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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40386 ***
+
+WANDERING GHOSTS
+
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
+SAN FRANCISCO
+
+MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+
+LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
+MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+
+TORONTO
+
+
+[Illustration: "What?... It's gone, man, the skull is gone!!"]
+
+
+WANDERING GHOSTS
+
+BY F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "A ROMAN SINGER," ETC.
+
+_WITH FRONTISPIECE_
+
+New York
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+1911
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1894,
+BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS.
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1899,
+BY STREET AND SMITH.
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1903,
+BY F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+AND
+
+BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1905 AND 1908,
+BY P. F. COLLIER AND SON.
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1911,
+BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1911.
+
+Norwood Press
+J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                PAGE
+THE DEAD SMILE                     1
+
+THE SCREAMING SKULL               41
+
+MAN OVERBOARD!                    97
+
+FOR THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE        165
+
+THE UPPER BERTH                  195
+
+BY THE WATER OF PARADISE         235
+
+THE DOLL'S GHOST                 279
+
+
+
+
+THE DEAD SMILE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Sir Hugh Ockram smiled as he sat by the open window of his study, in the
+late August afternoon; and just then a curiously yellow cloud obscured
+the low sun, and the clear summer light turned lurid, as if it had been
+suddenly poisoned and polluted by the foul vapours of a plague. Sir
+Hugh's face seemed, at best, to be made of fine parchment drawn
+skin-tight over a wooden mask, in which two eyes were sunk out of sight,
+and peered from far within through crevices under the slanting, wrinkled
+lids, alive and watchful like two toads in their holes, side by side and
+exactly alike. But as the light changed, then a little yellow glare
+flashed in each. Nurse Macdonald said once that when Sir Hugh smiled he
+saw the faces of two women in hell--two dead women he had betrayed.
+(Nurse Macdonald was a hundred years old.) And the smile widened,
+stretching the pale lips across the discoloured teeth in an expression
+of profound self-satisfaction, blended with the most unforgiving hatred
+and contempt for the human doll. The hideous disease of which he was
+dying had touched his brain. His son stood beside him, tall, white and
+delicate as an angel in a primitive picture; and though there was deep
+distress in his violet eyes as he looked at his father's face, he felt
+the shadow of that sickening smile stealing across his own lips and
+parting them and drawing them against his will. And it was like a bad
+dream, for he tried not to smile and smiled the more. Beside him,
+strangely like him in her wan, angelic beauty, with the same shadowy
+golden hair, the same sad violet eyes, the same luminously pale face,
+Evelyn Warburton rested one hand upon his arm. And as she looked into
+her uncle's eyes, and could not turn her own away, she knew that the
+deathly smile was hovering on her own red lips, drawing them tightly
+across her little teeth, while two bright tears ran down her cheeks to
+her mouth, and dropped from the upper to the lower lip while she
+smiled--and the smile was like the shadow of death and the seal of
+damnation upon her pure, young face.
+
+"Of course," said Sir Hugh very slowly, and still looking out at the
+trees, "if you have made up your mind to be married, I cannot hinder
+you, and I don't suppose you attach the smallest importance to my
+consent----"
+
+"Father!" exclaimed Gabriel reproachfully.
+
+"No; I do not deceive myself," continued the old man, smiling terribly.
+"You will marry when I am dead, though there is a very good reason why
+you had better not--why you had better not," he repeated very
+emphatically, and he slowly turned his toad eyes upon the lovers.
+
+"What reason?" asked Evelyn in a frightened voice.
+
+"Never mind the reason, my dear. You will marry just as if it did not
+exist." There was a long pause. "Two gone," he said, his voice lowering
+strangely, "and two more will be four--all together--for ever and ever,
+burning, burning, burning bright."
+
+At the last words his head sank slowly back, and the little glare of the
+toad eyes disappeared under the swollen lids; and the lurid cloud passed
+from the westering sun, so that the earth was green again and the light
+pure. Sir Hugh had fallen asleep, as he often did in his last illness,
+even while speaking.
+
+Gabriel Ockram drew Evelyn away, and from the study they went out into
+the dim hall, softly closing the door behind them, and each audibly drew
+breath, as though some sudden danger had been passed. They laid their
+hands each in the other's, and their strangely-like eyes met in a long
+look, in which love and perfect understanding were darkened by the
+secret terror of an unknown thing. Their pale faces reflected each
+other's fear.
+
+"It is his secret," said Evelyn at last. "He will never tell us what it
+is."
+
+"If he dies with it," answered Gabriel, "let it be on his own head!"
+
+"On his head!" echoed the dim hall. It was a strange echo, and some were
+frightened by it, for they said that if it were a real echo it should
+repeat everything and not give back a phrase here and there, now
+speaking, now silent. But Nurse Macdonald said that the great hall would
+never echo a prayer when an Ockram was to die, though it would give back
+curses ten for one.
+
+"On his head!" it repeated quite softly, and Evelyn started and looked
+round.
+
+"It is only the echo," said Gabriel, leading her away.
+
+They went out into the late afternoon light, and sat upon a stone seat
+behind the chapel, which was built across the end of the east wing. It
+was very still, not a breath stirred, and there was no sound near them.
+Only far off in the park a song-bird was whistling the high prelude to
+the evening chorus.
+
+"It is very lonely here," said Evelyn, taking Gabriel's hand nervously,
+and speaking as if she dreaded to disturb the silence. "If it were dark,
+I should be afraid."
+
+"Of what? Of me?" Gabriel's sad eyes turned to her.
+
+"Oh no! How could I be afraid of you? But of the old Ockrams--they say
+they are just under our feet here in the north vault outside the chapel,
+all in their shrouds, with no coffins, as they used to bury them."
+
+"As they always will--as they will bury my father, and me. They say an
+Ockram will not lie in a coffin."
+
+"But it cannot be true--these are fairy tales--ghost stories!" Evelyn
+nestled nearer to her companion, grasping his hand more tightly, and the
+sun began to go down.
+
+"Of course. But there is the story of old Sir Vernon, who was beheaded
+for treason under James II. The family brought his body back from the
+scaffold in an iron coffin with heavy locks, and they put it in the
+north vault. But ever afterwards, whenever the vault was opened to bury
+another of the family, they found the coffin wide open, and the body
+standing upright against the wall, and the head rolled away in a corner,
+smiling at it."
+
+"As Uncle Hugh smiles?" Evelyn shivered.
+
+"Yes, I suppose so," answered Gabriel, thoughtfully. "Of course I never
+saw it, and the vault has not been opened for thirty years--none of us
+have died since then."
+
+"And if--if Uncle Hugh dies--shall you----" Evelyn stopped, and her
+beautiful thin face was quite white.
+
+"Yes. I shall see him laid there too--with his secret, whatever it is."
+Gabriel sighed and pressed the girl's little hand.
+
+"I do not like to think of it," she said unsteadily. "O Gabriel, what
+can the secret be? He said we had better not marry--not that he forbade
+it--but he said it so strangely, and he smiled--ugh!" Her small white
+teeth chattered with fear, and she looked over her shoulder while
+drawing still closer to Gabriel. "And, somehow, I felt it in my own
+face--"
+
+"So did I," answered Gabriel in a low, nervous voice. "Nurse
+Macdonald----" He stopped abruptly.
+
+"What? What did she say?"
+
+"Oh--nothing. She has told me things--they would frighten you, dear.
+Come, it is growing chilly." He rose, but Evelyn held his hand in both
+of hers, still sitting and looking up into his face.
+
+"But we shall be married, just the same--Gabriel! Say that we shall!"
+
+"Of course, darling--of course. But while my father is so very ill, it
+is impossible----"
+
+"O Gabriel, Gabriel, dear! I wish we were married now!" cried Evelyn in
+sudden distress. "I know that something will prevent it and keep us
+apart."
+
+"Nothing shall!"
+
+"Nothing?"
+
+"Nothing human," said Gabriel Ockram, as she drew him down to her.
+
+And their faces, that were so strangely alike, met and touched--and
+Gabriel knew that the kiss had a marvellous savour of evil, but on
+Evelyn's lips it was like the cool breath of a sweet and mortal fear.
+And neither of them understood, for they were innocent and young. Yet
+she drew him to her by her lightest touch, as a sensitive plant shivers
+and waves its thin leaves, and bends and closes softly upon what it
+wants; and he let himself be drawn to her willingly, as he would if her
+touch had been deadly and poisonous; for she strangely loved that half
+voluptuous breath of fear, and he passionately desired the nameless evil
+something that lurked in her maiden lips.
+
+"It is as if we loved in a strange dream," she said.
+
+"I fear the waking," he murmured.
+
+"We shall not wake, dear--when the dream is over it will have already
+turned into death, so softly that we shall not know it. But until
+then----"
+
+She paused, and her eyes sought his, and their faces slowly came nearer.
+It was as if they had thoughts in their red lips that foresaw and
+foreknew the deep kiss of each other.
+
+"Until then----" she said again, very low, and her mouth was nearer to
+his.
+
+"Dream--till then," murmured his breath.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Nurse Macdonald was a hundred years old. She used to sleep sitting all
+bent together in a great old leathern arm-chair with wings, her feet in
+a bag footstool lined with sheepskin, and many warm blankets wrapped
+about her, even in summer. Beside her a little lamp always burned at
+night by an old silver cup, in which there was something to drink.
+
+Her face was very wrinkled, but the wrinkles were so small and fine and
+near together that they made shadows instead of lines. Two thin locks of
+hair, that was turning from white to a smoky yellow again, were drawn
+over her temples from under her starched white cap. Every now and then
+she woke, and her eyelids were drawn up in tiny folds like little pink
+silk curtains, and her queer blue eyes looked straight before her
+through doors and walls and worlds to a far place beyond. Then she slept
+again, and her hands lay one upon the other on the edge of the blanket;
+the thumbs had grown longer than the fingers with age, and the joints
+shone in the low lamplight like polished crab-apples.
+
+It was nearly one o'clock in the night, and the summer breeze was
+blowing the ivy branch against the panes of the window with a hushing
+caress. In the small room beyond, with the door ajar, the girl-maid who
+took care of Nurse Macdonald was fast asleep. All was very quiet. The
+old woman breathed regularly, and her indrawn lips trembled each time as
+the breath went out, and her eyes were shut.
+
+But outside the closed window there was a face, and violet eyes were
+looking steadily at the ancient sleeper, for it was like the face of
+Evelyn Warburton, though there were eighty feet from the sill of the
+window to the foot of the tower. Yet the cheeks were thinner than
+Evelyn's, and as white as a gleam, and the eyes stared, and the lips
+were not red with life; they were dead, and painted with new blood.
+
+Slowly Nurse Macdonald's wrinkled eyelids folded themselves back, and
+she looked straight at the face at the window while one might count ten.
+
+"Is it time?" she asked in her little old, faraway voice.
+
+While she looked the face at the window changed, for the eyes opened
+wider and wider till the white glared all round the bright violet, and
+the bloody lips opened over gleaming teeth, and stretched and widened
+and stretched again, and the shadowy golden hair rose and streamed
+against the window in the night breeze. And in answer to Nurse
+Macdonald's question came the sound that freezes the living flesh.
+
+That low-moaning voice that rises suddenly, like the scream of storm,
+from a moan to a wail, from a wail to a howl, from a howl to the
+fear-shriek of the tortured dead--he who has heard knows, and he can
+bear witness that the cry of the banshee is an evil cry to hear alone in
+the deep night. When it was over and the face was gone, Nurse Macdonald
+shook a little in her great chair, and still she looked at the black
+square of the window, but there was nothing more there, nothing but the
+night, and the whispering ivy branch. She turned her head to the door
+that was ajar, and there stood the girl in her white gown, her teeth
+chattering with fright.
+
+"It is time, child," said Nurse Macdonald. "I must go to him, for it is
+the end."
+
+She rose slowly, leaning her withered hands upon the arms of the chair,
+and the girl brought her a woollen gown and a great mantle, and her
+crutch-stick, and made her ready. But very often the girl looked at the
+window and was unjointed with fear, and often Nurse Macdonald shook her
+head and said words which the maid could not understand.
+
+"It was like the face of Miss Evelyn," said the girl at last, trembling.
+
+But the ancient woman looked up sharply and angrily, and her queer blue
+eyes glared. She held herself by the arm of the great chair with her
+left hand, and lifted up her crutch-stick to strike the maid with all
+her might. But she did not.
+
+"You are a good girl," she said, "but you are a fool. Pray for wit,
+child, pray for wit--or else find service in another house than Ockram
+Hall. Bring the lamp and help me under my left arm."
+
+The crutch-stick clacked on the wooden floor, and the low heels of the
+woman's slippers clappered after her in slow triplets, as Nurse
+Macdonald got toward the door. And down the stairs each step she took
+was a labour in itself, and by the clacking noise the waking servants
+knew that she was coming, very long before they saw her.
+
+No one was sleeping now, and there were lights, and whisperings, and
+pale faces in the corridors near Sir Hugh's bedroom, and now some one
+went in, and now some one came out, but every one made way for Nurse
+Macdonald, who had nursed Sir Hugh's father more than eighty years ago.
+
+The light was soft and clear in the room. There stood Gabriel Ockram by
+his father's bedside, and there knelt Evelyn Warburton, her hair lying
+like a golden shadow down her shoulders, and her hands clasped nervously
+together. And opposite Gabriel, a nurse was trying to make Sir Hugh
+drink. But he would not, and though his lips were parted, his teeth were
+set. He was very, very thin and yellow now, and his eyes caught the
+light sideways and were as yellow coals.
+
+"Do not torment him," said Nurse Macdonald to the woman who held the
+cup. "Let me speak to him, for his hour is come."
+
+"Let her speak to him," said Gabriel in a dull voice.
+
+So the ancient woman leaned to the pillow and laid the feather-weight of
+her withered hand, that was like a brown moth, upon Sir Hugh's yellow
+fingers, and she spoke to him earnestly, while only Gabriel and Evelyn
+were left in the room to hear.
+
+"Hugh Ockram," she said, "this is the end of your life; and as I saw you
+born, and saw your father born before you, I am come to see you die.
+Hugh Ockram, will you tell me the truth?"
+
+The dying man recognised the little faraway voice he had known all his
+life, and he very slowly turned his yellow face to Nurse Macdonald; but
+he said nothing. Then she spoke again.
+
+"Hugh Ockram, you will never see the daylight again. Will you tell the
+truth?"
+
+His toad-like eyes were not yet dull. They fastened themselves on her
+face.
+
+"What do you want of me?" he asked, and each word struck hollow upon the
+last. "I have no secrets. I have lived a good life."
+
+Nurse Macdonald laughed--a tiny, cracked laugh, that made her old head
+bob and tremble a little, as if her neck were on a steel spring. But Sir
+Hugh's eyes grew red, and his pale lips began to twist.
+
+"Let me die in peace," he said slowly.
+
+But Nurse Macdonald shook her head, and her brown, moth-like hand left
+his and fluttered to his forehead.
+
+"By the mother that bore you and died of grief for the sins you did,
+tell me the truth!"
+
+Sir Hugh's lips tightened on his discoloured teeth.
+
+"Not on earth," he answered slowly.
+
+"By the wife who bore your son and died heartbroken, tell me the truth!"
+
+"Neither to you in life, nor to her in eternal death."
+
+His lips writhed, as if the words were coals between them, and a great
+drop of sweat rolled across the parchment of his forehead. Gabriel
+Ockram bit his hand as he watched his father die. But Nurse Macdonald
+spoke a third time.
+
+"By the woman whom you betrayed, and who waits for you this night, Hugh
+Ockram, tell me the truth!"
+
+"It is too late. Let me die in peace."
+
+The writhing lips began to smile across the set yellow teeth, and the
+toad eyes glowed like evil jewels in his head.
+
+"There is time," said the ancient woman. "Tell me the name of Evelyn
+Warburton's father. Then I will let you die in peace."
+
+Evelyn started back, kneeling as she was, and stared at Nurse Macdonald,
+and then at her uncle.
+
+"The name of Evelyn's father?" he repeated slowly, while the awful
+smile spread upon his dying face.
+
+The light was growing strangely dim in the great room. As Evelyn looked,
+Nurse Macdonald's crooked shadow on the wall grew gigantic. Sir Hugh's
+breath came thick, rattling in his throat, as death crept in like a
+snake and choked it back. Evelyn prayed aloud, high and clear.
+
+Then something rapped at the window, and she felt her hair rise upon her
+head in a cool breeze, as she looked around in spite of herself. And
+when she saw her own white face looking in at the window, and her own
+eyes staring at her through the glass, wide and fearful, and her own
+hair streaming against the pane, and her own lips dashed with blood, she
+rose slowly from the floor and stood rigid for one moment, till she
+screamed once and fell straight back into Gabriel's arms. But the shriek
+that answered hers was the fear-shriek of the tormented corpse, out of
+which the soul cannot pass for shame of deadly sins, though the devils
+fight in it with corruption, each for their due share.
+
+Sir Hugh Ockram sat upright in his deathbed, and saw and cried aloud:
+
+"Evelyn!" His harsh voice broke and rattled in his chest as he sank
+down. But still Nurse Macdonald tortured him, for there was a little
+life left in him still.
+
+"You have seen the mother as she waits for you, Hugh Ockram. Who was
+this girl Evelyn's father? What was his name?"
+
+For the last time the dreadful smile came upon the twisted lips, very
+slowly, very surely now, and the toad eyes glared red, and the parchment
+face glowed a little in the flickering light. For the last time words
+came.
+
+"They know it in hell."
+
+Then the glowing eyes went out quickly, the yellow face turned waxen
+pale, and a great shiver ran through the thin body as Hugh Ockram died.
