I was
about to abandon my search, when I saw something gleaming in the
locker, and reached in and drew it out. It appeared to be an
ordinary white sheet, but its presence there was curious. I turned
the light on it. It was covered with dark-brown stains.
Even now the memory of that sheet turns me ill. I shook it out,
and Mac, at my exclamation, came to me. It was not a sheet at all,
that is, not a whole one. It was a circular piece of white cloth,
on which, in black, were curious marks--a six-pointed star
predominating. There were others--a crescent, a crude attempt to
draw what might be either a dog or a lamb, and a cross. From edge
to edge it was smeared with blood.
Of what followed just after, both McWhirter and I are vague. There
seemed to be, simultaneously, a yell of fury from the rigging
overhead, and the crash of a falling body on the deck near us. Then
we were closing with a kicking, biting, screaming thing, that bore
me to the ground, extinguishing the little electric flash, and that,
rising suddenly from under me, had McWhirter in the air, and almost
overboard before I caught him. So dazed were we by the onslaught
that the thing--whatever it was--could have escaped, and left us
none the wiser. But, although it eluded us in the darkness, it did
not leave.
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