I fancy I can also hear a similar noise in the hold beneath my cabin floor, the entrance to which is situated abaft the foremast.

I also feel that something is scraping against the schooner's hull.

Have boats come alongside?
Are the crew engaged in loading or unloading merchandise?
And yet we cannot possibly have reached our journey's end.

The Count d'Artigas said that we should not reach our destination till this afternoon.

Now, I repeat, she was, last night, fully fifty or sixty miles from the nearest land, the group of the Bermudas.