+
+But in death he still smiled, for he knew his secret and kept it still,
+on the other side, and he would take it with him, to lie with him for
+ever in the north vault of the chapel where the Ockrams lie uncoffined
+in their shrouds--all but one. Though he was dead, he smiled, for he had
+kept his treasure of evil truth to the end, and there was none left to
+tell the name he had spoken, but there was all the evil he had not
+undone left to bear fruit.
+
+As they watched--Nurse Macdonald and Gabriel, who held Evelyn still
+unconscious in his arms while he looked at the father--they felt the
+dead smile crawling along their own lips--the ancient crone and the
+youth with the angel's face. Then they shivered a little, and both
+looked at Evelyn as she lay with her head on his shoulder, and, though
+she was very beautiful, the same sickening smile was twisting her young
+mouth too, and it was like the foreshadowing of a great evil which they
+could not understand.
+
+But by and by they carried Evelyn out, and she opened her eyes and the
+smile was gone. From far away in the great house the sound of weeping
+and crooning came up the stairs and echoed along the dismal corridors,
+for the women had begun to mourn the dead master, after the Irish
+fashion, and the hall had echoes of its own all that night, like the
+far-off wail of the banshee among forest trees.
+
+When the time was come they took Sir Hugh in his winding-sheet on a
+trestle bier, and bore him to the chapel and through the iron door and
+down the long descent to the north vault, with tapers, to lay him by his
+father. And two men went in first to prepare the place, and came back
+staggering like drunken men, and white, leaving their lights behind
+them.
+
+But Gabriel Ockram was not afraid, for he knew. And he went in alone and
+saw that the body of Sir Vernon Ockram was leaning upright against the
+stone wall, and that its head lay on the ground near by with the face
+turned up, and the dried leathern lips smiled horribly at the dried-up
+corpse, while the iron coffin, lined with black velvet, stood open on
+the floor.
+
+Then Gabriel took the thing in his hands, for it was very light, being
+quite dried by the air of the vault, and those who peeped in from the
+door saw him lay it in the coffin again, and it rustled a little, like a
+bundle of reeds, and sounded hollow as it touched the sides and the
+bottom. He also placed the head upon the shoulders and shut down the
+lid, which fell to with a rusty spring that snapped.
+
+After that they laid Sir Hugh beside his father, with the trestle bier
+on which they had brought him, and they went back to the chapel.
+
+But when they saw one another's faces, master and men, they were all
+smiling with the dead smile of the corpse they had left in the vault, so
+that they could not bear to look at one another until it had faded away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Gabriel Ockram became Sir Gabriel, inheriting the baronetcy with the
+half-ruined fortune left by his father, and still Evelyn Warburton lived
+at Ockram Hall, in the south room that had been hers ever since she
+could remember anything. She could not go away, for there were no
+relatives to whom she could have gone, and, besides, there seemed to be
+no reason why she should not stay. The world would never trouble itself
+to care what the Ockrams did on their Irish estates, and it was long
+since the Ockrams had asked anything of the world.
+
+So Sir Gabriel took his father's place at the dark old table in the
+dining-room, and Evelyn sat opposite to him, until such time as their
+mourning should be over, and they might be married at last. And
+meanwhile their lives went on as before, since Sir Hugh had been a
+hopeless invalid during the last year of his life, and they had seen him
+but once a day for a little while, spending most of their time together
+in a strangely perfect companionship.
+
+But though the late summer saddened into autumn, and autumn darkened
+into winter, and storm followed storm, and rain poured on rain through
+the short days and the long nights, yet Ockram Hall seemed less gloomy
+since Sir Hugh had been laid in the north vault beside his father. And
+at Christmastide Evelyn decked the great hall with holly and green
+boughs, and huge fires blazed on every hearth. Then the tenants were all
+bidden to a New Year's dinner, and they ate and drank well, while Sir
+Gabriel sat at the head of the table. Evelyn came in when the port wine
+was brought, and the most respected of the tenants made a speech to
+propose her health.
+
+It was long, he said, since there had been a Lady Ockram. Sir Gabriel
+shaded his eyes with his hand and looked down at the table, but a faint
+colour came into Evelyn's transparent cheeks. But, said the grey-haired
+farmer, it was longer still since there had been a Lady Ockram so fair
+as the next was to be, and he gave the health of Evelyn Warburton.
+
+Then the tenants all stood up and shouted for her, and Sir Gabriel stood
+up likewise, beside Evelyn. And when the men gave the last and loudest
+cheer of all there was a voice not theirs, above them all, higher,
+fiercer, louder--a scream not earthly, shrieking for the bride of Ockram
+Hall. And the holly and the green boughs over the great chimney-piece
+shook and slowly waved as if a cool breeze were blowing over them. But
+the men turned very pale, and many of them set down their glasses, but
+others let them fall upon the floor for fear. And looking into one
+another's faces, they were all smiling strangely, a dead smile, like
+dead Sir Hugh's. One cried out words in Irish, and the fear of death was
+suddenly upon them all, so that they fled in panic, falling over one
+another like wild beasts in the burning forest, when the thick smoke
+runs along before the flame; and the tables were over-set, and drinking
+glasses and bottles were broken in heaps, and the dark red wine crawled
+like blood upon the polished floor.
+
+Sir Gabriel and Evelyn stood alone at the head of the table before the
+wreck of the feast, not daring to turn to see each other, for each knew
+that the other smiled. But his right arm held her and his left hand
+clasped her right as they stared before them; and but for the shadows of
+her hair one might not have told their two faces apart. They listened
+long, but the cry came not again, and the dead smile faded from their
+lips, while each remembered that Sir Hugh Ockram lay in the north vault,
+smiling in his winding-sheet, in the dark, because he had died with his
+secret.
+
+So ended the tenants' New Year's dinner. But from that time on Sir
+Gabriel grew more and more silent, and his face grew even paler and
+thinner than before. Often, without warning and without words, he would
+rise from his seat, as if something moved him against his will, and he
+would go out into the rain or the sunshine to the north side of the
+chapel, and sit on the stone bench, staring at the ground as if he could
+see through it, and through the vault below, and through the white
+winding-sheet in the dark, to the dead smile that would not die.
+
+Always when he went out in that way Evelyn came out presently and sat
+beside him. Once, too, as in summer, their beautiful faces came suddenly
+near, and their lids drooped, and their red lips were almost joined
+together. But as their eyes met, they grew wide and wild, so that the
+white showed in a ring all round the deep violet, and their teeth
+chattered, and their hands were like hands of corpses, each in the
+other's, for the terror of what was under their feet, and of what they
+knew but could not see.
+
+Once, also, Evelyn found Sir Gabriel in the chapel alone, standing
+before the iron door that led down to the place of death, and in his
+hand there was the key to the door; but he had not put it into the lock.
+Evelyn drew him away, shivering, for she had also been driven in waking
+dreams to see that terrible thing again, and to find out whether it had
+changed since it had lain there.
+
+"I'm going mad," said Sir Gabriel, covering his eyes with his hand as
+he went with her. "I see it in my sleep, I see it when I am awake--it
+draws me to it, day and night--and unless I see it I shall die!"
+
+"I know," answered Evelyn, "I know. It is as if threads were spun from
+it, like a spider's, drawing us down to it." She was silent for a
+moment, and then she started violently and grasped his arm with a man's
+strength, and almost screamed the words she spoke. "But we must not go
+there!" she cried. "We must not go!"
+
+Sir Gabriel's eyes were half shut, and he was not moved by the agony of
+her face.
+
+"I shall die, unless I see it again," he said, in a quiet voice not like
+his own. And all that day and that evening he scarcely spoke, thinking
+of it, always thinking, while Evelyn Warburton quivered from head to
+foot with a terror she had never known.
+
+She went alone, on a grey winter's morning, to Nurse Macdonald's room in
+the tower, and sat down beside the great leathern easy-chair, laying her
+thin white hand upon the withered fingers.
+
+"Nurse," she said, "what was it that Uncle Hugh should have told you,
+that night before he died? It must have been an awful secret--and yet,
+though you asked him, I feel somehow that you know it, and that you know
+why he used to smile so dreadfully."
+
+The old woman's head moved slowly from side to side.
+
+"I only guess--I shall never know," she answered slowly in her cracked
+little voice.
+
+"But what do you guess? Who am I? Why did you ask who my father was? You
+know I am Colonel Warburton's daughter, and my mother was Lady Ockram's
+sister, so that Gabriel and I are cousins. My father was killed in
+Afghanistan. What secret can there be?"
+
+"I do not know. I can only guess."
+
+"Guess what?" asked Evelyn imploringly, and pressing the soft withered
+hands, as she leaned forward. But Nurse Macdonald's wrinkled lids
+dropped suddenly over her queer blue eyes, and her lips shook a little
+with her breath, as if she were asleep.
+
+Evelyn waited. By the fire the Irish maid was knitting fast, and the
+needles clicked like three or four clocks ticking against each other.
+And the real clock on the wall solemnly ticked alone, checking off the
+seconds of the woman who was a hundred years old, and had not many days
+left. Outside the ivy branch beat the window in the wintry blast, as it
+had beaten against the glass a hundred years ago.
+
+Then as Evelyn sat there she felt again the waking of a horrible
+desire--the sickening wish to go down, down to the thing in the north
+vault, and to open the winding-sheet, and see whether it had changed;
+and she held Nurse Macdonald's hands as if to keep herself in her place
+and fight against the appalling attraction of the evil dead.
+
+But the old cat that kept Nurse Macdonald's feet warm, lying always on
+the bag footstool, got up and stretched itself, and looked up into
+Evelyn's eyes, while its back arched, and its tail thickened and
+bristled, and its ugly pink lips drew back in a devilish grin, showing
+its sharp teeth. Evelyn stared at it, half fascinated by its ugliness.
+Then the creature suddenly put out one paw with all its claws spread,
+and spat at the girl, and all at once the grinning cat was like the
+smiling corpse far down below, so that Evelyn shivered down to her small
+feet, and covered her face with her free hand, lest Nurse Macdonald
+should wake and see the dead smile there, for she could feel it.
+
+The old woman had already opened her eyes again, and she touched her cat
+with the end of her crutch-stick, whereupon its back went down and its
+tail shrunk, and it sidled back to its place on the bag footstool. But
+its yellow eyes looked up sideways at Evelyn, between the slits of its
+lids.
+
+"What is it that you guess, nurse?" asked the young girl again.
+
+"A bad thing--a wicked thing. But I dare not tell you, lest it might not
+be true, and the very thought should blast your life. For if I guess
+right, he meant that you should not know, and that you two should marry,
+and pay for his old sin with your souls."
+
+"He used to tell us that we ought not to marry----"
+
+"Yes--he told you that, perhaps--but it was as if a man put poisoned
+meat before a starving beast, and said 'do not eat,' but never raised
+his hand to take the meat away. And if he told you that you should not
+marry, it was because he hoped you would; for of all men living or dead,
+Hugh Ockram was the falsest man that ever told a cowardly lie, and the
+cruelest that ever hurt a weak woman, and the worst that ever loved a
+sin."
+
+"But Gabriel and I love each other," said Evelyn very sadly.
+
+Nurse Macdonald's old eyes looked far away, at sights seen long ago, and
+that rose in the grey winter air amid the mists of an ancient youth.
+
+"If you love, you can die together," she said, very slowly. "Why should
+you live, if it is true? I am a hundred years old. What has life given
+me? The beginning is fire; the end is a heap of ashes; and between the
+end and the beginning lies all the pain of the world. Let me sleep,
+since I cannot die."
+
+Then the old woman's eyes closed again, and her head sank a little lower
+upon her breast.
+
+So Evelyn went away and left her asleep, with the cat asleep on the bag
+footstool; and the young girl tried to forget Nurse Macdonald's words,
+but she could not, for she heard them over and over again in the wind,
+and behind her on the stairs. And as she grew sick with fear of the
+frightful unknown evil to which her soul was bound, she felt a bodily
+something pressing her, and pushing her, and forcing her on, and from
+the other side she felt the threads that drew her mysteriously: and when
+she shut her eyes, she saw in the chapel behind the altar, the low iron
+door through which she must pass to go to the thing.
+
+And as she lay awake at night, she drew the sheet over her face, lest
+she should see shadows on the wall beckoning to her; and the sound of
+her own warm breath made whisperings in her ears, while she held the
+mattress with her hands, to keep from getting up and going to the
+chapel. It would have been easier if there had not been a way thither
+through the library, by a door which was never locked. It would be
+fearfully easy to take her candle and go softly through the sleeping
+house. And the key of the vault lay under the altar behind a stone that
+turned. She knew the little secret. She could go alone and see.
+
+But when she thought of it, she felt her hair rise on her head, and
+first she shivered so that the bed shook, and then the horror went
+through her in a cold thrill that was agony again, like myriads of icy
+needles boring into her nerves.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The old clock in Nurse Macdonald's tower struck midnight. From her room
+she could hear the creaking chains and weights in their box in the
+corner of the staircase, and overhead the jarring of the rusty lever
+that lifted the hammer. She had heard it all her life. It struck eleven
+strokes clearly, and then came the twelfth, with a dull half stroke, as
+though the hammer were too weary to go on, and had fallen asleep against
+the bell.
+
+The old cat got up from the bag footstool and stretched itself, and
+Nurse Macdonald opened her ancient eyes and looked slowly round the
+room by the dim light of the night lamp. She touched the cat with her
+crutch-stick, and it lay down upon her feet. She drank a few drops from
+her cup and went to sleep again.
+
+But downstairs Sir Gabriel sat straight up as the clock struck, for he
+had dreamed a fearful dream of horror, and his heart stood still, till
+he awoke at its stopping, and it beat again furiously with his breath,
+like a wild thing set free. No Ockram had ever known fear waking, but
+sometimes it came to Sir Gabriel in his sleep.
+
+He pressed his hands to his temples as he sat up in bed, and his hands
+were icy cold, but his head was hot. The dream faded far, and in its
+place there came the master thought that racked his life; with the
+thought also came the sick twisting of his lips in the dark that would
+have been a smile. Far off, Evelyn Warburton dreamed that the dead smile
+was on her mouth, and awoke, starting with a little moan, her face in
+her hands, shivering.
+
+But Sir Gabriel struck a light and got up and began to walk up and down
+his great room. It was midnight, and he had barely slept an hour, and in
+the north of Ireland the winter nights are long.
+
+"I shall go mad," he said to himself, holding his forehead. He knew that
+it was true. For weeks and months the possession of the thing had grown
+upon him like a disease, till he could think of nothing without thinking
+first of that. And now all at once it outgrew his strength, and he knew
+that he must be its instrument or lose his mind--that he must do the
+deed he hated and feared, if he could fear anything, or that something
+would snap in his brain and divide him from life while he was yet alive.
+He took the candlestick in his hand, the old-fashioned heavy candlestick
+that had always been used by the head of the house. He did not think of
+dressing, but went as he was, in his silk night clothes and his
+slippers, and he opened the door. Everything was very still in the great
+old house. He shut the door behind him and walked noiselessly on the
+carpet through the long corridor. A cool breeze blew over his shoulder
+and blew the flame of his candle straight out from him. Instinctively he
+stopped and looked round, but all was still, and the upright flame
+burned steadily. He walked on, and instantly a strong draught was behind
+him, almost extinguishing the light. It seemed to blow him on his way,
+ceasing whenever he turned, coming again when he went on--invisible,
+icy.
+
+Down the great staircase to the echoing hall he went, seeing nothing but
+the flaring flame of the candle standing away from him over the
+guttering wax, while the cold wind blew over his shoulder and through
+his hair. On he passed through the open door into the library, dark with
+old books and carved bookcases; on through the door in the shelves, with
+painted shelves on it, and the imitated backs of books, so that one
+needed to know where to find it--and it shut itself after him with a
+soft click. He entered the low-arched passage, and though the door was
+shut behind him and fitted tightly in its frame, still the cold breeze
+blew the flame forward as he walked. And he was not afraid; but his face
+was very pale, and his eyes were wide and bright, looking before him,
+seeing already in the dark air the picture of the thing beyond. But in
+the chapel he stood still, his hand on the little turning stone tablet
+in the back of the stone altar. On the tablet were engraved words:
+"_Clavis sepulchri Clarissimorum Dominorum De Ockram_"--("the key to the
+vault of the most illustrious lords of Ockram"). Sir Gabriel paused and
+listened. He fancied that he heard a sound far off in the great house
+where all had been so still, but it did not come again. Yet he waited at
+the last, and looked at the low iron door. Beyond it, down the long
+descent, lay his father uncoffined, six months dead, corrupt, terrible
+in his clinging shroud. The strangely preserving air of the vault could
+not yet have done its work completely. But on the thing's ghastly
+features, with their half-dried, open eyes, there would still be the
+frightful smile with which the man had died--the smile that haunted----
+
+As the thought crossed Sir Gabriel's mind, he felt his lips writhing,
+and he struck his own mouth in wrath with the back of his hand so
+fiercely that a drop of blood ran down his chin, and another, and more,
+falling back in the gloom upon the chapel pavement. But still his
+bruised lips twisted themselves. He turned the tablet by the simple
+secret. It needed no safer fastening, for had each Ockram been coffined
+in pure gold, and had the door been open wide, there was not a man in
+Tyrone brave enough to go down to that place, saving Gabriel Ockram
+himself, with his angel's face and his thin, white hands, and his sad
+unflinching eyes. He took the great old key and set it into the lock of
+the iron door; and the heavy, rattling noise echoed down the descent
+beyond like footsteps, as if a watcher had stood behind the iron and
+were running away within, with heavy dead feet. And though he was
+standing still, the cool wind was from behind him, and blew the flame of
+the candle against the iron panel. He turned the key.
