The sea-birds rose in clouds as we swung across the shoal, the black surf-ducks scuttered out to sea, the gulls tossed their sun-tipped wings in the ocean, riding the rollers like bits of froth.
Already we were sailing slowly out across that great hole in the ocean, five miles deep, the most profound sounding ever taken in the Atlantic. The presence of great heights or great depths, seen or unseen, always impresses the human mind--perhaps oppresses it. We were very silent; the sunlight stain on cliff and beach deepened to crimson, then faded into sombre purple bloom that lingered long after the rose-tint died out in the zenith.
Our progress was slow; at times, although the sail filled with the rising land breeze, we scarcely seemed to move at all.
"Of course," said the pretty nurse, "we couldn't be aground in the deepest hole in the Atlantic."
"Scarcely," said Halyard, sarcastically, "unless we're grounded on a whale."
"What's that soft thumping?" I asked. "Have we run afoul of a barrel or log?"
It was almost too dark to see, but I leaned over the rail and swept the water with my hand.
Instantly something smooth glided under it, like the back of a great fish, and I jerked my hand back to the tiller. At the same moment the whole surface of the water seemed to begin to purr, with a sound like the breaking of froth in a champagne-glass.
"What's the matter with you?" asked Halyard, sharply.
"A fish came up under my hand," I said; "a porpoise or something--"
With a low cry, the pretty nurse clasped my arm in both her hands.
"Listen!" she whispered. "It's purring around the boat."
"What the devil's purring?" shouted Halyard. "I won't have anything purring around me!"
At that moment, to my amazement, I saw that the boat had stopped entirely, although the sail was full and the small pennant fluttered from the mast-head. Something, too, was tugging at the rudder, twisting and jerking it until the tiller strained and creaked in my hand. All at once it snapped; the tiller swung useless and the boat whirled around, heeling in the stiffening wind, and drove shoreward.
It was then that I, ducking to escape the boom, caught a glimpse of something ahead--something that a sudden wave seemed to toss on deck and leave there, wet and flapping--a man with round, fixed, fishy eyes, and soft, slaty skin.