reed-pipes on which that vacant
mournful note had been sounded.

And as he looked, with fooled eyes, again his ears became fooled:

_"Ahoy there! What ship's that? Are you a ship?... Here, give me that
trumpet--"_ Then a metallic barking. _"Ahoy there! What the devil are
you? Didn't you ring a bell? Ring it again, or blow a blast or something,
and go dead slow!"_

All this came, as it were, indistinctly, and through a sort of high
singing in Abel Keeling's own ears. Then he fancied a short bewildered
laugh, followed by a colloquy from somewhere between sea and sky.

"Here, Ward, just pinch me, will you? Tell me what you see there. I want
to know if I'm awake."

"See where?"

"There, on the starboard bow. (Stop that ventilating fan; I can't
hear myself think.) See anything? Don't tell me it's that damned
Dutchman--don't pitch me that old Vanderdecken tale--give me an easy
one first, something about a sea-serpent.... You did hear that bell,
didn't you?"

"Shut up a minute--listen--"

Again Bligh's voice was lifted up.

_"This is the cov'nant that I make:
From henceforth nevermore
Will I again the world destroy
With water, as before."_

Bligh's voice died away again in Abel Keeling's ears.

"_Oh--my--fat--Aunt--Julia!_" the voice that seemed to come from between
sea and sky sounded again. Then it spoke more loudly. "_I say,_" it began
with careful politeness, "_if you are a ship, do you mind telling us
where the masquerade is to be? Our wireless is out of order, and we
hadn't heard of it.... Oh, you do see it, Ward, don't you?... Please,
please tell us what the hell you are!_"

Again Abel Keeling had moved as a sleepwalker moves. He had raised
himself up by the belfry timbers, and Bligh had sunk in a heap on the
deck. Abel Keeling's movement overturned the pipkin, which raced the
little trickle of its contents down the deck and lodged where the still
and brimming sea made, as it were, a chain with the carved balustrade of
the quarter-deck--one link a still gleaming edge, then a dark baluster,
and then another gleaming link. For one moment only Abel Keeling found
himself noticing that that which had driven Bligh aft had been the
rising of the water in the waist as the galleon settled by the head--the
waist was now entirely submerged; then once more he was absorbed in
his dream, its voices, and its shape in the mist, which had again taken
the form of a pyramid before his eyeballs.

"_Of course_," a voi