+
+Sir Gabriel saw that his candle was short. There were new ones on the
+altar, with long candlesticks, and he lit one, and left his own burning
+on the floor. As he set it down on the pavement his lip began to bleed
+again, and another drop fell upon the stones.
+
+He drew the iron door open and pushed it back against the chapel wall,
+so that it should not shut of itself, while he was within; and the
+horrible draught of the sepulchre came up out of the depths in his face,
+foul and dark. He went in, but though the fetid air met him, yet the
+flame of the tall candle was blown straight from him against the wind
+while he walked down the easy incline with steady steps, his loose
+slippers slapping the pavement as he trod.
+
+He shaded the candle with his hand, and his fingers seemed to be made of
+wax and blood as the light shone through them. And in spite of him the
+unearthly draught forced the flame forward, till it was blue over the
+black wick, and it seemed as if it must go out. But he went straight on,
+with shining eyes.
+
+The downward passage was wide, and he could not always see the walls by
+the struggling light, but he knew when he was in the place of death by
+the larger, drearier echo of his steps in the greater space, and by the
+sensation of a distant blank wall. He stood still, almost enclosing the
+flame of the candle in the hollow of his hand. He could see a little,
+for his eyes were growing used to the gloom. Shadowy forms were outlined
+in the dimness, where the biers of the Ockrams stood crowded together,
+side by side, each with its straight, shrouded corpse, strangely
+preserved by the dry air, like the empty shell that the locust sheds in
+summer. And a few steps before him he saw clearly the dark shape of
+headless Sir Vernon's iron coffin, and he knew that nearest to it lay
+the thing he sought.
+
+He was as brave as any of those dead men had been, and they were his
+fathers, and he knew that sooner or later he should lie there himself,
+beside Sir Hugh, slowly drying to a parchment shell. But he was still
+alive, and he closed his eyes a moment, and three great drops stood on
+his forehead.
+
+Then he looked again, and by the whiteness of the winding-sheet he knew
+his father's corpse, for all the others were brown with age; and,
+moreover, the flame of the candle was blown toward it. He made four
+steps till he reached it, and suddenly the light burned straight and
+high, shedding a dazzling yellow glare upon the fine linen that was all
+white, save over the face, and where the joined hands were laid on the
+breast. And at those places ugly stains had spread, darkened with
+outlines of the features and of the tight-clasped fingers. There was a
+frightful stench of drying death.
+
+As Sir Gabriel looked down, something stirred behind him, softly at
+first, then more noisily, and something fell to the stone floor with a
+dull thud and rolled up to his feet; he started back and saw a withered
+head lying almost face upward on the pavement, grinning at him. He felt
+the cold sweat standing on his face, and his heart beat painfully.
+
+For the first time in all his life that evil thing which men call fear
+was getting hold of him, checking his heart-strings as a cruel driver
+checks a quivering horse, clawing at his backbone with icy hands,
+lifting his hair with freezing breath, climbing up and gathering in his
+midriff with leaden weight.
+
+Yet presently he bit his lip and bent down, holding the candle in one
+hand, to lift the shroud back from the head of the corpse with the
+other. Slowly he lifted it. Then it clove to the half-dried skin of the
+face, and his hand shook as if some one had struck him on the elbow, but
+half in fear and half in anger at himself, he pulled it, so that it came
+away with a little ripping sound. He caught his breath as he held it,
+not yet throwing it back, and not yet looking. The horror was working in
+him, and he felt that old Vernon Ockram was standing up in his iron
+coffin, headless, yet watching him with the stump of his severed neck.
+
+While he held his breath he felt the dead smile twisting his lips. In
+sudden wrath at his own misery, he tossed the death-stained linen
+backward, and looked at last. He ground his teeth lest he should shriek
+aloud.
+
+There it was, the thing that haunted him, that haunted Evelyn Warburton,
+that was like a blight on all that came near him.
+
+The dead face was blotched with dark stains, and the thin, grey hair was
+matted about the discoloured forehead. The sunken lids were half open,
+and the candle light gleamed on something foul where the toad eyes had
+lived.
+
+But yet the dead thing smiled, as it had smiled in life; the ghastly
+lips were parted and drawn wide and tight upon the wolfish teeth,
+cursing still, and still defying hell to do its worst--defying, cursing,
+and always and for ever smiling alone in the dark.
+
+Sir Gabriel opened the winding-sheet where the hands were, and the
+blackened, withered fingers were closed upon something stained and
+mottled. Shivering from head to foot, but fighting like a man in agony
+for his life, he tried to take the package from the dead man's hold. But
+as he pulled at it the claw-like fingers seemed to close more tightly,
+and when he pulled harder the shrunken hands and arms rose from the
+corpse with a horrible look of life following his motion--then as he
+wrenched the sealed packet loose at last, the hands fell back into their
+place still folded.
+
+He set down the candle on the edge of the bier to break the seals from
+the stout paper. And, kneeling on one knee, to get a better light, he
+read what was within, written long ago in Sir Hugh's queer hand.
+
+He was no longer afraid.
+
+He read how Sir Hugh had written it all down that it might perchance be
+a witness of evil and of his hatred; how he had loved Evelyn Warburton,
+his wife's sister; and how his wife had died of a broken heart with his
+curse upon her, and how Warburton and he had fought side by side in
+Afghanistan, and Warburton had fallen; but Ockram had brought his
+comrade's wife back a full year later, and little Evelyn, her child, had
+been born in Ockram Hall. And next, how he had wearied of the mother,
+and she had died like her sister with his curse on her. And then, how
+Evelyn had been brought up as his niece, and how he had trusted that his
+son Gabriel and his daughter, innocent and unknowing, might love and
+marry, and the souls of the women he had betrayed might suffer another
+anguish before eternity was out. And, last of all, he hoped that some
+day, when nothing could be undone, the two might find his writing and
+live on, not daring to tell the truth for their children's sake and the
+world's word, man and wife.
+
+This he read, kneeling beside the corpse in the north vault, by the
+light of the altar candle; and when he had read it all, he thanked God
+aloud that he had found the secret in time. But when he rose to his feet
+and looked down at the dead face it was changed, and the smile was gone
+from it for ever, and the jaw had fallen a little, and the tired, dead
+lips were relaxed. And then there was a breath behind him and close to
+him, not cold like that which had blown the flame of the candle as he
+came, but warm and human. He turned suddenly.
+
+There she stood, all in white, with her shadowy golden hair--for she had
+risen from her bed and had followed him noiselessly, and had found him
+reading, and had herself read over his shoulder. He started violently
+when he saw her, for his nerves were unstrung--and then he cried out her
+name in the still place of death:
+
+"Evelyn!"
+
+"My brother!" she answered softly and tenderly, putting out both hands
+to meet his.
+
+
+
+
+THE SCREAMING SKULL
+
+
+I have often heard it scream. No, I am not nervous, I am not
+imaginative, and I never believed in ghosts, unless that thing is one.
+Whatever it is, it hates me almost as much as it hated Luke Pratt, and
+it screams at me.
+
+If I were you, I would never tell ugly stories about ingenious ways of
+killing people, for you never can tell but that some one at the table
+may be tired of his or her nearest and dearest. I have always blamed
+myself for Mrs. Pratt's death, and I suppose I was responsible for it in
+a way, though heaven knows I never wished her anything but long life and
+happiness. If I had not told that story she might be alive yet. That is
+why the thing screams at me, I fancy.
+
+She was a good little woman, with a sweet temper, all things considered,
+and a nice gentle voice; but I remember hearing her shriek once when she
+thought her little boy was killed by a pistol that went off, though
+every one was sure that it was not loaded. It was the same scream;
+exactly the same, with a sort of rising quaver at the end; do you know
+what I mean? Unmistakable.
+
+The truth is, I had not realised that the doctor and his wife were not
+on good terms. They used to bicker a bit now and then when I was here,
+and I often noticed that little Mrs. Pratt got very red and bit her lip
+hard to keep her temper, while Luke grew pale and said the most
+offensive things. He was that sort when he was in the nursery, I
+remember, and afterward at school. He was my cousin, you know; that is
+how I came by this house; after he died, and his boy Charley was killed
+in South Africa, there were no relations left. Yes, it's a pretty little
+property, just the sort of thing for an old sailor like me who has taken
+to gardening.
+
+One always remembers one's mistakes much more vividly than one's
+cleverest things, doesn't one? I've often noticed it. I was dining with
+the Pratts one night, when I told them the story that afterwards made so
+much difference. It was a wet night in November, and the sea was
+moaning. Hush!--if you don't speak you will hear it now....
+
+Do you hear the tide? Gloomy sound, isn't it? Sometimes, about this time
+of year--hallo!--there it is! Don't be frightened, man--it won't eat
+you--it's only a noise, after all! But I'm glad you've heard it,
+because there are always people who think it's the wind, or my
+imagination, or something. You won't hear it again to-night, I fancy,
+for it doesn't often come more than once. Yes--that's right. Put another
+stick on the fire, and a little more stuff into that weak mixture you're
+so fond of. Do you remember old Blauklot the carpenter, on that German
+ship that picked us up when the _Clontarf_ went to the bottom? We were
+hove to in a howling gale one night, as snug as you please, with no land
+within five hundred miles, and the ship coming up and falling off as
+regularly as clockwork--"Biddy te boor beebles ashore tis night, poys!"
+old Blauklot sang out, as he went off to his quarters with the
+sail-maker. I often think of that, now that I'm ashore for good and all.
+
+Yes, it was on a night like this, when I was at home for a spell,
+waiting to take the _Olympia_ out on her first trip--it was on the next
+voyage that she broke the record, you remember--but that dates it.
+Ninety-two was the year, early in November.
+
+The weather was dirty, Pratt was out of temper, and the dinner was bad,
+very bad indeed, which didn't improve matters, and cold, which made it
+worse. The poor little lady was very unhappy about it, and insisted on
+making a Welsh rarebit on the table to counteract the raw turnips and
+the half-boiled mutton. Pratt must have had a hard day. Perhaps he had
+lost a patient. At all events, he was in a nasty temper.
+
+"My wife is trying to poison me, you see!" he said. "She'll succeed some
+day." I saw that she was hurt, and I made believe to laugh, and said
+that Mrs. Pratt was much too clever to get rid of her husband in such a
+simple way; and then I began to tell them about Japanese tricks with
+spun glass and chopped horsehair and the like.
+
+Pratt was a doctor, and knew a lot more than I did about such things,
+but that only put me on my mettle, and I told a story about a woman in
+Ireland who did for three husbands before any one suspected foul play.
+
+Did you never hear that tale? The fourth husband managed to keep awake
+and caught her, and she was hanged. How did she do it? She drugged them,
+and poured melted lead into their ears through a little horn funnel when
+they were asleep.... No--that's the wind whistling. It's backing up to
+the southward again. I can tell by the sound. Besides, the other thing
+doesn't often come more than once in an evening even at this time of
+year--when it happened. Yes, it was in November. Poor Mrs. Pratt died
+suddenly in her bed not long after I dined here. I can fix the date,
+because I got the news in New York by the steamer that followed the
+_Olympia_ when I took her out on her first trip. You had the _Leofric_
+the same year? Yes, I remember. What a pair of old buffers we are coming
+to be, you and I. Nearly fifty years since we were apprentices together
+on the _Clontarf_. Shall you ever forget old Blauklot? "Biddy te boor
+beebles ashore, poys!" Ha, ha! Take a little more, with all that water.
+It's the old Hulstkamp I found in the cellar when this house came to me,
+the same I brought Luke from Amsterdam five-and-twenty years ago. He had
+never touched a drop of it. Perhaps he's sorry now, poor fellow.
+
+Where did I leave off? I told you that Mrs. Pratt died suddenly--yes.
+Luke must have been lonely here after she was dead, I should think; I
+came to see him now and then, and he looked worn and nervous, and told
+me that his practice was growing too heavy for him, though he wouldn't
+take an assistant on any account. Years went on, and his son was killed
+in South Africa, and after that he began to be queer. There was
+something about him not like other people. I believe he kept his senses
+in his profession to the end; there was no complaint of his having made
+bad mistakes in cases, or anything of that sort, but he had a look about
+him----
+
+Luke was a red-headed man with a pale face when he was young, and he
+was never stout; in middle age he turned a sandy grey, and after his son
+died he grew thinner and thinner, till his head looked like a skull with
+parchment stretched over it very tight, and his eyes had a sort of glare
+in them that was very disagreeable to look at.
+
+He had an old dog that poor Mrs. Pratt had been fond of, and that used
+to follow her everywhere. He was a bull-dog, and the sweetest tempered
+beast you ever saw, though he had a way of hitching his upper lip behind
+one of his fangs that frightened strangers a good deal. Sometimes, of an
+evening, Pratt and Bumble--that was the dog's name--used to sit and look
+at each other a long time, thinking about old times, I suppose, when
+Luke's wife used to sit in that chair you've got. That was always her
+place, and this was the doctor's, where I'm sitting. Bumble used to
+climb up by the footstool--he was old and fat by that time, and could
+not jump much, and his teeth were getting shaky. He would look steadily
+at Luke, and Luke looked steadily at the dog, his face growing more and
+more like a skull with two little coals for eyes; and after about five
+minutes or so, though it may have been less, old Bumble would suddenly
+begin to shake all over, and all on a sudden he would set up an awful
+howl, as if he had been shot, and tumble out of the easy-chair and trot
+away, and hide himself under the sideboard, and lie there making odd
+noises.
+
+Considering Pratt's looks in those last months, the thing is not
+surprising, you know. I'm not nervous or imaginative, but I can quite
+believe he might have sent a sensitive woman into hysterics--his head
+looked so much like a skull in parchment.
+
+At last I came down one day before Christmas, when my ship was in dock
+and I had three weeks off. Bumble was not about, and I said casually
+that I supposed the old dog was dead.
+
+"Yes," Pratt answered, and I thought there was something odd in his tone
+even before he went on after a little pause. "I killed him," he said
+presently. "I could not stand it any longer."
+
+I asked what it was that Luke could not stand, though I guessed well
+enough.
+
+"He had a way of sitting in her chair and glaring at me, and then
+howling." Luke shivered a little. "He didn't suffer at all, poor old
+Bumble," he went on in a hurry, as if he thought I might imagine he had
+been cruel. "I put dionine into his drink to make him sleep soundly, and
+then I chloroformed him gradually, so that he could not have felt
+suffocated even if he was dreaming. It's been quieter since then."
+
+I wondered what he meant, for the words slipped out as if he could not
+help saying them. I've understood since. He meant that he did not hear
+that noise so often after the dog was out of the way. Perhaps he thought
+at first that it was old Bumble in the yard howling at the moon, though
+it's not that kind of noise, is it? Besides, I know what it is, if Luke
+didn't. It's only a noise, after all, and a noise never hurt anybody
+yet. But he was much more imaginative than I am. No doubt there really
+is something about this place that I don't understand; but when I don't
+understand a thing, I call it a phenomenon, and I don't take it for
+granted that it's going to kill me, as he did. I don't understand
+everything, by long odds, nor do you, nor does any man who has been to
+sea. We used to talk of tidal waves, for instance, and we could not
+account for them; now we account for them by calling them submarine
+earthquakes, and we branch off into fifty theories, any one of which
+might make earthquakes quite comprehensible if we only knew what they
+are. I fell in with one of them once, and the inkstand flew straight up
+from the table against the ceiling of my cabin. The same thing happened
+to Captain Lecky--I dare say you've read about it in his "Wrinkles."
+Very good. If that sort of thing took place ashore, in this room for
+instance, a nervous person would talk about spirits and levitation and
+fifty things that mean nothing, instead of just quietly setting it down
+as a "phenomenon" that has not been explained yet. My view of that
+voice, you see.
+
+Besides, what is there to prove that Luke killed his wife? I would not
+even suggest such a thing to any one but you. After all, there was
+nothing but the coincidence that poor little Mrs. Pratt died suddenly in
+her bed a few days after I told that story at dinner. She was not the
+only woman who ever died like that. Luke got the doctor over from the
+next parish, and they agreed that she had died of something the matter
+with her heart. Why not? It's common enough.
+
+Of course, there was the ladle. I never told anybody about that, and it
+made me start when I found it in the cupboard in the bedroom. It was
+new, too--a little tinned iron ladle that had not been in the fire more
+than once or twice, and there was some lead in it that had been melted,
+and stuck to the bottom of the bowl, all grey, with hardened dross on
+it. But that proves nothing. A country doctor is generally a handy man,
+who does everything for himself, and Luke may have had a dozen reasons
+for melting a little lead in a ladle. He was fond of sea-fishing, for
+instance, and he may have cast a sinker for a night-line; perhaps it was
+a weight for the hall clock, or something like that. All the same, when
+I found it I had a rather queer sensation, because it looked so much
+like the thing I had described when I told them the story. Do you
+understand? It affected me unpleasantly, and I threw it away; it's at
+the bottom of the sea a mile from the Spit, and it will be jolly well
+rusted beyond recognising if it's ever washed up by the tide.
+
+You see, Luke must have bought it in the village, years ago, for the man
+sells just such ladles still. I suppose they are used in cooking. In any
+case, there was no reason why an inquisitive housemaid should find such
+a thing lying about, with lead in it, and wonder what it was, and
+perhaps talk to the maid who heard me tell the story at dinner--for that
+girl married the plumber's son in the village, and may remember the
+whole thing.
