“It was shining,” he said slowly, trying to put his idea into words.  “Maybe not exactly white, but light-colored.  It stood still for so long, I thought I must be mistaken—­that it was a light on the rigging.  Then I got to thinking that there wasn’t no place for a light to come from just there.”

That was true enough.

“First it was as tall as a man, or taller maybe,” he went on.  “Then it seemed about half that high and still in the same place.  Then it got lower still, and it took to crawling along on its belly.  It was then I yelled.”

I looked down.  The green starboard light threw a light over only a small part of the deck.  The red light did no better.  The masthead was possibly thirty feet above the hull, and served no illuminating purpose whatever.  From the bridge forward the deck was practically dark.

“You yelled, and then what happened?”

His reply was vague—­troubled.

“I’m not sure,” he said slowly.  “It seemed to fade away.  The white got smaller—­went to nothing, like a cloud blown away in a gale.  I flung the spike.”

I accepted the story with outward belief and a mental reservation.  But I did not relish the idea of the spike Adams had thrown lying below on deck.  No more formidable weapon short of an axe, could be devised.  I said as much.

“I’m going down for it,” I said; “if you’re nervous, you’d better keep it by you.  But don’t drop it on everything that moves below.  You almost got Burns.”

I went down cautiously, and struck a match where Adams had indicated the spike.  It was not there.  Nor had Burns picked it up.  A splintered board showed where it had struck, and a smaller indentation where it had rebounded; but the marlinespike was gone, and Burns had not seen it.  We got a lantern and searched systematically, without result.  Burns turned to me a face ghastly in the oil light.

“Somebody has it,” he said, “and there will be more murder!  Oh, my God, Leslie!”

“When you went back after the alarm, did you count the men?”

“No; Oleson said no one had come forward.  They could not have passed without his seeing them.  He has the binnacle lantern and two other lights.”

“And no one came from the after house?”

“No one.”

Eight bells rang out sharply.  The watch changed.  I took the revolver and Burns’s position at the companionway, while Burns went aft.  He lined up the men by the binnacle light, and went over them carefully.  The marlinespike was not found; but he took from the cook a long meat-knife, and brought both negro and knife forward to me.  The man was almost collapsing with terror.  He maintained that he had taken the knife for self-protection, and we let him go with a warning.

Dawn brought me an hour’s sleep, the first since my awakening in the storeroom.  When I roused, Jones at the wheel had thrown an extra blanket over me, for the morning was cool and a fine rain was falling.