r in that direction, and see if you can find an explanation,"
said I.

Unconsciously imitating Tompion in the attitude he assumed, Courtenay
stood intently gazing into the darkness for a full minute or more,
without result. He had turned to me and was about to speak when a faint
_crack_, like the breaking of a thole-pin, was heard, the sound being
accompanied by a very distinct luminous splash of the water.

"Ha!" exclaimed Courtenay, "there is a boat over there at no great
distance from us!" and at the same moment Fidd came barefooted and
noiselessly to my side with the question:

"Did ye see and hear that, sir?"

"Ay, ay, Mr Fidd, I saw it. Are the starboard guns loaded?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then kindly pass along the word to the captain of each gun to watch for
the next splash and then to train his gun upon it."

"Ay, ay, sir," was the reply; and Fidd turned away to execute his
mission as I sprang upon the rail and, grasping one of the shrouds of
the main rigging to steady myself, hailed in Spanish:

"Boat ahoy! who are you, and what do you want? Lay on your oars and
answer instantly, or I will fire upon you."

I waited a full minute without eliciting any response or sign of any
description from the direction in which our enemies were supposed to be
lurking, and then ordered a port-fire to be burnt and a musket to be
fired in their direction.

A brief interval elapsed, and then the darkness was suddenly broken into
by the ghastly glare of the port-fire, with which one of the men nimbly
shinned up the fore-rigging in order to send the illumination as far
abroad as possible, and at the same instant a musket was fired. For a
moment or two nothing whatever was to be seen but our own decks, with
the men standing stripped to the waist at their guns--a row of statues
half marble, half ebony, as the glare lighted up one side of each figure
and left the other side in blackest shadow--the spars and rigging
towering weird and ghostly up into the opaque blackness above us like
those of a phantom ship; whilst the water shimmered like burning
brimstone under the baleful light. Then, evidently under the impression
that the boat had become visible in the gleam of the port-fire--though
at that instant we could see nothing--a voice was heard from out the
darkness on our starboard beam exclaiming in Spanish:

"Give way with a will, my heroes! one smart dash now and we shall be
alongside yet before they can load their guns.