+
+You understand me, don't you? Now that Luke Pratt is dead and gone, and
+lies buried beside his wife, with an honest man's tombstone at his head,
+I should not care to stir up anything that could hurt his memory. They
+are both dead, and their son, too. There was trouble enough about Luke's
+death, as it was.
+
+How? He was found dead on the beach one morning, and there was a
+coroner's inquest. There were marks on his throat, but he had not been
+robbed. The verdict was that he had come to his end "by the hands or
+teeth of some person or animal unknown," for half the jury thought it
+might have been a big dog that had thrown him down and gripped his
+windpipe, though the skin of his throat was not broken. No one knew at
+what time he had gone out, nor where he had been. He was found lying on
+his back above high-water mark, and an old cardboard bandbox that had
+belonged to his wife lay under his hand, open. The lid had fallen off.
+He seemed to have been carrying home a skull in the box--doctors are
+fond of collecting such things. It had rolled out and lay near his head,
+and it was a remarkably fine skull, rather small, beautifully shaped and
+very white, with perfect teeth. That is to say, the upper jaw was
+perfect, but there was no lower one at all, when I first saw it.
+
+Yes, I found it here when I came. You see, it was very white and
+polished, like a thing meant to be kept under a glass case, and the
+people did not know where it came from, nor what to do with it; so they
+put it back into the bandbox and set it on the shelf of the cupboard in
+the best bedroom, and of course they showed it to me when I took
+possession. I was taken down to the beach, too, to be shown the place
+where Luke was found, and the old fisherman explained just how he was
+lying, and the skull beside him. The only point he could not explain
+was why the skull had rolled up the sloping sand toward Luke's head
+instead of rolling downhill to his feet. It did not seem odd to me at
+the time, but I have often thought of it since, for the place is rather
+steep. I'll take you there to-morrow if you like--I made a sort of cairn
+of stones there afterward.
+
+When he fell down, or was thrown down--whichever happened--the bandbox
+struck the sand, and the lid came off, and the thing came out and ought
+to have rolled down. But it didn't. It was close to his head, almost
+touching it, and turned with the face toward it. I say it didn't strike
+me as odd when the man told me; but I could not help thinking about it
+afterward, again and again, till I saw a picture of it all when I closed
+my eyes; and then I began to ask myself why the plaguey thing had rolled
+up instead of down, and why it had stopped near Luke's head instead of
+anywhere else, a yard away, for instance.
+
+You naturally want to know what conclusion I reached, don't you? None
+that at all explained the rolling, at all events. But I got something
+else into my head, after a time, that made me feel downright
+uncomfortable.
+
+Oh, I don't mean as to anything supernatural! There may be ghosts, or
+there may not be. If there are, I'm not inclined to believe that they
+can hurt living people except by frightening them, and, for my part, I
+would rather face any shape of ghost than a fog in the Channel when it's
+crowded. No. What bothered me was just a foolish idea, that's all, and I
+cannot tell how it began, nor what made it grow till it turned into a
+certainty.
+
+I was thinking about Luke and his poor wife one evening over my pipe and
+a dull book, when it occurred to me that the skull might possibly be
+hers, and I have never got rid of the thought since. You'll tell me
+there's no sense in it, no doubt; that Mrs. Pratt was buried like a
+Christian and is lying in the churchyard where they put her, and that
+it's perfectly monstrous to suppose her husband kept her skull in her
+old bandbox in his bedroom. All the same, in the face of reason, and
+common sense, and probability, I'm convinced that he did. Doctors do all
+sorts of queer things that would make men like you and me feel creepy,
+and those are just the things that don't seem probable, nor logical, nor
+sensible to us.
+
+Then, don't you see?--if it really was her skull, poor woman, the only
+way of accounting for his having it is that he really killed her, and
+did it in that way, as the woman killed her husbands in the story, and
+that he was afraid there might be an examination some day which would
+betray him. You see, I told that too, and I believe it had really
+happened some fifty or sixty years ago. They dug up the three skulls,
+you know, and there was a small lump of lead rattling about in each one.
+That was what hanged the woman. Luke remembered that, I'm sure. I don't
+want to know what he did when he thought of it; my taste never ran in
+the direction of horrors, and I don't fancy you care for them either, do
+you? No. If you did, you might supply what is wanting to the story.
+
+It must have been rather grim, eh? I wish I did not see the whole thing
+so distinctly, just as everything must have happened. He took it the
+night before she was buried, I'm sure, after the coffin had been shut,
+and when the servant girl was asleep. I would bet anything, that when
+he'd got it, he put something under the sheet in its place, to fill up
+and look like it. What do you suppose he put there, under the sheet?
+
+I don't wonder you take me up on what I'm saying! First I tell you that
+I don't want to know what happened, and that I hate to think about
+horrors, and then I describe the whole thing to you as if I had seen it.
+I'm quite sure that it was her work-bag that he put there. I remember
+the bag very well, for she always used it of an evening; it was made of
+brown plush, and when it was stuffed full it was about the size of--you
+understand. Yes, there I am, at it again! You may laugh at me, but you
+don't live here alone, where it was done, and you didn't tell Luke the
+story about the melted lead. I'm not nervous, I tell you, but sometimes
+I begin to feel that I understand why some people are. I dwell on all
+this when I'm alone, and I dream of it, and when that thing
+screams--well, frankly, I don't like the noise any more than you do,
+though I should be used to it by this time.
+
+I ought not to be nervous. I've sailed in a haunted ship. There was a
+Man in the Top, and two-thirds of the crew died of the West Coast fever
+inside of ten days after we anchored; but I was all right, then and
+afterward. I have seen some ugly sights, too, just as you have, and all
+the rest of us. But nothing ever stuck in my head in the way this does.
+
+You see, I've tried to get rid of the thing, but it doesn't like that.
+It wants to be there in its place, in Mrs. Pratt's bandbox in the
+cupboard in the best bedroom. It's not happy anywhere else. How do I
+know that? Because I've tried it. You don't suppose that I've not tried,
+do you? As long as it's there it only screams now and then, generally at
+this time of year, but if I put it out of the house it goes on all
+night, and no servant will stay here twenty-four hours. As it is, I've
+often been left alone and have been obliged to shift for myself for a
+fortnight at a time. No one from the village would ever pass a night
+under the roof now, and as for selling the place, or even letting it,
+that's out of the question. The old women say that if I stay here I
+shall come to a bad end myself before long.
+
+I'm not afraid of that. You smile at the mere idea that any one could
+take such nonsense seriously. Quite right. It's utterly blatant
+nonsense, I agree with you. Didn't I tell you that it's only a noise
+after all when you started and looked round as if you expected to see a
+ghost standing behind your chair?
+
+I may be all wrong about the skull, and I like to think that I am--when
+I can. It may be just a fine specimen which Luke got somewhere long ago,
+and what rattles about inside when you shake it may be nothing but a
+pebble, or a bit of hard clay, or anything. Skulls that have lain long
+in the ground generally have something inside them that rattles, don't
+they? No, I've never tried to get it out, whatever it is; I'm afraid it
+might be lead, don't you see? And if it is, I don't want to know the
+fact, for I'd much rather not be sure. If it really is lead, I killed
+her quite as much as if I had done the deed myself. Anybody must see
+that, I should think. As long as I don't know for certain, I have the
+consolation of saying that it's all utterly ridiculous nonsense, that
+Mrs. Pratt died a natural death and that the beautiful skull belonged to
+Luke when he was a student in London. But if I were quite sure, I
+believe I should have to leave the house; indeed I do, most certainly.
+As it is, I had to give up trying to sleep in the best bedroom where the
+cupboard is.
+
+You ask me why I don't throw it into the pond--yes, but please don't
+call it a "confounded bugbear"--it doesn't like being called names.
+
+There! Lord, what a shriek! I told you so! You're quite pale, man. Fill
+up your pipe and draw your chair nearer to the fire, and take some more
+drink. Old Hollands never hurt anybody yet. I've seen a Dutchman in Java
+drink half a jug of Hulstkamp in a morning without turning a hair. I
+don't take much rum myself, because it doesn't agree with my rheumatism,
+but you are not rheumatic and it won't damage you. Besides, it's a very
+damp night outside. The wind is howling again, and it will soon be in
+the southwest; do you hear how the windows rattle? The tide must have
+turned too, by the moaning.
+
+We should not have heard the thing again if you had not said that. I'm
+pretty sure we should not. Oh yes, if you choose to describe it as a
+coincidence, you are quite welcome, but I would rather that you should
+not call the thing names again, if you don't mind. It may be that the
+poor little woman hears, and perhaps it hurts her, don't you know?
+Ghost? No! You don't call anything a ghost that you can take in your
+hands and look at in broad daylight, and that rattles when you shake it.
+Do you, now? But it's something that hears and understands; there's no
+doubt about that.
+
+I tried sleeping in the best bedroom when I first came to the house,
+just because it was the best and the most comfortable, but I had to give
+it up. It was their room, and there's the big bed she died in, and the
+cupboard is in the thickness of the wall, near the head, on the left.
+That's where it likes to be kept, in its bandbox. I only used the room
+for a fortnight after I came, and then I turned out and took the little
+room downstairs, next to the surgery, where Luke used to sleep when he
+expected to be called to a patient during the night.
+
+I was always a good sleeper ashore; eight hours is my dose, eleven to
+seven when I'm alone, twelve to eight when I have a friend with me. But
+I could not sleep after three o'clock in the morning in that room--a
+quarter past, to be accurate--as a matter of fact, I timed it with my
+old pocket chronometer, which still keeps good time, and it was always
+at exactly seventeen minutes past three. I wonder whether that was the
+hour when she died?
+
+It was not what you have heard. If it had been that I could not have
+stood it two nights. It was just a start and a moan and hard breathing
+for a few seconds in the cupboard, and it could never have waked me
+under ordinary circumstances, I'm sure. I suppose you are like me in
+that, and we are just like other people who have been to sea. No natural
+sounds disturb us at all, not all the racket of a square-rigger hove to
+in a heavy gale, or rolling on her beam ends before the wind. But if a
+lead pencil gets adrift and rattles in the drawer of your cabin table
+you are awake in a moment. Just so--you always understand. Very well,
+the noise in the cupboard was no louder than that, but it waked me
+instantly.
+
+I said it was like a "start." I know what I mean, but it's hard to
+explain without seeming to talk nonsense. Of course you cannot exactly
+"hear" a person "start"; at the most, you might hear the quick drawing
+of the breath between the parted lips and closed teeth, and the almost
+imperceptible sound of clothing that moved suddenly though very
+slightly. It was like that.
+
+You know how one feels what a sailing vessel is going to do, two or
+three seconds before she does it, when one has the wheel. Riders say the
+same of a horse, but that's less strange, because the horse is a live
+animal with feelings of its own, and only poets and landsmen talk about
+a ship being alive, and all that. But I have always felt somehow that
+besides being a steaming machine or a sailing machine for carrying
+weights, a vessel at sea is a sensitive instrument, and a means of
+communication between nature and man, and most particularly the man at
+the wheel, if she is steered by hand. She takes her impressions directly
+from wind and sea, tide and stream, and transmits them to the man's
+hand, just as the wireless telegraph picks up the interrupted currents
+aloft and turns them out below in the form of a message.
+
+You see what I am driving at; I felt that something started in the
+cupboard, and I felt it so vividly that I heard it, though there may
+have been nothing to hear, and the sound inside my head waked me
+suddenly. But I really heard the other noise. It was as if it were
+muffled inside a box, as far away as if it came through a long-distance
+telephone; and yet I knew that it was inside the cupboard near the head
+of my bed. My hair did not bristle and my blood did not run cold that
+time. I simply resented being waked up by something that had no
+business to make a noise, any more than a pencil should rattle in the
+drawer of my cabin table on board ship. For I did not understand; I just
+supposed that the cupboard had some communication with the outside air,
+and that the wind had got in and was moaning through it with a sort of
+very faint screech. I struck a light and looked at my watch, and it was
+seventeen minutes past three. Then I turned over and went to sleep on my
+right ear. That's my good one; I'm pretty deaf with the other, for I
+struck the water with it when I was a lad in diving from the foretopsail
+yard. Silly thing to do, it was, but the result is very convenient when
+I want to go to sleep when there's a noise.
+
+That was the first night, and the same thing happened again and several
+times afterward, but not regularly, though it was always at the same
+time, to a second; perhaps I was sometimes sleeping on my good ear, and
+sometimes not. I overhauled the cupboard and there was no way by which
+the wind could get in, or anything else, for the door makes a good fit,
+having been meant to keep out moths, I suppose; Mrs. Pratt must have
+kept her winter things in it, for it still smells of camphor and
+turpentine.
+
+After about a fortnight I had had enough of the noises. So far I had
+said to myself that it would be silly to yield to it and take the skull
+out of the room. Things always look differently by daylight, don't they?
+But the voice grew louder--I suppose one may call it a voice--and it got
+inside my deaf ear, too, one night. I realised that when I was wide
+awake, for my good ear was jammed down on the pillow, and I ought not to
+have heard a fog-horn in that position. But I heard that, and it made me
+lose my temper, unless it scared me, for sometimes the two are not far
+apart. I struck a light and got up, and I opened the cupboard, grabbed
+the bandbox and threw it out of the window, as far as I could.
+
+Then my hair stood on end. The thing screamed in the air, like a shell
+from a twelve-inch gun. It fell on the other side of the road. The night
+was very dark, and I could not see it fall, but I know it fell beyond
+the road. The window is just over the front door, it's fifteen yards to
+the fence, more or less, and the road is ten yards wide. There's a
+quickset hedge beyond, along the glebe that belongs to the vicarage.
+
+I did not sleep much more that night. It was not more than half an hour
+after I had thrown the bandbox out when I heard a shriek outside--like
+what we've had to-night, but worse, more despairing, I should call it;
+and it may have been my imagination, but I could have sworn that the
+screams came nearer and nearer each time. I lit a pipe, and walked up
+and down for a bit, and then took a book and sat up reading, but I'll be
+hanged if I can remember what I read nor even what the book was, for
+every now and then a shriek came up that would have made a dead man turn
+in his coffin.
+
+A little before dawn some one knocked at the front door. There was no
+mistaking that for anything else, and I opened my window and looked
+down, for I guessed that some one wanted the doctor, supposing that the
+new man had taken Luke's house. It was rather a relief to hear a human
+knock after that awful noise.
+
+You cannot see the door from above, owing to the little porch. The
+knocking came again, and I called out, asking who was there, but nobody
+answered, though the knock was repeated. I sang out again, and said that
+the doctor did not live here any longer. There was no answer, but it
+occurred to me that it might be some old countryman who was stone deaf.
+So I took my candle and went down to open the door. Upon my word, I was
+not thinking of the thing yet, and I had almost forgotten the other
+noises. I went down convinced that I should find somebody outside, on
+the doorstep, with a message. I set the candle on the hall table, so
+that the wind should not blow it out when I opened. While I was drawing
+the old-fashioned bolt I heard the knocking again. It was not loud, and
+it had a queer, hollow sound, now that I was close to it, I remember,
+but I certainly thought it was made by some person who wanted to get in.
+
+It wasn't. There was nobody there, but as I opened the door inward,
+standing a little on one side, so as to see out at once, something
+rolled across the threshold and stopped against my foot.
+
+I drew back as I felt it, for I knew what it was before I looked down. I
+cannot tell you how I knew, and it seemed unreasonable, for I am still
+quite sure that I had thrown it across the road. It's a French window,
+that opens wide, and I got a good swing when I flung it out. Besides,
+when I went out early in the morning, I found the bandbox beyond the
+thickset hedge.
+
+You may think it opened when I threw it, and that the skull dropped out;
+but that's impossible, for nobody could throw an empty cardboard box so
+far. It's out of the question; you might as well try to fling a ball of
+paper twenty-five yards, or a blown bird's egg.
+
+To go back, I shut and bolted the hall door, picked the thing up
+carefully, and put it on the table beside the candle. I did that
+mechanically, as one instinctively does the right thing in danger
+without thinking at all--unless one does the opposite. It may seem odd,
+but I believe my first thought had been that somebody might come and
+find me there on the threshold while it was resting against my foot,
+lying a little on its side, and turning one hollow eye up at my face, as
+if it meant to accuse me. And the light and shadow from the candle
+played in the hollows of the eyes as it stood on the table, so that they
+seemed to open and shut at me. Then the candle went out quite
+unexpectedly, though the door was fastened and there was not the least
+draught; and I used up at least half a dozen matches before it would
+burn again.
+
+I sat down rather suddenly, without quite knowing why. Probably I had
+been badly frightened, and perhaps you will admit there was no great
+shame in being scared. The thing had come home, and it wanted to go
+upstairs, back to its cupboard. I sat still and stared at it for a bit,
+till I began to feel very cold; then I took it and carried it up and set
+it in its place, and I remember that I spoke to it, and promised that it
+should have its bandbox again in the morning.
+
+You want to know whether I stayed in the room till daybreak? Yes, but I
+kept a light burning, and sat up smoking and reading, most likely out of
+fright; plain, undeniable fear, and you need not call it cowardice
+either, for that's not the same thing. I could not have stayed alone
+with that thing in the cupboard; I should have been scared to death,
+though I'm not more timid than other people. Confound it all, man, it
+had crossed the road alone, and had got up the doorstep and had knocked
+to be let in.
+
+When the dawn came, I put on my boots and went out to find the bandbox.
+I had to go a good way round, by the gate near the highroad, and I found
+the box open and hanging on the other side of the hedge. It had caught
+on the twigs by the string, and the lid had fallen off and was lying on
+the ground below it. That shows that it did not open till it was well
+over; and if it had not opened as soon as it left my hand, what was
+inside it must have gone beyond the road too.
