night. . . . Carter swore heartily to himself. His perplexity became positive bodily pain as he sat, wet, uncomfortable, and still, one hand on the tiller, thrown up and down in headlong swings of his boat. And before his eyes, towering high, the black hull of the brig also rose and fell, setting her stern down in the sea, now and again, with a tremendous and foaming splash. Not a sound from her reached Carter's ears. She seemed an abandoned craft but for the outline of a man's head and body still visible in a watchful attitude above the taffrail.
Carter told his bowman to haul up closer and hailed:
“Brig ahoy. Anything wrong?”
He waited, listening. The shadowy man still watched. After some time a curt “No” came back in answer.
“Are you going to keep hove-to long?” shouted Carter.
“Don't know. Not long. Drop your boat clear of the ship. Drop clear. Do damage if you don't.”
“Slack away, John!” said Carter in a resigned tone to the elderly seaman in the bow. “Slack away and let us ride easy to the full scope. They don't seem very talkative on board there.”
Even while he was speaking the line ran out and the regular undulations of the passing seas drove the boat away from the brig. Carter turned a little in his seat to look at the land. It loomed up dead to leeward like a lofty and irregular cone only a mile or a mile and a half distant. The noise of the surf beating upon its base was heard against the wind in measured detonations. The fatigue of many days spent in the boat asserted itself above the restlessness of Carter's thoughts and, gradually, he lost the notion of the passing time without altogether losing the consciousness of his situation.
In the intervals of that benumbed stupor—rather than sleep—he was aware that the interrupted noise of the surf had grown into a continuous great rumble, swelling periodically into a loud roar; that the high islet appeared now bigger, and that a white fringe of foam was visible at its feet. Still there was no stir or movement of any kind on board the brig. He noticed that the wind was
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