After waiting a moment, Carter went on deck.  The sky, the sea, the brig itself had disappeared in a darkness that had become impenetrable, palpable, and stifling.  An immense cloud had come up running over the heavens, as if looking for the little craft, and now hung over it, arrested.  To the south there was a livid trembling gleam, faint and sad, like a vanishing memory of destroyed starlight.  To the north, as if to prove the impossible, an incredibly blacker patch outlined on the tremendous blackness of the sky the heart of the coming squall.  The glimmers in the water had gone out and the invisible sea all around lay mute and still as if it had died suddenly of fright.

Carter could see nothing.  He felt about him people moving; he heard them in the darkness whispering faintly as if they had been exchanging secrets important or infamous.  The night effaced even words, and its mystery had captured everything and every sound—­had left nothing free but the unexpected that seemed to hover about one, ready to stretch out its stealthy hand in a touch sudden, familiar, and appalling.  Even the careless disposition of the young ex-officer of an opium-clipper was affected by the ominous aspect of the hour.  What was this vessel?  What were those people?  What would happen to-morrow?  To the yacht?  To himself?  He felt suddenly without any additional reason but the darkness that it was a poor show, anyhow, a dashed poor show for all hands.  The irrational conviction made him falter for a second where he stood and he gripped the slide of the companionway hard.

Shaw’s voice right close to his ear relieved and cleared his troubled thoughts.

“Oh! it’s you, Mister.  Come up at last,” said the mate of the brig slowly.  “It appears we’ve got to give you a tow now.  Of all the rum incidents, this beats all.  A boat sneaks up from nowhere and turns out to be a long-expected friend!  For you are one of them friends the skipper was going to meet somewhere here.  Ain’t you now?  Come!  I know more than you may think.  Are we off to—­you may just as well tell—­off to—­h’m ha . . . you know?”

“Yes.  I know.  Don’t you?” articulated Carter, innocently.

Shaw remained very quiet for a minute.

“Where’s my skipper?” he asked at last.

“I left him down below in a kind of trance.  Where’s my boat?”

“Your boat is hanging astern.  And my opinion is that you are as uncivil as I’ve proved you to be untruthful.  Egzz-actly.”

Carter stumbled toward the taffrail and in the first step he made came full against somebody who glided away.  It seemed to him that such a night brings men to a lower level.  He thought that he might have been knocked on the head by anybody strong enough to lift a crow-bar.  He felt strangely irritated.  He said loudly, aiming his words at Shaw whom he supposed somewhere near: 

“And my opinion is that you and your skipper will come to a sudden bad end before—­”