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Here we separated, the carpenter boldly making his way forward past the noisy, jabbering, drunken crowd who were grouped about the main-hatchway, engaged in hoisting on deck the goods that the boatswain, down in the hold, was selecting from the ship's heterogeneous cargo, while the rest excepting Simpson and myself quietly stole up the mizen rigging, three of them concealing themselves in the top, while the rest, continuing on up the topmast rigging, made for the main and foretops by way of the stays; the lanterns which were being used to light the pirates at their work about the main-hatchway so effectually dazzling the drunken ruffians' eyes, that there was not the slightest fear of any of the silent, sober figures stealthily moving about aloft being seen by them; indeed so deep was the gloom created between the masts by the towering expanses of the Indiaman's canvas that even I, far away as I was from the dazzling light of the lanterns, was unable to follow with my eye the dusky, indistinctly-seen figures any further than the rim of the mizen-top.

The ripple of the water against the boat, as its keel cleaves through the stream the darkling current hurrying by the indistinctly-seen craft, of all forms and all sizes, hovering around, and making their way in ghost-like silence, or warning each other of their approach by cries, that, heard from afar, have something doleful in their note the solemn shadows cast by the bridges the deeper gloom of the echoing arches the lights glimmering from the banks the red reflection thrown upon the waves by a fire kindled on some stationary barge the tall and fantastic shapes of the houses, as discerned through the obscurity; these, and other sights and sounds of the same character, give a sombre colour to the thoughts of one who may choose to indulge in meditation at such a time and in such a place.

And then I began to wonder, bitterly, how many poor souls weak, helpless, delicate women and children, and famine-stricken men had perished miserably, after drifting about the ocean for days that were veritable eternities of suffering, yet might have been rescued had the officer of the watch aboard a passing ship but bestowed a trifle more interest and attention upon the small, distant, indistinctly-seen object that for an instant caught his gaze, and which he all too hastily assumed to be the slanting pinion of some wandering sea bird, or the leaping crest of a distant wave.

Alizon groaned deeply, but, at a gesture from the hag, she became motionless and speechless. A dusky indistinctly-seen figure hovered near the entrance of the embrasure. Mother Demdike beckoned it to her. "Convey this girl to the vault, and watch over her," she said. "I will descend anon."