+
+That's all. I took the box upstairs to the cupboard, and put the skull
+back and locked it up. When the girl brought me my breakfast she said
+she was sorry, but that she must go, and she did not care if she lost
+her month's wages. I looked at her, and her face was a sort of greenish,
+yellowish white. I pretended to be surprised, and asked what was the
+matter; but that was of no use, for she just turned on me and wanted to
+know whether I meant to stay in a haunted house, and how long I
+expected to live if I did, for though she noticed I was sometimes a
+little hard of hearing, she did not believe that even I could sleep
+through those screams again--and if I could, why had I been moving about
+the house and opening and shutting the front door, between three and
+four in the morning? There was no answering that, since she had heard
+me, so off she went, and I was left to myself. I went down to the
+village during the morning and found a woman who was willing to come and
+do the little work there is and cook my dinner, on condition that she
+might go home every night. As for me, I moved downstairs that day, and I
+have never tried to sleep in the best bedroom since. After a little
+while I got a brace of middle-aged Scotch servants from London, and
+things were quiet enough for a long time. I began by telling them that
+the house was in a very exposed position, and that the wind whistled
+round it a good deal in the autumn and winter, which had given it a bad
+name in the village, the Cornish people being inclined to superstition
+and telling ghost stories. The two hard-faced, sandy-haired sisters
+almost smiled, and they answered with great contempt that they had no
+great opinion of any Southern bogey whatever, having been in service in
+two English haunted houses, where they had never seen so much as the
+Boy in Gray, whom they reckoned no very particular rarity in
+Forfarshire.
+
+They stayed with me several months, and while they were in the house we
+had peace and quiet. One of them is here again now, but she went away
+with her sister within the year. This one--she was the cook--married the
+sexton, who works in my garden. That's the way of it. It's a small
+village and he has not much to do, and he knows enough about flowers to
+help me nicely, besides doing most of the hard work; for though I'm fond
+of exercise, I'm getting a little stiff in the hinges. He's a sober,
+silent sort of fellow, who minds his own business, and he was a widower
+when I came here--Trehearn is his name, James Trehearn. The Scotch
+sisters would not admit that there was anything wrong about the house,
+but when November came they gave me warning that they were going, on the
+ground that the chapel was such a long walk from here, being in the next
+parish, and that they could not possibly go to our church. But the
+younger one came back in the spring, and as soon as the banns could be
+published she was married to James Trehearn by the vicar, and she seems
+to have had no scruples about hearing him preach since then. I'm quite
+satisfied, if she is! The couple live in a small cottage that looks
+over the churchyard.
+
+I suppose you are wondering what all this has to do with what I was
+talking about. I'm alone so much that when an old friend comes to see
+me, I sometimes go on talking just for the sake of hearing my own voice.
+But in this case there is really a connection of ideas. It was James
+Trehearn who buried poor Mrs. Pratt, and her husband after her in the
+same grave, and it's not far from the back of his cottage. That's the
+connection in my mind, you see. It's plain enough. He knows something;
+I'm quite sure that he does, by his manner, though he's such a reticent
+beggar.
+
+Yes, I'm alone in the house at night now, for Mrs. Trehearn does
+everything herself, and when I have a friend the sexton's niece comes in
+to wait on the table. He takes his wife home every evening in winter,
+but in summer, when there's light, she goes by herself. She's not a
+nervous woman, but she's less sure than she used to be that there are no
+bogies in England worth a Scotchwoman's notice. Isn't it amusing, the
+idea that Scotland has a monopoly of the supernatural? Odd sort of
+national pride, I call that, don't you?
+
+That's a good fire, isn't it? When driftwood gets started at last
+there's nothing like it, I think. Yes, we get lots of it, for I'm sorry
+to say there are still a great many wrecks about here. It's a lonely
+coast, and you may have all the wood you want for the trouble of
+bringing it in. Trehearn and I borrow a cart now and then, and load it
+between here and the Spit. I hate a coal fire when I can get wood of any
+sort. A log is company, even if it's only a piece of a deck-beam or
+timber sawn off, and the salt in it makes pretty sparks. See how they
+fly, like Japanese hand-fireworks! Upon my word, with an old friend and
+a good fire and a pipe, one forgets all about that thing upstairs,
+especially now that the wind has moderated. It's only a lull, though,
+and it will blow a gale before morning.
+
+You think you would like to see the skull? I've no objection. There's no
+reason why you shouldn't have a look at it, and you never saw a more
+perfect one in your life, except that there are two front teeth missing
+in the lower jaw.
+
+Oh yes--I had not told you about the jaw yet. Trehearn found it in the
+garden last spring when he was digging a pit for a new asparagus bed.
+You know we make asparagus beds six or eight feet deep here. Yes, yes--I
+had forgotten to tell you that. He was digging straight down, just as he
+digs a grave; if you want a good asparagus bed made, I advise you to
+get a sexton to make it for you. Those fellows have a wonderful knack at
+that sort of digging.
+
+Trehearn had got down about three feet when he cut into a mass of white
+lime in the side of the trench. He had noticed that the earth was a
+little looser there, though he says it had not been disturbed for a
+number of years. I suppose he thought that even old lime might not be
+good for asparagus, so he broke it out and threw it up. It was pretty
+hard, he says, in biggish lumps, and out of sheer force of habit he
+cracked the lumps with his spade as they lay outside the pit beside him;
+the jawbone of a skull dropped out of one of the pieces. He thinks he
+must have knocked out the two front teeth in breaking up the lime, but
+he did not see them anywhere. He's a very experienced man in such
+things, as you may imagine, and he said at once that the jaw had
+probably belonged to a young woman, and that the teeth had been complete
+when she died. He brought it to me, and asked me if I wanted to keep it;
+if I did not, he said he would drop it into the next grave he made in
+the churchyard, as he supposed it was a Christian jaw, and ought to have
+decent burial, wherever the rest of the body might be. I told him that
+doctors often put bones into quicklime to whiten them nicely, and that
+I supposed Dr. Pratt had once had a little lime pit in the garden for
+that purpose, and had forgotten the jaw. Trehearn looked at me quietly.
+
+"Maybe it fitted that skull that used to be in the cupboard upstairs,
+sir," he said. "Maybe Dr. Pratt had put the skull into the lime to clean
+it, or something, and when he took it out he left the lower jaw behind.
+There's some human hair sticking in the lime, sir."
+
+I saw there was, and that was what Trehearn said. If he did not suspect
+something, why in the world should he have suggested that the jaw might
+fit the skull? Besides, it did. That's proof that he knows more than he
+cares to tell. Do you suppose he looked before she was buried? Or
+perhaps--when he buried Luke in the same grave----
+
+Well, well, it's of no use to go over that, is it? I said I would keep
+the jaw with the skull, and I took it upstairs and fitted it into its
+place. There's not the slightest doubt about the two belonging together,
+and together they are.
+
+Trehearn knows several things. We were talking about plastering the
+kitchen a while ago, and he happened to remember that it had not been
+done since the very week when Mrs. Pratt died. He did not say that the
+mason must have left some lime on the place, but he thought it, and
+that it was the very same lime he had found in the asparagus pit. He
+knows a lot. Trehearn is one of your silent beggars who can put two and
+two together. That grave is very near the back of his cottage, too, and
+he's one of the quickest men with a spade I ever saw. If he wanted to
+know the truth, he could, and no one else would ever be the wiser unless
+he chose to tell. In a quiet village like ours, people don't go and
+spend the night in the churchyard to see whether the sexton potters
+about by himself between ten o'clock and daylight.
+
+What is awful to think of, is Luke's deliberation, if he did it; his
+cool certainty that no one would find him out; above all, his nerve, for
+that must have been extraordinary. I sometimes think it's bad enough to
+live in the place where it was done, if it really was done. I always put
+in the condition, you see, for the sake of his memory, and a little bit
+for my own sake, too.
+
+I'll go upstairs and fetch the box in a minute. Let me light my pipe;
+there's no hurry! We had supper early, and it's only half-past nine
+o'clock. I never let a friend go to bed before twelve, or with less than
+three glasses--you may have as many more as you like, but you shan't
+have less, for the sake of old times.
+
+It's breezing up again, do you hear? That was only a lull just now, and
+we are going to have a bad night.
+
+A thing happened that made me start a little when I found that the jaw
+fitted exactly. I'm not very easily startled in that way myself, but I
+have seen people make a quick movement, drawing their breath sharply,
+when they had thought they were alone and suddenly turned and saw some
+one very near them. Nobody can call that fear. You wouldn't, would you?
+No. Well, just when I had set the jaw in its place under the skull, the
+teeth closed sharply on my finger. It felt exactly as if it were biting
+me hard, and I confess that I jumped before I realised that I had been
+pressing the jaw and the skull together with my other hand. I assure you
+I was not at all nervous. It was broad daylight, too, and a fine day,
+and the sun was streaming into the best bedroom. It would have been
+absurd to be nervous, and it was only a quick mistaken impression, but
+it really made me feel queer. Somehow it made me think of the funny
+verdict of the coroner's jury on Luke's death, "by the hand or teeth of
+some person or animal unknown." Ever since that I've wished I had seen
+those marks on his throat, though the lower jaw was missing then.
+
+I have often seen a man do insane things with his hands that he does
+not realise at all. I once saw a man hanging on by an old awning stop
+with one hand, leaning backward, outboard, with all his weight on it,
+and he was just cutting the stop with the knife in his other hand when I
+got my arms round him. We were in mid-ocean, going twenty knots. He had
+not the smallest idea what he was doing; neither had I when I managed to
+pinch my finger between the teeth of that thing. I can feel it now. It
+was exactly as if it were alive and were trying to bite me. It would if
+it could, for I know it hates me, poor thing! Do you suppose that what
+rattles about inside is really a bit of lead? Well, I'll get the box
+down presently, and if whatever it is happens to drop out into your
+hands that's your affair. If it's only a clod of earth or a pebble, the
+whole matter would be off my mind, and I don't believe I should ever
+think of the skull again; but somehow I cannot bring myself to shake out
+the bit of hard stuff myself. The mere idea that it may be lead makes me
+confoundedly uncomfortable, yet I've got the conviction that I shall
+know before long. I shall certainly know. I'm sure Trehearn knows, but
+he's such a silent beggar.
+
+I'll go upstairs now and get it. What? You had better go with me? Ha,
+ha! do you think I'm afraid of a bandbox and a noise? Nonsense!
+
+Bother the candle, it won't light! As if the ridiculous thing
+understood what it's wanted for! Look at that--the third match. They
+light fast enough for my pipe. There, do you see? It's a fresh box, just
+out of the tin safe where I keep the supply on account of the dampness.
+Oh, you think the wick of the candle may be damp, do you? All right,
+I'll light the beastly thing in the fire. That won't go out, at all
+events. Yes, it sputters a bit, but it will keep lighted now. It burns
+just like any other candle, doesn't it? The fact is, candles are not
+very good about here. I don't know where they come from, but they have a
+way of burning low occasionally, with a greenish flame that spits tiny
+sparks, and I'm often annoyed by their going out of themselves. It
+cannot be helped, for it will be long before we have electricity in our
+village. It really is rather a poor light, isn't it?
+
+You think I had better leave you the candle and take the lamp, do you? I
+don't like to carry lamps about, that's the truth. I never dropped one
+in my life, but I have always thought I might, and it's so confoundedly
+dangerous if you do. Besides, I am pretty well used to these rotten
+candles by this time.
+
+You may as well finish that glass while I'm getting it, for I don't mean
+to let you off with less than three before you go to bed. You won't
+have to go upstairs, either, for I've put you in the old study next to
+the surgery--that's where I live myself. The fact is, I never ask a
+friend to sleep upstairs now. The last man who did was Crackenthorpe,
+and he said he was kept awake all night. You remember old Crack, don't
+you? He stuck to the Service, and they've just made him an admiral. Yes,
+I'm off now--unless the candle goes out. I couldn't help asking if you
+remembered Crackenthorpe. If any one had told us that the skinny little
+idiot he used to be was to turn out the most successful of the lot of
+us, we should have laughed at the idea, shouldn't we? You and I did not
+do badly, it's true--but I'm really going now. I don't mean to let you
+think that I've been putting it off by talking! As if there were
+anything to be afraid of! If I were scared, I should tell you so quite
+frankly, and get you to go upstairs with me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here's the box. I brought it down very carefully, so as not to disturb
+it, poor thing. You see, if it were shaken, the jaw might get separated
+from it again, and I'm sure it wouldn't like that. Yes, the candle went
+out as I was coming downstairs, but that was the draught from the leaky
+window on the landing. Did you hear anything? Yes, there was another
+scream. Am I pale, do you say? That's nothing. My heart is a little
+queer sometimes, and I went upstairs too fast. In fact, that's one
+reason why I really prefer to live altogether on the ground floor.
+
+Wherever that shriek came from, it was not from the skull, for I had the
+box in my hand when I heard the noise, and here it is now; so we have
+proved definitely that the screams are produced by something else. I've
+no doubt I shall find out some day what makes them. Some crevice in the
+wall, of course, or a crack in a chimney, or a chink in the frame of a
+window. That's the way all ghost stories end in real life. Do you know,
+I'm jolly glad I thought of going up and bringing it down for you to
+see, for that last shriek settles the question. To think that I should
+have been so weak as to fancy that the poor skull could really cry out
+like a living thing!
+
+Now I'll open the box, and we'll take it out and look at it under the
+bright light. It's rather awful to think that the poor lady used to sit
+there, in your chair, evening after evening, in just the same light,
+isn't it? But then--I've made up my mind that it's all rubbish from
+beginning to end, and that it's just an old skull that Luke had when he
+was a student; and perhaps he put it into the lime merely to whiten it,
+and could not find the jaw.
+
+I made a seal on the string, you see, after I had put the jaw in its
+place, and I wrote on the cover. There's the old white label on it
+still, from the milliner's, addressed to Mrs. Pratt when the hat was
+sent to her, and as there was room I wrote on the edge: "A skull, once
+the property of the late Luke Pratt, M.D." I don't quite know why I
+wrote that, unless it was with the idea of explaining how the thing
+happened to be in my possession. I cannot help wondering sometimes what
+sort of hat it was that came in the bandbox. What colour was it, do you
+think? Was it a gay spring hat with a bobbing feather and pretty
+ribands? Strange that the very same box should hold the head that wore
+the finery--perhaps. No--we made up our minds that it just came from the
+hospital in London where Luke did his time. It's far better to look at
+it in that light, isn't it? There's no more connection between that
+skull and poor Mrs. Pratt than there was between my story about the lead
+and----
+
+Good Lord! Take the lamp--don't let it go out, if you can help it--I'll
+have the window fastened again in a second--I say, what a gale! There,
+it's out! I told you so! Never mind, there's the firelight--I've got the
+window shut--the bolt was only half down. Was the box blown off the
+table? Where the deuce is it? There! That won't open again, for I've put
+up the bar. Good dodge, an old-fashioned bar--there's nothing like it.
+Now, you find the bandbox while I light the lamp. Confound those
+wretched matches! Yes, a pipe spill is better--it must light in the
+fire--I hadn't thought of it--thank you--there we are again. Now,
+where's the box? Yes, put it back on the table, and we'll open it.
+
+That's the first time I have ever known the wind to burst that window
+open; but it was partly carelessness on my part when I last shut it.
+Yes, of course I heard the scream. It seemed to go all round the house
+before it broke in at the window. That proves that it's always been the
+wind and nothing else, doesn't it? When it was not the wind, it was my
+imagination. I've always been a very imaginative man: I must have been,
+though I did not know it. As we grow older we understand ourselves
+better, don't you know?
+
+I'll have a drop of the Hulstkamp neat, by way of an exception, since
+you are filling up your glass. That damp gust chilled me, and with my
+rheumatic tendency I'm very much afraid of a chill, for the cold
+sometimes seems to stick in my joints all winter when it once gets in.
+
+By George, that's good stuff! I'll just light a fresh pipe, now that
+everything is snug again, and then we'll open the box. I'm so glad we
+heard that last scream together, with the skull here on the table
+between us, for a thing cannot possibly be in two places at the same
+time, and the noise most certainly came from outside, as any noise the
+wind makes must. You thought you heard it scream through the room after
+the window was burst open? Oh yes, so did I, but that was natural enough
+when everything was open. Of course we heard the wind. What could one
+expect?
+
+Look here, please. I want you to see that the seal is intact before we
+open the box together. Will you take my glasses? No, you have your own.
+All right. The seal is sound, you see, and you can read the words of the
+motto easily. "Sweet and low"--that's it--because the poem goes on "Wind
+of the Western sea," and says, "blow him again to me," and all that.
+Here is the seal on my watch-chain, where it's hung for more than forty
+years. My poor little wife gave it to me when I was courting, and I
+never had any other. It was just like her to think of those words--she
+was always fond of Tennyson.
+
+It's of no use to cut the string, for it's fastened to the box, so I'll
+just break the wax and untie the knot, and afterward we'll seal it up
+again. You see, I like to feel that the thing is safe in its place, and
+that nobody can take it out. Not that I should suspect Trehearn of
+meddling with it, but I always feel that he knows a lot more than he
+tells.
+
+You see, I've managed it without breaking the string, though when I
+fastened it I never expected to open the bandbox again. The lid comes
+off easily enough. There! Now look!
+
+What? Nothing in it? Empty? It's gone, man, the skull is gone!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+No, there's nothing the matter with me. I'm only trying to collect my
+thoughts. It's so strange. I'm positively certain that it was inside
+when I put on the seal last spring. I can't have imagined that: it's
+utterly impossible. If I ever took a stiff glass with a friend now and
+then, I would admit that I might have made some idiotic mistake when I
+had taken too much. But I don't, and I never did. A pint of ale at
+supper and half a go of rum at bedtime was the most I ever took in my
+good days. I believe it's always we sober fellows who get rheumatism and
+gout! Yet there was my seal, and there is the empty bandbox. That's
+plain enough.
