“What’s up, anyway?” he said.  “What’s ’e seen? ‘oo’re we chasin’ after?”

I said I didn’t know, and he swung up into the topmast rigging.  I followed on.  The chaps on the lee side were about level with us.  Under the foot of the topsail, I could see Tammy and the other ’prentice down on the maindeck, looking upwards.

The fellows were a bit excited in a sort of subdued way; though I am inclined to think there was far more curiosity and, perhaps, a certain consciousness of the strangeness of it all.  I know that, looking to leeward, there was a tendancy to keep well together, in which I sympathised.

“Must be a bloomin’ stowaway,” one of the men suggested.

I grabbed at the idea, instantly.  Perhaps—­And then, in a moment, I dismissed it.  I remembered how that first thing had stepped over the rail into the sea.  That matter could not be explained in such a manner.  With regard to this, I was curious and anxious.  I had seen nothing this time.  What could the Second Mate have seen?  I wondered.  Were we chasing fancies, or was there really someone—­something real, among the shadows above us?  My thoughts returned to that thing, Tammy and I had seen near the log-reel.  I remembered how incapable the Second Mate had been of seeing anything then.  I remembered how natural it had seemed that he should not be able to see.  I caught the word “stowaway” again.  After all, that might explain away this affair.  It would——­

My train of thought was broken suddenly.  One of the men was shouting and gesticulating.

“I sees ’im!  I sees ’im!” He was pointing upwards over our heads.

“Where?” said the man above me.  “Where?”

I was looking up, for all that I was worth.  I was conscious of a certain sense of relief.  “It is real then,” I said to myself.  I screwed my head round, and looked along the yards above us.  Yet, still I could see nothing; nothing except shadows and patches of light.

Down on deck, I caught the Second Mate’s voice.

“Have you got him?” he was shouting.

“Not yet, Zur,” sung out the lowest man on the lee side.

“We sees ’im, Sir,” added Quoin.

“I don’t!” I said.

“There ’e is agen,” he said.

We had reached the t’gallant rigging, and he was pointing up to the royal yard.

“Ye’re a fule, Quoin.  That’s what ye are.”

The voice came from above.  It was Jock’s, and there was a burst of laughter at Quoin’s expense.

I could see Jock now.  He was standing in the rigging, just below the yard.  He had gone straight away up, while the rest of us were mooning over the top.

“Ye’re a fule, Quoin,” he said, again, “And I’m thinking the Second’s juist as saft.”

He began to descend.

“Then there’s no one?” I asked.

“Na’,” he said, briefly.

As we reached the deck, the Second Mate ran down off the poop.  He came towards us, with an expectant air.