"Nonsense. It wouldn't have handled us that way."

"Well, what was it? Listen! For God's sake keep quiet there
forward!"

Wilbur looked over the side into the water. The ripples were
still chasing themselves away from the schooner. There was
nothing else. The stillness shut down again. There was not a
sound.



VI

A SEA MYSTERY


In spite of his best efforts at self-control, Wilbur felt a slow,
cold clutch at his heart. That sickening, uncanny lifting of the
schooner out of the glassy water, at a time when there was not
enough wind to so much as wrinkle the surface, sent a creep of
something very like horror through all his flesh.

Again he peered over the side, down into the kelp-thickened sea.
Nothing--not a breath of air was stirring. The gray light that
flooded down from the stars showed not a break upon the surface of
Magdalena Bay. On shore, nothing moved.

"Quiet there, forward," called Moran to the shrill-voiced coolies.