.
Their eyes looked at me; their lips moved; they wagged their heads at the other end of the boat--three of them; they beckoned--to me.

Why not?
Hadn't I jumped?
I said nothing.

There are no words for the sort of things I wanted to say.

If I had opened my lips just then I would have simply howled like an animal.

I was asking myself when I would wake up.
They urged me aloud to come aft and hear quietly what the skipper had to say.