he hair bristling upon my scalp as I
listened to it. Three times in rapid succession did that dreadful,
heart-shaking cry come wailing to our ears, and then all was silence
again for perhaps half a minute, when the men about me began to ask, in
low, tense whispers, whence it came, and from what creature. To me, I
must confess, the sounds seemed to be such as might burst from the lips
of a fellow-creature in the very uttermost extremity of mortal terror.
But that could scarcely be, for how could mortal man have approached us
within a distance of some two hundred yards in that breathless calm,
unless, indeed, in a boat--of which there had certainly been no sign in
any direction half an hour before. And if one were disposed for a
moment to admit such a possibility, whence could a boat come? The
pirate brig had been the only craft in sight when darkness fell, and it
was scarcely within the bounds of probability that anything then out of
sight beneath the horizon could have drawn so near to us during the
succeeding hours of darkness. Or again, admitting such a possibility,
what dreadful happening could have wrung from human lips such blood-
curdling sounds? We were all eagerly discussing the matter, some of the
men agreeing with me that the sounds were human, while others stoutly
maintained that they were supernatural, and boded some terrible disaster
to the boats, when our discussion was abruptly broken in upon by the
sound of rippling water near at hand, as though a craft of some kind
were bearing down upon us at a speed sufficient to raise a brisk surge
under her bows, and the next instant the voice of San Domingo pealed out
in piercing tones, eloquent of the direst terror:

"Oh, look dere eberybody! Wha' dat?" And with a howl like that of a
wild beast he rose to his feet and made a frantic dash aft for the
stern-sheets, fighting his way past the other men, and trampling over
the unfortunate wounded in the bottom of the boat, quite beside himself
with fright.

And indeed there was some excuse for the negro's extraordinary
behaviour; for, intense as was the darkness that enveloped us, the water
was faintly phosphorescent, and we were thus enabled to discern
indistinctly that, less than a hundred yards distant from us, a huge
creature, which, to our excited imaginations, appeared to be between two
and three hundred feet long, had risen to the surface and was now slowly
swimming in a direction that would carry it ac