+
+I say, I don't half like this. It's not right. There's something wrong
+about it, in my opinion. You needn't talk to me about supernatural
+manifestations, for I don't believe in them, not a little bit! Somebody
+must have tampered with the seal and stolen the skull. Sometimes, when I
+go out to work in the garden in summer, I leave my watch and chain, on
+the table. Trehearn must have taken the seal then, and used it, for he
+would be quite sure that I should not come in for at least an hour.
+
+If it was not Trehearn--oh, don't talk to me about the possibility that
+the thing has got out by itself! If it has, it must be somewhere about
+the house, in some out-of-the-way corner, waiting. We may come upon it
+anywhere, waiting for us, don't you know?--just waiting in the dark.
+Then it will scream at me; it will shriek at me in the dark, for it
+hates me, I tell you!
+
+The bandbox is quite empty. We are not dreaming, either of us. There, I
+turn it upside down.
+
+What's that? Something fell out as I turned it over. It's on the floor,
+it's near your feet, I know it is, and we must find it. Help me to find
+it, man. Have you got it? For God's sake, give it to me, quickly!
+
+Lead! I knew it when I heard it fall. I knew it couldn't be anything
+else by the little thud it made on the hearth-rug. So it was lead after
+all, and Luke did it.
+
+I feel a little bit shaken up--not exactly nervous, you know, but badly
+shaken up, that's the fact. Anybody would, I should think. After all,
+you cannot say that it's fear of the thing, for I went up and brought it
+down--at least, I believed I was bringing it down, and that's the same
+thing, and by George, rather than give in to such silly nonsense, I'll
+take the box upstairs again and put it back in its place. It's not that.
+It's the certainty that the poor little woman came to her end in that
+way, by my fault, because I told the story. That's what is so dreadful.
+Somehow, I had always hoped that I should never be quite sure of it, but
+there is no doubting it now. Look at that!
+
+Look at it! That little lump of lead with no particular shape. Think of
+what it did, man! Doesn't it make you shiver? He gave her something to
+make her sleep, of course, but there must have been one moment of awful
+agony. Think of having boiling lead poured into your brain. Think of
+it. She was dead before she could scream, but only think of--oh! there
+it is again--it's just outside--I know it's just outside--I can't keep
+it out of my head!--oh!--oh!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You thought I had fainted? No, I wish I had, for it would have stopped
+sooner. It's all very well to say that it's only a noise, and that a
+noise never hurt anybody--you're as white as a shroud yourself. There's
+only one thing to be done, if we hope to close an eye to-night. We must
+find it and put it back into its bandbox and shut it up in the cupboard,
+where it likes to be. I don't know how it got out, but it wants to get
+in again. That's why it screams so awfully to-night--it was never so bad
+as this--never since I first----
+
+Bury it? Yes, if we can find it, we'll bury it, if it takes us all
+night. We'll bury it six feet deep and ram down the earth over it, so
+that it shall never get out again, and if it screams, we shall hardly
+hear it so deep down. Quick, we'll get the lantern and look for it. It
+cannot be far away; I'm sure it's just outside--it was coming in when I
+shut the window, I know it.
+
+Yes, you're quite right. I'm losing my senses, and I must get hold of
+myself. Don't speak to me for a minute or two; I'll sit quite still and
+keep my eyes shut and repeat something I know. That's the best way.
+
+"Add together the altitude, the latitude, and the polar distance, divide
+by two and subtract the altitude from the half-sum; then add the
+logarithm of the secant of the latitude, the cosecant of the polar
+distance, the cosine of the half-sum and the sine of the half-sum minus
+the altitude"--there! Don't say that I'm out of my senses, for my memory
+is all right, isn't it?
+
+Of course, you may say that it's mechanical, and that we never forget
+the things we learned when we were boys and have used almost every day
+for a lifetime. But that's the very point. When a man is going crazy,
+it's the mechanical part of his mind that gets out of order and won't
+work right; he remembers things that never happened, or he sees things
+that aren't real, or he hears noises when there is perfect silence.
+That's not what is the matter with either of us, is it?
+
+Come, we'll get the lantern and go round the house. It's not
+raining--only blowing like old boots, as we used to say. The lantern is
+in the cupboard under the stairs in the hall, and I always keep it
+trimmed in case of a wreck.
+
+No use to look for the thing? I don't see how you can say that. It was
+nonsense to talk of burying it, of course, for it doesn't want to be
+buried; it wants to go back into its bandbox and be taken upstairs, poor
+thing! Trehearn took it out, I know, and made the seal over again.
+Perhaps he took it to the churchyard, and he may have meant well. I
+daresay he thought that it would not scream any more if it were quietly
+laid in consecrated ground, near where it belongs. But it has come home.
+Yes, that's it. He's not half a bad fellow, Trehearn, and rather
+religiously inclined, I think. Does not that sound natural, and
+reasonable, and well meant? He supposed it screamed because it was not
+decently buried--with the rest. But he was wrong. How should he know
+that it screams at me because it hates me, and because it's my fault
+that there was that little lump of lead in it?
+
+No use to look for it, anyhow? Nonsense! I tell you it wants to be
+found--Hark! what's that knocking? Do you hear it?
+Knock--knock--knock--three times, then a pause, and then again. It has a
+hollow sound, hasn't it?
+
+It has come home. I've heard that knock before. It wants to come in and
+be taken upstairs, in its box. It's at the front door.
+
+Will you come with me? We'll take it in. Yes, I own that I don't like to
+go alone and open the door. The thing will roll in and stop against my
+foot, just as it did before, and the light will go out. I'm a good deal
+shaken by finding that bit of lead, and, besides, my heart isn't quite
+right--too much strong tobacco, perhaps. Besides, I'm quite willing to
+own that I'm a bit nervous to-night, if I never was before in my life.
+
+That's right, come along! I'll take the box with me, so as not to come
+back. Do you hear the knocking? It's not like any other knocking I ever
+heard. If you will hold this door open, I can find the lantern under the
+stairs by the light from this room without bringing the lamp into the
+hall--it would only go out.
+
+The thing knows we are coming--hark! It's impatient to get in. Don't
+shut the door till the lantern is ready, whatever you do. There will be
+the usual trouble with the matches, I suppose--no, the first one, by
+Jove! I tell you it wants to get in, so there's no trouble. All right
+with that door now; shut it, please. Now come and hold the lantern, for
+it's blowing so hard outside that I shall have to use both hands. That's
+it, hold the light low. Do you hear the knocking still? Here goes--I'll
+open just enough with my foot against the bottom of the door--now!
+
+Catch it! it's only the wind that blows it across the floor, that's
+all--there's half a hurricane outside, I tell you! Have you got it? The
+bandbox is on the table. One minute, and I'll have the bar up. There!
+
+Why did you throw it into the box so roughly? It doesn't like that, you
+know.
+
+What do you say? Bitten your hand? Nonsense, man! You did just what I
+did. You pressed the jaws together with your other hand and pinched
+yourself. Let me see. You don't mean to say you have drawn blood? You
+must have squeezed hard, by Jove, for the skin is certainly torn. I'll
+give you some carbolic solution for it before we go to bed, for they say
+a scratch from a skull's tooth may go bad and give trouble.
+
+Come inside again and let me see it by the lamp. I'll bring the
+bandbox--never mind the lantern, it may just as well burn in the hall,
+for I shall need it presently when I go up the stairs. Yes, shut the
+door if you will; it makes it more cheerful and bright. Is your finger
+still bleeding? I'll get you the carbolic in an instant; just let me see
+the thing.
+
+Ugh! There's a drop of blood on the upper jaw. It's on the eye-tooth.
+Ghastly, isn't it? When I saw it running along the floor of the hall,
+the strength almost went out of my hands, and I felt my knees bending;
+then I understood that it was the gale, driving it over the smooth
+boards. You don't blame me? No, I should think not! We were boys
+together, and we've seen a thing or two, and we may just as well own to
+each other that we were both in a beastly funk when it slid across the
+floor at you. No wonder you pinched your finger picking it up, after
+that, if I did the same thing out of sheer nervousness, in broad
+daylight, with the sun streaming in on me.
+
+Strange that the jaw should stick to it so closely, isn't it? I suppose
+it's the dampness, for it shuts like a vice--I have wiped off the drop
+of blood, for it was not nice to look at. I'm not going to try to open
+the jaws, don't be afraid! I shall not play any tricks with the poor
+thing, but I'll just seal the box again, and we'll take it upstairs and
+put it away where it wants to be. The wax is on the writing-table by the
+window. Thank you. It will be long before I leave my seal lying about
+again, for Trehearn to use, I can tell you. Explain? I don't explain
+natural phenomena, but if you choose to think that Trehearn had hidden
+it somewhere in the bushes, and that the gale blew it to the house
+against the door, and made it knock, as if it wanted to be let in,
+you're not thinking the impossible, and I'm quite ready to agree with
+you.
+
+Do you see that? You can swear that you've actually seen me seal it this
+time, in case anything of the kind should occur again. The wax fastens
+the strings to the lid, which cannot possibly be lifted, even enough to
+get in one finger. You're quite satisfied, aren't you? Yes. Besides, I
+shall lock the cupboard and keep the key in my pocket hereafter.
+
+Now we can take the lantern and go upstairs. Do you know? I'm very much
+inclined to agree with your theory that the wind blew it against the
+house. I'll go ahead, for I know the stairs; just hold the lantern near
+my feet as we go up. How the wind howls and whistles! Did you feel the
+sand on the floor under your shoes as we crossed the hall?
+
+Yes--this is the door of the best bedroom. Hold up the lantern, please.
+This side, by the head of the bed. I left the cupboard open when I got
+the box. Isn't it queer how the faint odour of women's dresses will hang
+about an old closet for years? This is the shelf. You've seen me set the
+box there, and now you see me turn the key and put it into my pocket. So
+that's done!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Good-night. Are you sure you're quite comfortable? It's not much of a
+room, but I daresay you would as soon sleep here as upstairs to-night.
+If you want anything, sing out; there's only a lath and plaster
+partition between us. There's not so much wind on this side by half.
+There's the Hollands on the table, if you'll have one more nightcap. No?
+Well, do as you please. Good-night again, and don't dream about that
+thing, if you can.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following paragraph appeared in the _Penraddon News_, 23rd November,
+1906:
+
+
+                "MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF A RETIRED SEA CAPTAIN
+
+     "The village of Tredcombe is much disturbed by the strange death of
+     Captain Charles Braddock, and all sorts of impossible stories are
+     circulating with regard to the circumstances, which certainly seem
+     difficult of explanation. The retired captain, who had successfully
+     commanded in his time the largest and fastest liners belonging to
+     one of the principal transatlantic steamship companies, was found
+     dead in his bed on Tuesday morning in his own cottage, a quarter of
+     a mile from the village. An examination was made at once by the
+     local practitioner, which revealed the horrible fact that the
+     deceased had been bitten in the throat by a human assailant, with
+     such amazing force as to crush the windpipe and cause death. The
+     marks of the teeth of both jaws were so plainly visible on the skin
+     that they could be counted, but the perpetrator of the deed had
+     evidently lost the two lower middle incisors. It is hoped that this
+     peculiarity may help to identify the murderer, who can only be a
+     dangerous escaped maniac. The deceased, though over sixty-five
+     years of age, is said to have been a hale man of considerable
+     physical strength, and it is remarkable that no signs of any
+     struggle were visible in the room, nor could it be ascertained how
+     the murderer had entered the house. Warning has been sent to all
+     the insane asylums in the United Kingdom, but as yet no information
+     has been received regarding the escape of any dangerous patient.
+
+     "The coroner's jury returned the somewhat singular verdict that
+     Captain Braddock came to his death 'by the hands or teeth of some
+     person unknown.' The local surgeon is said to have expressed
+     privately the opinion that the maniac is a woman, a view he deduces
+     from the small size of the jaws, as shown by the marks of the
+     teeth. The whole affair is shrouded in mystery. Captain Braddock
+     was a widower, and lived alone. He leaves no children."
+
+
+[_Note_.--Students of ghost lore and haunted houses will find the
+foundation of the foregoing story in the legends about a skull which is
+still preserved in the farm-house called Bettiscombe Manor, situated, I
+believe, on the Dorsetshire coast.]
+
+
+
+
+MAN OVERBOARD!
+
+
+Yes--I have heard "Man overboard!" a good many times since I was a boy,
+and once or twice I have seen the man go. There are more men lost in
+that way than passengers on ocean steamers ever learn of. I have stood
+looking over the rail on a dark night, when there was a step beside me,
+and something flew past my head like a big black bat--and then there was
+a splash! Stokers often go like that. They go mad with the heat, and
+they slip up on deck and are gone before anybody can stop them, often
+without being seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he
+generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason. I have seen a man
+empty his revolver into a crowd of emigrants forward, and then go over
+like a rocket. Of course, any officer who respects himself will do what
+he can to pick a man up, if the weather is not so heavy that he would
+have to risk his ship; but I don't think I remember seeing a man come
+back when he was once fairly gone more than two or three times in all my
+life, though we have often picked up the life-buoy, and sometimes the
+fellow's cap. Stokers and passengers jump over; I never knew a sailor to
+do that, drunk or sober. Yes, they say it has happened on hard ships,
+but I never knew a case myself. Once in a long time a man is fished out
+when it is just too late, and dies in the boat before you can get him
+aboard, and--well, I don't know that I ever told that story since it
+happened--I knew a fellow who went over, and came back dead. I didn't
+see him after he came back; only one of us did, but we all knew he was
+there.
+
+No, I am not giving you "sharks." There isn't a shark in this story, and
+I don't know that I would tell it at all if we weren't alone, just you
+and I. But you and I have seen things in various parts, and maybe you
+will understand. Anyhow, you know that I am telling what I know about,
+and nothing else; and it has been on my mind to tell you ever since it
+happened, only there hasn't been a chance.
+
+It's a long story, and it took some time to happen; and it began a good
+many years ago, in October, as well as I can remember. I was mate then;
+I passed the local Marine Board for master about three years later. She
+was the _Helen B. Jackson_, of New York, with lumber for the West
+Indies, four-masted schooner, Captain Hackstaff. She was an
+old-fashioned one, even then--no steam donkey, and all to do by hand.
+There were still sailors in the coasting trade in those days, you
+remember. She wasn't a hard ship, for the Old Man was better than most
+of them, though he kept to himself and had a face like a monkey-wrench.
+We were thirteen, all told, in the ship's company; and some of them
+afterwards thought that might have had something to do with it, but I
+had all that nonsense knocked out of me when I was a boy. I don't mean
+to say that I like to go to sea on a Friday, but I _have_ gone to sea on
+a Friday, and nothing has happened; and twice before that we have been
+thirteen, because one of the hands didn't turn up at the last minute,
+and nothing ever happened either--nothing worse than the loss of a light
+spar or two, or a little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had
+sailed as cheerily as you please--no thirteens, no Fridays, no dead men
+in the hold. I believe it generally happens that way.
+
+I daresay you remember those two Benton boys that were so much alike? It
+is no wonder, for they were twin brothers. They shipped with us as boys
+on the old _Boston Belle_, when you were mate and I was before the mast.
+I never was quite sure which was which of those two, even then; and when
+they both had beards it was harder than ever to tell them apart. One was
+Jim, and the other was Jack; James Benton and John Benton. The only
+difference I ever could see was, that one seemed to be rather more
+cheerful and inclined to talk than the other; but one couldn't even be
+sure of that. Perhaps they had moods. Anyhow, there was one of them that
+used to whistle when he was alone. He only knew one tune, and that was
+"Nancy Lee," and the other didn't know any tune at all; but I may be
+mistaken about that, too. Perhaps they both knew it.
+
+Well, those two Benton boys turned up on board the _Helen B. Jackson_.
+They had been on half a dozen ships since the _Boston Belle_, and they
+had grown up and were good seamen. They had reddish beards and bright
+blue eyes and freckled faces; and they were quiet fellows, good workmen
+on rigging, pretty willing, and both good men at the wheel. They managed
+to be in the same watch--it was the port watch on the _Helen B._, and
+that was mine, and I had great confidence in them both. If there was any
+job aloft that needed two hands, they were always the first to jump into
+the rigging; but that doesn't often happen on a fore-and-aft schooner.
+If it breezed up, and the jibtopsail was to be taken in, they never
+minded a wetting, and they would be out at the bowsprit end before there
+was a hand at the downhaul. The men liked them for that, and because
+they didn't blow about what they could do. I remember one day in a
+reefing job, the downhaul parted and came down on deck from the peak of
+the spanker. When the weather moderated, and we shook the reefs out, the
+downhaul was forgotten until we happened to think we might soon need it
+again. There was some sea on, and the boom was off, and the gaff was
+slamming. One of those Benton boys was at the wheel, and before I knew
+what he was doing, the other was out on the gaff with the end of the new
+downhaul, trying to reeve it through its block. The one who was steering
+watched him, and got as white as cheese. The other one was swinging
+about on the gaff end, and every time she rolled to leeward, he brought
+up with a jerk that would have sent anything but a monkey flying into
+space. But he didn't leave it until he had rove the new rope, and he got
+back all right. I think it was Jack at the wheel; the one that seemed
+more cheerful, the one that whistled "Nancy Lee." He had rather have
+been doing the job himself than watch his brother do it, and he had a
+scared look; but he kept her as steady as he could in the swell, and he
+drew a long breath when Jim had worked his way back to the peak-halliard
+block, and had something to hold on to. I think it was Jim.
