d and went forward to his duty, the increase in the
severity of the gale was very evident; the thermometer, the wheelsman
said, had dropped below zero. Ice was making rapidly on the hull of
the ferry, where the spray, flying thicker through the snow, was
freezing as it struck. The deck was all ice now underfoot, and the
rails were swollen to great gleaming slabs which joined and grew
together; a parapet of ice had appeared on the bow; and all about the
swirling snow screen shut off everything. A searchlight which had
flared from the bridge while Alan was below, pierced that screen not a
ship's length ahead, or on the beam, before the glare dimmed to a glow
which served to show no more than the fine, flying pellets of the
storm. Except for the noise of the wind and the water, there had been
no echo from beyond that screen since the shore signals were lost; now
a low, far-away sound came down the wind; it maintained itself for a
few seconds, ceased, and then came again, and continued at uneven
intervals longer than the timed blasts of Number 25's whistle. It
might be the horn of some struggling sailing vessel, which in spite of
the storm and the closed season was braving the seas; at the end of
each interval of silence, the horn blew twice now; the echo came abeam,
passed astern, and was no longer to be heard. How far away its origin
had been, Alan could only guess; probably the sailing vessel, away to
windward, had not heard the whistle of Number 25 at all.

Alan saw old Burr who, on his way to the wheelhouse, had halted to
listen too. For several minutes the old man stood motionless; he came
on again and stopped to listen. There had been no sound for quite five
minutes now.

"You hear 'em?" Burr's voice quavered in Alan's ear. "You hear 'em?"

"What?" Alan asked.

"The four blasts! You hear 'em now? The four blasts!"

Burr was straining as he listened, and Alan stood still too; no sound
came to him but the noise of the storm. "No," he replied. "I don't
hear anything. Do you hear them now?"

Burr stood beside him without making reply; the searchlight, which had
been pointed abeam, shot its glare forward, and Alan could see Burr's
face in the dancing reflection of the flare. The man had never more
plainly resembled the picture of Benjamin Corvet; that which had been
in the picture, that strange sensation of something haunting him, was
upon this man's face, a thousand times intensified; but instead of