!_' says he. I said it again. He straightens up and takes a turn up
and down the bridge.

"'You'd better watch out,' I said. 'It may come back.'

"'I _am_ watching out!' says he, rather savage. '_I'll_ take care of all
the aeroplanes about, Chief.'

"I went back then and took another look round with my glasses, but I saw
nothing but a couple of coasting steamers in shore. I stepped down into
the mess-room and looked through the slit of the Fourth's door. Funny
coincidence! He was on his settee in his pyjamas, asleep, and on his
stomach was a magazine he'd been reading, a magazine with a coloured
cover showing an aeroplane dropping a bursting shell on a man-o'-war.

"I lay awake for a long time, listening to the bells, watching Rosa's
picture flickering on the bulkhead as the screw below me shook the ship.
So we'd met again! I couldn't blame the Second Mate--I've kept the
grave-yard watch myself; I couldn't blame Mister Charley Phillips. But
what would he have said if I'd told him my brother was on that machine?
What if I'd said I'd seen wireless sparks spitting above it? Humph!

"I suppose I must have dozed a little, for the next thing I remember was
the whoop of our siren and the engines going dead slow. As I tumbled out
to go down it was three o'clock. The Third was standing by the reversing
gear and I saw by the vacuum gauge that the temperature of the sea was
down to forty-eight degrees. 'Fo