"What do you think?" I replied.
"I don't know what to think," he said. "But I've a feeling that it's
something to do with all the rest," and he indicated aloft, with his
head.
"I've been thinking, too," I remarked.
"That it is?" he inquired.
"Yes," I answered, and told him how the idea had come to me at my
dinner, that the strange men-shadows which came aboard, might come from
that indistinct vessel we had seen down in the sea.
"Good Lord!" he exclaimed, as he got my meaning. And then for a little,
he stood and thought.
"That's where they live, you mean?" he said, at last, and paused again.
"Well," I replied. "It can't be the sort of existence _we_ should call
life."
He nodded, doubtfully.
"No," he said, and was silent again.
Presently, he put out an idea that had come to him.
"You _think_, then, that that--vessel has been with us for some time, if
we'd only known?" he asked.
"All along," I replied. "I mean ever since these things started."
"Supposing there are others," he said, suddenly.