of men's voices talking above the high wind.
Martin Hallowell was coming ashore in the boat that was to carry Alan
away. Beyond them, the lights of the _Huntress_ showed where she was
getting up sail. Martin made the landing with some difficulty, climbed
the ladder to the wharf, and stood bracing himself against the heavy
wind.

"We are a little early," he said. "Hold fast there with the boat hook.
He will be here in a----"

His voice was drowned by a strange sound, an unearthly wailing that
seemed to rise from the water beneath, but which filled the air until
there was no saying from what direction it came. It lifted and
dropped, hung sobbing and echoing above the water, then died away.

"Holy St. Anthony help us!" cried the nearest sailor. "It is the soul
of some poor drowned creature caught among the weeds."

"Give way," roared the man at the rudder, and with one accord the oars
dropped into the water.

"Stop, wait! It--it is nothing, you fools," cried Martin Hallowell,
but his own voice quavered with terror, and carried little reassurance
to the frightened men.

The boat hung doubtfully a ship's length from the pier, the oars
dipping to hold it into the wind, the men hesitating, ashamed of their
terror yet fearing to come closer. Again the cry broke forth,
resounding again and again, mingling in terrible, ghostly fashion with
the splashing and gurgling of the water. The boat shot away into the
dark, just as Alan came running down the wharf, shouting to them to
come back. The sailors, however, bent to their oars, unheeding; the
lantern in the stern dipped and jerked as they rowed away, and the
light finally went out of sight as the boat drew alongside the
_Huntress_. It was just possible to make out the big ship as she
weighed anchor and, rolling and plunging, moved slowly out into the
tideway.

"She's gone--without me!" cried Alan. "Oh, they might have come back,
the cowards!"

"Did you hear that--that terrible sound?" asked Martin Hallowell. In a
second's pause between the breaking of two waves, it was possible to
hear his teeth chatter.

"Terrible!" cried Alan in disgust. "That was only my sister Cicely,
hiding under the wharf. It was a game we once played to frighten Ben
Barton. Come out," he ordered sternly, kneeling down and thrusting an
arm into the dark space to help her.

Out Cicely came, wet and shivering, with her hair streaked with mud
and her hands scratched and cut by the sharp barnacles.