The raps of the invisible hand upon the table replied at once.
“_Mein Gott!_” muttered Horst. “I shall go mad!” Jensen continued his colloquy.
“Where is the _Gloucester City_?” He smiled to himself as though setting a trap for this unseen intelligence. “Is she still afloat?”
“_y-o-u-r a-n-c-h-o-r f-i-x-e-d- i-n u-p-p-e-r w-o-r-k-s_”
Lyngstrand uttered an ejaculation of awed astonishment. He looked to see the sweat pearling on Captain Horst’s forehead.
The raps spelled out, spontaneously, an explanatory afterward.
“_We?_” queried Jensen. “Who are ‘_we_’?”
“_t-h-e d-r-o-w-n-e-d_” The raps were decisive.
“Why?” Lyngstrand admired his comrade’s steely self-control. “Why did you lead us to it?”
Both glanced swiftly at Horst. He was speechless, his face a study in blanched terror.
“_h-e k-n-o-w-s_” added the raps. There was something indefinably malicious about their sound.
“Stop it!” Horst’s voice was strangled, scarcely audible. “Stop it!”
Lyngstrand, fascinated by this conversation with the unseen, was grateful for the question.
“_t-h-r-e-e h-u-n-d-r-e-d a-n-d e-i-g-h-t g-l-o-u-c-e-s-t-e-r c-i-t-y h-u-n-d-r-e-d a-n-d f-i-v-e r-e-s-c-u-e-d o-t-h-e-r s-h-i-p-s f-o-u-r h-u-n-d-r-e-d a-n-d t-h-i-r-t-e-e-n i-n a-l-l_”
“My God!” muttered Lyngstrand, in a sudden vivid remembrance that stabbed him like a pain. He glanced at Horst.
“_y-e-s_” There was a little pause, “_h-u-n-d-r-e-d-s m-o-r-e I d-o-n-t k-n-o-w d-r-o-w-n-e-d o-t-h-e-r s-u-n-k s-h-i-p-s a-l-l h-e-r-e_”
Lyngstrand shivered, looked around him uneasily. Jensen’s voice scarcely betrayed a tremor as he pursued.
“No!--no!” screamed Horst, suddenly. “No!--_Ach, Gott, schütze mich!_”
Both Lyngstrand and Jensen had a sense of inaudible mocking laughter in the air about them. There was an awful silence.
“_t-e-l-l h-i-m t-h-e-y a-r-e f-i-l-i-n-g p-a-s-t h-i-m i-d-e-n-t-i-f-y-i-n-g h-i-m_”
But Horst, with a blood-curdling scream of terror, had flung himself at the charthouse door, thrown it open. They heard the hiss and sough of the dark seas. He plunged out, blindly, head-foremost. Then, just beyond the threshold, he stopped, recoiled, staggered back into the charthouse.
“No!” he gasped, hoarsely. “No!--_I can’t face them! I can’t face them!_--I can’t die!--I dare not!”