+
+They had good togs, too, and they were neat and clean men in the
+forecastle. I knew they had nobody belonging to them ashore--no mother,
+no sisters, and no wives; but somehow they both looked as if a woman
+overhauled them now and then. I remember that they had one ditty bag
+between them, and they had a woman's thimble in it. One of the men said
+something about it to them, and they looked at each other; and one
+smiled, but the other didn't. Most of their clothes were alike, but they
+had one red guernsey between them. For some time I used to think it was
+always the same one that wore it, and I thought that might be a way to
+tell them apart. But then I heard one asking the other for it, and
+saying that the other had worn it last. So that was no sign either. The
+cook was a West Indiaman, called James Lawley; his father had been
+hanged for putting lights in cocoanut trees where they didn't belong.
+But he was a good cook, and knew his business; and it wasn't
+soup-and-bully and dog's-body every Sunday. That's what I meant to say.
+On Sunday the cook called both those boys Jim, and on weekdays he called
+them Jack. He used to say he must be right sometimes if he did that,
+because even the hands on a painted clock point right twice a day.
+
+What started me to trying for some way of telling the Bentons apart was
+this. I heard them talking about a girl. It was at night, in our watch,
+and the wind had headed us off a little rather suddenly, and when we had
+flattened in the jibs, we clewed down the topsails, while the two Benton
+boys got the spanker sheet aft. One of them was at the helm. I coiled
+down the mizzen-topsail downhaul myself, and was going aft to see how
+she headed up, when I stopped to look at a light, and leaned against the
+deck-house. While I was standing there, I heard the two boys talking. It
+sounded as if they had talked of the same thing before, and, as far as I
+could tell, the voice I heard first belonged to the one who wasn't quite
+so cheerful as the other--the one who was Jim when one knew which he
+was.
+
+"Does Mamie know?" Jim asked.
+
+"Not yet," Jack answered quietly. He was at the wheel. "I mean to tell
+her next time we get home."
+
+"All right."
+
+That was all I heard, because I didn't care to stand there listening
+while they were talking about their own affairs; so I went aft to look
+into the binnacle, and I told the one at the wheel to keep her so as
+long as she had way on her, for I thought the wind would back up again
+before long, and there was land to leeward. When he answered, his voice,
+somehow, didn't sound like the cheerful one. Perhaps his brother had
+relieved the wheel while they had been speaking, but what I had heard
+set me wondering which of them it was that had a girl at home. There's
+lots of time for wondering on a schooner in fair weather.
+
+After that I thought I noticed that the two brothers were more silent
+when they were together. Perhaps they guessed that I had overheard
+something that night, and kept quiet when I was about. Some men would
+have amused themselves by trying to chaff them separately about the girl
+at home, and I suppose whichever one it was would have let the cat out
+of the bag if I had done that. But, somehow, I didn't like to. Yes, I
+was thinking of getting married myself at that time, so I had a sort of
+fellow-feeling for whichever one it was, that made me not want to chaff
+him.
+
+They didn't talk much, it seemed to me; but in fair weather, when there
+was nothing to do at night, and one was steering, the other was
+everlastingly hanging round as if he were waiting to relieve the wheel,
+though he might have been enjoying a quiet nap for all I cared in such
+weather. Or else, when one was taking his turn at the lookout, the other
+would be sitting on an anchor beside him. One kept near the other, at
+night more than in the daytime. I noticed that. They were fond of
+sitting on that anchor, and they generally tucked away their pipes under
+it, for the _Helen B._ was a dry boat in most weather, and like most
+fore-and-afters was better on a wind than going free. With a beam sea we
+sometimes shipped a little water aft. We were by the stern, anyhow, on
+that voyage, and that is one reason why we lost the man.
+
+We fell in with a southerly gale, southeast at first; and then the
+barometer began to fall while you could watch it, and a long swell began
+to come up from the south'ard. A couple of months earlier we might have
+been in for a cyclone, but it's "October all over" in those waters, as
+you know better than I. It was just going to blow, and then it was to
+rain, that was all; and we had plenty of time to make everything snug
+before it breezed up much. It blew harder after sunset, and by the time
+it was quite dark it was a full gale. We had shortened sail for it, but
+as we were by the stern we were carrying the spanker close reefed
+instead of the storm trysail. She steered better so, as long as we
+didn't have to heave to. I had the first watch with the Benton boys, and
+we had not been on deck an hour when a child might have seen that the
+weather meant business.
+
+The Old Man came up on deck and looked round, and in less than a minute
+he told us to give her the trysail. That meant heaving to, and I was
+glad of it; for though the _Helen B._ was a good vessel enough, she
+wasn't a new ship by a long way, and it did her no good to drive her in
+that weather. I asked whether I should call all hands, but just then the
+cook came aft, and the Old Man said he thought we could manage the job
+without waking the sleepers, and the trysail was handy on deck already,
+for we hadn't been expecting anything better. We were all in oilskins,
+of course, and the night was as black as a coal mine, with only a ray of
+light from the slit in the binnacle shield, and you couldn't tell one
+man from another except by his voice. The Old Man took the wheel; we got
+the boom amidships, and he jammed her into the wind until she had hardly
+any way. It was blowing now, and it was all that I and two others could
+do to get in the slack of the downhaul, while the others lowered away at
+the peak and throat, and we had our hands full to get a couple of turns
+round the wet sail. It's all child's play on a fore-and-after compared
+with reefing topsails in anything like weather, but the gear of a
+schooner sometimes does unhandy things that you don't expect, and those
+everlasting long halliards get foul of everything if they get adrift. I
+remember thinking how unhandy that particular job was. Somebody
+unhooked the throat-halliard block, and thought he had hooked it into
+the head-cringle of the trysail, and sang out to hoist away, but he had
+missed it in the dark, and the heavy block went flying into the lee
+rigging, and nearly killed him when it swung back with the weather roll.
+Then the Old Man got her up in the wind until the jib was shaking like
+thunder; then he held her off, and she went off as soon as the headsails
+filled, and he couldn't get her back again without the spanker. Then the
+_Helen B._ did her favourite trick, and before we had time to say much,
+we had a sea over the quarter and were up to our waists, with the
+parrels of the trysail only half becketed round the mast, and the deck
+so full of gear that you couldn't put your foot on a plank, and the
+spanker beginning to get adrift again, being badly stopped, and the
+general confusion and hell's delight that you can only have on a
+fore-and-after when there's nothing really serious the matter. Of
+course, I don't mean to say that the Old Man couldn't have steered his
+trick as well as you or I or any other seaman; but I don't believe he
+had ever been on board the _Helen B_. before, or had his hand on her
+wheel till then; and he didn't know her ways. I don't mean to say that
+what happened was his fault. I don't know whose fault it was. Perhaps
+nobody was to blame. But I knew something happened somewhere on board
+when we shipped that sea, and you'll never get it out of my head. I
+hadn't any spare time myself, for I was becketing the rest of the
+trysail to the mast. We were on the starboard tack, and the
+throat-halliard came down to port as usual, and I suppose there were at
+least three men at it, hoisting away, while I was at the beckets.
+
+Now I am going to tell you something. You have known me, man and boy,
+several voyages; and you are older than I am; and you have always been a
+good friend to me. Now, do you think I am the sort of man to think I
+hear things where there isn't anything to hear, or to think I see things
+when there is nothing to see? No, you don't. Thank you. Well now, I had
+passed the last becket, and I sang out to the men to sway away, and I
+was standing on the jaws of the spanker-gaff, with my left hand on the
+bolt-rope of the trysail, so that I could feel when it was board-taut,
+and I wasn't thinking of anything except being glad the job was over,
+and that we were going to heave her to. It was as black as a
+coal-pocket, except that you could see the streaks on the seas as they
+went by, and abaft the deck-house I could see the ray of light from the
+binnacle on the captain's yellow oilskin as he stood at the wheel--or,
+rather, I might have seen it if I had looked round at that minute. But
+I didn't look round. I heard a man whistling. It was "Nancy Lee," and I
+could have sworn that the man was right over my head in the crosstrees.
+Only somehow I knew very well that if anybody could have been up there,
+and could have whistled a tune, there were no living ears sharp enough
+to hear it on deck then. I heard it distinctly, and at the same time I
+heard the real whistling of the wind in the weather rigging, sharp and
+clear as the steam-whistle on a Dago's peanut-cart in New York. That was
+all right, that was as it should be; but the other wasn't right; and I
+felt queer and stiff, as if I couldn't move, and my hair was curling
+against the flannel lining of my sou'wester, and I thought somebody had
+dropped a lump of ice down my back.
+
+I said that the noise of the wind in the rigging was real, as if the
+other wasn't, for I felt that it wasn't, though I heard it. But it was,
+all the same; for the captain heard it, too. When I came to relieve the
+wheel, while the men were clearing up decks, he was swearing. He was a
+quiet man, and I hadn't heard him swear before, and I don't think I did
+again, though several queer things happened after that. Perhaps he said
+all he had to say then; I don't see how he could have said anything
+more. I used to think nobody could swear like a Dane, except a
+Neapolitan or a South American; but when I had heard the Old Man, I
+changed my mind. There's nothing afloat or ashore that can beat one of
+your quiet American skippers, if he gets off on that tack. I didn't need
+to ask him what was the matter, for I knew he had heard "Nancy Lee," as
+I had, only it affected us differently.
+
+He did not give me the wheel, but told me to go forward and get the
+second bonnet off the staysail, so as to keep her up better. As we
+tailed on to the sheet when it was done, the man next me knocked his
+sou'wester off against my shoulder, and his face came so close to me
+that I could see it in the dark. It must have been very white for me to
+see it, but I only thought of that afterwards. I don't see how any light
+could have fallen upon it, but I knew it was one of the Benton boys. I
+don't know what made me speak to him. "Hullo, Jim! Is that you?" I
+asked. I don't know why I said Jim, rather than Jack.
+
+"I am Jack," he answered.
+
+We made all fast, and things were much quieter. "The Old Man heard you
+whistling 'Nancy Lee,' just now," I said, "and he didn't like it."
+
+It was as if there were a white light inside his face, and it was
+ghastly. I know his teeth chattered. But he didn't say anything, and the
+next minute he was somewhere in the dark trying to find his sou'wester
+at the foot of the mast.
+
+When all was quiet, and she was hove to, coming to and falling off her
+four points as regularly as a pendulum, and the helm lashed a little to
+the lee, the Old Man turned in again, and I managed to light a pipe in
+the lee of the deck-house, for there was nothing more to be done till
+the gale chose to moderate, and the ship was as easy as a baby in its
+cradle. Of course the cook had gone below, as he might have done an hour
+earlier; so there were supposed to be four of us in the watch. There was
+a man at the lookout, and there was a hand by the wheel, though there
+was no steering to be done, and I was having my pipe in the lee of the
+deck-house, and the fourth man was somewhere about decks, probably
+having a smoke, too. I thought some skippers I had sailed with would
+have called the watch aft, and given them a drink after that job, but it
+wasn't cold, and I guessed that our Old Man wouldn't be particularly
+generous in that way. My hands and feet were red-hot, and it would be
+time enough to get into dry clothes when it was my watch below; so I
+stayed where I was, and smoked. But by and by, things being so quiet, I
+began to wonder why nobody moved on deck; just that sort of restless
+wanting to know where every man is that one sometimes feels in a gale of
+wind on a dark night. So when I had finished my pipe, I began to move
+about. I went aft, and there was a man leaning over the wheel, with his
+legs apart and both hands hanging down in the light from the binnacle,
+and his sou'wester over his eyes. Then I went forward, and there was a
+man at the lookout, with his back against the foremast, getting what
+shelter he could from the staysail. I knew by his small height that he
+was not one of the Benton boys. Then I went round by the weather side,
+and poked about in the dark, for I began to wonder where the other man
+was. But I couldn't find him, though I searched the decks until I got
+right aft again. It was certainly one of the Benton boys that was
+missing, but it wasn't like either of them to go below to change his
+clothes in such warm weather. The man at the wheel was the other, of
+course. I spoke to him.
+
+"Jim, what's become of your brother?"
+
+"I am Jack, sir."
+
+"Well, then, Jack, where's Jim? He's not on deck."
+
+"I don't know, sir."
+
+When I had come up to him he had stood up from force of instinct, and
+had laid his hands on the spokes as if he were steering, though the
+wheel was lashed; but he still bent his face down, and it was half
+hidden by the edge of his sou'wester, while he seemed to be staring at
+the compass. He spoke in a very low voice, but that was natural, for
+the captain had left his door open when he turned in, as it was a warm
+night in spite of the storm, and there was no fear of shipping any more
+water now.
+
+"What put it into your head to whistle like that, Jack? You've been at
+sea long enough to know better."
+
+He said something, but I couldn't hear the words; it sounded as if he
+were denying the charge.
+
+"Somebody whistled," I said.
+
+He didn't answer, and then, I don't know why, perhaps because the Old
+Man hadn't given us a drink, I cut half an inch off the plug of tobacco
+I had in my oilskin pocket, and gave it to him. He knew my tobacco was
+good, and he shoved it into his mouth with a word of thanks. I was on
+the weather side of the wheel.
+
+"Go forward and see if you can find Jim," I said.
+
+He started a little, and then stepped back and passed behind me, and was
+going along the weather side. Maybe his silence about the whistling had
+irritated me, and his taking it for granted that because we were hove to
+and it was a dark night, he might go forward any way he pleased. Anyhow,
+I stopped him, though I spoke good-naturedly enough.
+
+"Pass to leeward, Jack," I said.
+
+He didn't answer, but crossed the deck between the binnacle and the
+deck-house to the lee side. She was only falling off and coming to, and
+riding the big seas as easily as possible, but the man was not steady on
+his feet and reeled against the corner of the deck-house and then
+against the lee rail. I was quite sure he couldn't have had anything to
+drink, for neither of the brothers were the kind to hide rum from their
+shipmates, if they had any, and the only spirits that were aboard were
+locked up in the captain's cabin. I wondered whether he had been hit by
+the throat-halliard block and was hurt.
+
+I left the wheel and went after him, but when I got to the corner of the
+deck-house I saw that he was on a full run forward, so I went back. I
+watched the compass for a while, to see how far she went off, and she
+must have come to again half a dozen times before I heard voices, more
+than three or four, forward; and then I heard the little West Indies
+cook's voice, high and shrill above the rest:
+
+"Man overboard!"
+
+There wasn't anything to be done, with the ship hove to and the wheel
+lashed. If there was a man overboard, he must be in the water right
+alongside. I couldn't imagine how it could have happened, but I ran
+forward instinctively. I came upon the cook first, half dressed in his
+shirt and trousers, just as he had tumbled out of his bunk. He was
+jumping into the main rigging, evidently hoping to see the man, as if
+any one could have seen anything on such a night, except the
+foam-streaks on the black water, and now and then the curl of a breaking
+sea as it went away to leeward. Several of the men were peering over the
+rail into the dark. I caught the cook by the foot, and asked who was
+gone.
+
+"It's Jim Benton," he shouted down to me. "He's not aboard this ship!"
+
+There was no doubt about that. Jim Benton was gone; and I knew in a
+flash that he had been taken off by that sea when we were setting the
+storm trysail. It was nearly half an hour since then; she had run like
+wild for a few minutes until we got her hove to, and no swimmer that
+ever swam could have lived as long as that in such a sea. The men knew
+it as well as I, but still they stared into the foam as if they had any
+chance of seeing the lost man. I let the cook get into the rigging and
+joined the men, and asked if they had made a thorough search on board,
+though I knew they had and that it could not take long, for he wasn't on
+deck, and there was only the forecastle below.
+
+"That sea took him over, sir, as sure as you're born," said one of the
+men close beside me.
+
+We had no boat that could have lived in that, sea, of course, and we all
+knew it. I offered to put one over, and let her drift astern two or
+three cables' lengths by a line, if the men thought they could haul me
+aboard again; but none of them would listen to that, and I should
+probably have been drowned if I had tried it, even with a life-belt; for
+it was a breaking sea. Besides, they all knew as well as I did that the
+man could not be right in our wake. I don't know why I spoke again.
+
+"Jack Benton, are you there? Will you go if I will?"
+
+"No, sir," answered a voice; and that was all.
+
+By that time the Old Man was on deck, and I felt his hand on my shoulder
+rather roughly, as if he meant to shake me.
+
+"I'd reckoned you had more sense, Mr. Torkeldsen," he said. "God knows I
+would risk my ship to look for him, if it were any use; but he must have
+gone half an hour ago."
+
+He was a quiet man, and the men knew he was right, and that they had
+seen the last of Jim Benton when they were bending the trysail--if
+anybody had seen him then. The captain went below again, and for some
+time the men stood around Jack, quite near him, without saying
+anything, as sailors do when they are sorry for a man and can't help
+him; and then the watch below turned in again, and we were three on
+deck.
+
+Nobody can understand that there can be much consolation in a funeral,
+unless he has felt that blank feeling there is when a man's gone
+overboard whom everybody likes. I suppose landsmen think it would be
+easier if they didn't have to bury their fathers and mothers and
+friends; but it wouldn't be. Somehow the funeral keeps up the idea of
+something beyond. You may believe in that something just the same; but a
+man who has gone in the dark, between two seas, without a cry, seems
+much more beyond reach than if he were still lying on his bed, and had
+only just stopped breathing. Perhaps Jim Benton knew that, and wanted to
+come back to us. I don't know, and I am only telling you what happened,
+and you may think what you like.
+
+Jack stuck by the wheel that night until the watch was over. I don't
+know whether he slept afterwards, but when I came on deck four hours
+later, there he was again, in his oilskins, with his sou'wester over his
+eyes, staring into the binnacle. We saw that he would rather stand
+there, and we left him alone. Perhaps it was some consolation to him to
+get that ray of light when everything was so dark. It began to rain,
+too, as it can when a southerly gale is going to break up, and we got
+every bucket and tub on board, and set them under the booms to catch the
+fresh water for washing our clothes. The rain made it very thick, and I
+went and stood under the lee of the staysail, looking out. I could tell
+that day was breaking, because the foam was whiter in the dark where the
+seas crested, and little by little the black rain grew grey and steamy,
+and I couldn't see the red glare of the port light on the water when she
+went off and rolled to leeward. The gale had moderated considerably, and
+in another hour we should be under way again. I was still standing there
+when Jack Benton came forward. He stood still a few minutes near me. The
+rain came down in a solid sheet, and I could see his wet beard and a
+corner of his cheek, too, grey in the dawn. Then he stooped down and
+began feeling under the anchor for his pipe. We had hardly shipped any
+water forward, and I suppose he had some way of tucking the pipe in, so
+that the rain hadn't floated it off. Presently he got on his legs again,
+and I saw that he had two pipes in his hand. One of them had belonged to
+his brother, and after looking at them a moment I suppose he recognized
+his own, for he put it in his mouth, dripping with water. Then he looked
+at the other fully a minute without moving. When he had made up his
+mind, I suppose, he quietly chucked it over the lee rail, without even
+looking round to see whether I was watching him. I thought it was a
+pity, for it was a good wooden pipe, with a nickel ferrule, and somebody
+would have been glad to have it. But I didn't like to make any remark,
+for he had a right to do what he pleased with what had belonged to his
+dead brother. He blew the water out of his own pipe, and dried it
+against his jacket, putting his hand inside his oilskin; he filled it,
+standing under the lee of the foremast, got a light after wasting two or
+three matches, and turned the pipe upside down in his teeth, to keep the
+rain out of the bowl. I don't know why I noticed everything he did, and
+remember it now; but somehow I felt sorry for him, and I kept wondering
+whether there was anything I could say that would make him feel better.
+But I didn't think of anything, and as it was broad daylight I went aft
+again, for I guessed that the Old Man would turn out before long and
+order the spanker set and the helm up. But he didn't turn out before
+seven bells, just as the clouds broke and showed blue sky to
+leeward--"the Frenchman's barometer," you used to call it.
+
+Some people don't seem to be so dead, when they are dead, as others are.
+Jim Benton was like that. He had been on my watch, and I couldn't get
+used to the idea that he wasn't about decks with me. I was always
+expecting to see him, and his brother was so exactly like him that I
+often felt as if I did see him and forgot he was dead, and made the
+mistake of calling Jack by his name; though I tried not to, because I
+knew it must hurt. If ever Jack had been the cheerful one of the two, as
+I had always supposed he had been, he had changed very much, for he grew
+to be more silent than Jim had ever been.
+
+One fine afternoon I was sitting on the main-hatch, overhauling the
+clockwork of the taffrail-log, which hadn't been registering very well
+of late, and I had got the cook to bring me a coffee-cup to hold the
+small screws as I took them out, and a saucer for the sperm oil I was
+going to use. I noticed that he didn't go away, but hung round without
+exactly watching what I was doing, as if he wanted to say something to
+me. I thought if it were worth much, he would say it anyhow, so I didn't
+ask him questions; and sure enough he began of his own accord before
+long. There was nobody on deck but the man at the wheel, and the other
+man away forward.
+
+"Mr. Torkeldsen," the cook began, and then stopped.
+
+I supposed he was going to ask me to let the watch break out a barrel
+of flour, or some salt horse.
+
+"Well, doctor?" I asked, as he didn't go on.
+
+"Well, Mr. Torkeldsen," he answered, "I somehow want to ask you whether
+you think I am giving satisfaction on this ship, or not?"
+
+"So far as I know, you are, doctor. I haven't heard any complaints from
+the forecastle, and the captain has said nothing, and I think you know
+your business, and the cabin-boy is bursting out of his clothes. That
+looks as if you are giving satisfaction. What makes you think you are
+not?"
+
+I am not good at giving you that West Indies talk, and shan't try; but
+the doctor beat about the bush awhile, and then he told me he thought
+the men were beginning to play tricks on him, and he didn't like it, and
+thought he hadn't deserved it, and would like his discharge at our next
+port. I told him he was a d----d fool, of course, to begin with; and
+that men were more apt to try a joke with a chap they liked than with
+anybody they wanted to get rid of; unless it was a bad joke, like
+flooding his bunk, or filling his boots with tar. But it wasn't that
+kind of practical joke. The doctor said that the men were trying to
+frighten him, and he didn't like it, and that they put things in his
+way that frightened him. So I told him he was a d----d fool to be
+frightened, anyway, and I wanted to know what things they put in his
+way. He gave me a queer answer. He said they were spoons and forks, and
+odd plates, and a cup now and then, and such things.
+
+I set down the taffrail-log on the bit of canvas I had put under it, and
+looked at the doctor. He was uneasy, and his eyes had a sort of hunted
+look, and his yellow face looked grey. He wasn't trying to make trouble.
+He was in trouble. So I asked him questions.
+
+He said he could count as well as anybody, and do sums without using his
+fingers, but that when he couldn't count any other way, he did use his
+fingers, and it always came out the same. He said that when he and the
+cabin-boy cleared up after the men's meals there were more things to
+wash than he had given out. There'd be a fork more, or there'd be a
+spoon more, and sometimes there'd be a spoon and a fork, and there was
+always a plate more. It wasn't that he complained of that. Before poor
+Jim Benton was lost they had a man more to feed, and his gear to wash up
+after meals, and that was in the contract, the doctor said. It would
+have been if there were twenty in the ship's company; but he didn't
+think it was right for the men to play tricks like that. He kept his
+things in good order, and he counted them, and he was responsible for
+them, and it wasn't right that the men should take more things than they
+needed when his back was turned, and just soil them and mix them up with
+their own, so as to make him think--
+
+He stopped there, and looked at me, and I looked at him. I didn't know
+what he thought, but I began to guess. I wasn't going to humour any such
+nonsense as that, so I told him to speak to the men himself, and not
+come bothering me about such things.
+
+"Count the plates and forks and spoons before them when they sit down to
+table, and tell them that's all they'll get; and when they have
+finished, count the things again, and if the count isn't right, find out
+who did it. You know it must be one of them. You're not a green hand;
+you've been going to sea ten or eleven years, and don't want any lessons
+about how to behave if the boys play a trick on you."
+
+"If I could catch him," said the cook, "I'd have a knife into him before
+he could say his prayers."
+
+Those West India men are always talking about knives, especially when
+they are badly frightened. I knew what he meant, and didn't ask him, but
+went on cleaning the brass cog-wheels of the patent log, and oiling the
+bearings with a feather. "Wouldn't it be better to wash it out with
+boiling water, sir?" asked the cook in an insinuating tone. He knew that
+he had made a fool of himself, and was anxious to make it right again.
+
+I heard no more about the odd platter and gear for two or three days,
+though I thought about his story a good deal. The doctor evidently
+believed that Jim Benton had come back, though he didn't quite like to
+say so. His story had sounded silly enough on a bright afternoon, in
+fair weather, when the sun was on the water, and every rag was drawing
+in the breeze, and the sea looked as pleasant and as harmless as a cat
+that has just eaten a canary. But when it was toward the end of the
+first watch, and the waning moon had not risen yet, and the water was
+like still oil, and the jibs hung down flat and helpless like the wings
+of a dead bird--it wasn't the same then. More than once I have started
+then and looked round when a fish jumped, expecting to see a face
+sticking out of the water with its eyes shut. I think we all felt
+something like that at the time.
+
+One afternoon we were putting a fresh service on the jib-sheet-pennant.
+It wasn't my watch, but I was standing by, looking on. Just then Jack
+Benton came up from below, and went to look for his pipe under the
+anchor. His face was hard and drawn, and his eyes were cold like steel
+balls. He hardly ever spoke now, but he did his duty as usual, and
+nobody had to complain of him, though we were all beginning to wonder
+how long his grief for his dead brother was going to last like that. I
+watched him as he crouched down, and ran his hand into the hiding-place
+for the pipe. When he stood up, he had two pipes in his hand.
+
+Now, I remembered very well seeing him throw one of those pipes away,
+early in the morning after the gale; and it came to me now, and I didn't
+suppose he kept a stock of them under the anchor. I caught sight of his
+face, and it was greenish white, like the foam on shallow water, and he
+stood a long time looking at the two pipes. He wasn't looking to see
+which was his, for I wasn't five yards from him as he stood, and one of
+those pipes had been smoked that day, and was shiny where his hand had
+rubbed it, and the bone mouthpiece was chafed white where his teeth had
+bitten it. The other was water-logged. It was swelled and cracking with
+wet, and it looked to me as if there were a little green weed on it.
+
+Jack Benton turned his head rather stealthily as I looked away, and then
+he hid the thing in his trousers pocket, and went aft on the lee side,
+out of sight. The men had got the sheet-pennant on a stretch to serve
+it, but I ducked under it and stood where I could see what Jack did,
+just under the fore-staysail. He couldn't see me, and he was looking
+about for something. His hand shook as he picked up a bit of half-bent
+iron rod, about a foot long, that had been used for turning an eye-bolt,
+and had been left on the main-hatch. His hand shook as he got a piece of
+marline out of his pocket, and made the water-logged pipe fast to the
+iron. He didn't mean it to get adrift either, for he took his turns
+carefully, and hove them taut and then rode them, so that they couldn't
+slip, and made the end fast with two half-hitches round the iron, and
+hitched it back on itself. Then he tried it with his hands, and looked
+up and down the deck furtively, and then quietly dropped the pipe and
+iron over the rail, so that I didn't even hear the splash. If anybody
+was playing tricks on board, they weren't meant for the cook.
+
+I asked some questions about Jack Benton, and one of the men told me
+that he was off his feed, and hardly ate anything, and swallowed all the
+coffee he could lay his hands on, and had used up all his own tobacco
+and had begun on what his brother had left.
+
+"The doctor says it ain't so, sir," said the man, looking at me shyly,
+as if he didn't expect to be believed; "the doctor says there's as much
+eaten from breakfast to breakfast as there was before Jim fell
+overboard, though there's a mouth less and another that eats nothing. I
+says it's the cabin-boy that gets it. He's bu'sting."
+
+I told him that if the cabin-boy ate more than his share, he must work
+more than his share, so as to balance things. But the man laughed
+queerly, and looked at me again.
+
+"I only said that, sir, just like that. We all know it ain't so."
+
+"Well, how is it?"
+
+"How is it?" asked the man, half-angry all at once. "I don't know how it
+is, but there's a hand on board that's getting his whack along with us
+as regular as the bells."
+
+"Does he use tobacco?" I asked, meaning to laugh it out of him, but as I
+spoke, I remembered the water-logged pipe.
+
+"I guess he's using his own still," the man answered, in a queer, low
+voice. "Perhaps he'll take some one else's when his is all gone."
+
+It was about nine o'clock in the morning, I remember, for just then the
+captain called to me to stand by the chronometer while he took his fore
+observation. Captain Hackstaff wasn't one of those old skippers who do
+everything themselves with a pocket watch, and keep the key of the
+chronometer in their waistcoat pocket, and won't tell the mate how far
+the dead reckoning is out. He was rather the other way, and I was glad
+of it, for he generally let me work the sights he took, and just ran
+his eye over my figures afterwards. I am bound to say his eye was pretty
+good, for he would pick out a mistake in a logarithm, or tell me that I
+had worked the "Equation of Time" with the wrong sign, before it seemed
+to me that he could have got as far as "half the sum, minus the
+altitude." He was always right, too, and besides he knew a lot about
+iron ships and local deviation, and adjusting the compass, and all that
+sort of thing. I don't know how he came to be in command of a
+fore-and-aft schooner. He never talked about himself, and maybe he had
+just been mate on one of those big steel square-riggers, and something
+had put him back. Perhaps he had been captain, and had got his ship
+aground, through no particular fault of his, and had to begin over
+again. Sometimes he talked just like you and me, and sometimes he would
+speak more like books do, or some of those Boston people I have heard. I
+don't know. We have all been shipmates now and then with men who have
+seen better days. Perhaps he had been in the Navy, but what makes me
+think he couldn't have been, was that he was a thorough good seaman, a
+regular old windjammer, and understood sail, which those Navy chaps
+rarely do. Why, you and I have sailed with men before the mast who had
+their master's certificates in their pockets--English Board of Trade
+certificates, too--who could work a double altitude if you would lend
+them a sextant and give them a look at the chronometer, as well as many
+a man who commands a big square-rigger. Navigation ain't everything, nor
+seamanship either. You've got to have it in you, if you mean to get
+there.
+
+I don't know how our captain heard that there was trouble forward. The
+cabin-boy may have told him, or the men may have talked outside his door
+when they relieved the wheel at night. Anyhow, he got wind of it, and
+when he had got his sight that morning, he had all hands aft, and gave
+them a lecture. It was just the kind of talk you might have expected
+from him. He said he hadn't any complaint to make, and that so far as he
+knew everybody on board was doing his duty, and that he was given to
+understand that the men got their whack, and were satisfied. He said his
+ship was never a hard ship, and that he liked quiet, and that was the
+reason he didn't mean to have any nonsense, and the men might just as
+well understand that, too. We'd had a great misfortune, he said, and it
+was nobody's fault. We had lost a man we all liked and respected, and he
+felt that everybody in the ship ought to be sorry for the man's brother,
+who was left behind, and that it was rotten lubberly childishness, and
+unjust and unmanly and cowardly, to be playing schoolboy tricks with
+forks and spoons and pipes, and that sort of gear. He said it had got to
+stop right now, and that was all, and the men might go forward. And so
+they did.
+
+It got worse after that, and the men watched the cook, and the cook
+watched the men, as if they were trying to catch each other; but I think
+everybody felt that there was something else. One evening, at
+supper-time, I was on deck, and Jack came aft to relieve the wheel while
+the man who was steering got his supper. He hadn't got past the
+main-hatch on the lee side, when I heard a man running in slippers that
+slapped on the deck, and there was a sort of a yell and I saw the
+coloured cook going for Jack, with a carving knife in his hand. I jumped
+to get between them, and Jack turned round short, and put out his hand.
+I was too far to reach them, and the cook jabbed out with his knife. But
+the blade didn't get anywhere near Benton. The cook seemed to be jabbing
+it into the air again and again, at least four feet short of the mark.
+Then he dropped his right hand, and I saw the whites of his eyes in the
+dusk, and he reeled up against the pin-rail, and caught hold of a
+belaying-pin with his left. I had reached him by that time, and grabbed
+hold of his knife-hand, and the other, too, for I thought he was going
+to use the pin; but Jack Benton was standing staring stupidly at him, as
+if he didn't understand. But instead, the cook was holding on because he
+couldn't stand, and his teeth were chattering, and he let go of the
+knife, and the point stuck into the deck.
+
+"He's crazy!" said Jack Benton, and that was all he said; and he went
+aft.
+
+When he was gone, the cook began to come to, and he spoke quite low,
+near my ear.
+
+"There were two of them! So help me God, there were two of them!"
+
+I don't know why I didn't take him by the collar, and give him a good
+shaking; but I didn't. I just picked up the knife and gave it to him,
+and told him to go back to his galley, and not to make a fool of
+himself. You see, he hadn't struck at Jack, but at something he thought
+he saw, and I knew what it was, and I felt that same thing, like a lump
+of ice sliding down my back, that I felt that night when we were bending
+the trysail.
+
+When the men had seen him running aft, they jumped up after him, but
+they held off when they saw that I had caught him. By and by, the man
+who had spoken to me before told me what had happened. He was a stocky
+little chap, with a red head.
+
+"Well," he said, "there isn't much to tell. Jack Benton had been eating
+his supper with the rest of us. He always sits at the after corner of
+the table, on the port side. His brother used to sit at the end, next
+him. The doctor gave him a thundering big piece of pie to finish up
+with, and when he had finished he didn't stop for a smoke, but went off
+quick to relieve the wheel. Just as he had gone, the doctor came in from
+the galley, and when he saw Jack's empty plate he stood stock still
+staring at it; and we all wondered what was the matter, till we looked
+at the plate. There were two forks in it, sir, lying side by side. Then
+the doctor grabbed his knife, and flew up through the hatch like a
+rocket. The other fork was there all right, Mr. Torkeldsen, for we all
+saw it and handled it; and we all had our own. That's all I know."
+
+I didn't feel that I wanted to laugh when he told me that story; but I
+hoped the Old Man wouldn't hear it, for I knew he wouldn't believe it,
+and no captain that ever sailed likes to have stories like that going
+round about his ship. It gives her a bad name. But that was all anybody
+ever saw except the cook, and he isn't the first man who has thought he
+saw things without having any drink in him. I think, if the doctor had
+been weak in the head, as he was afterwards, he might have done
+something foolish again, and there might have been serious trouble. But
+he didn't. Only, two or three times, I saw him looking at Jack Benton in
+a queer, scared way, and once I heard him talking to himself.
+
+"There's two of them! So help me God, there's two of them!"
+
+He didn't say anything more about asking for his discharge, but I knew
+well enough that if he got ashore at the next port we should never see
+him again, if he had to leave his kit behind him, and his money, too. He
+was scared all through, for good and all; and he wouldn't be right again
+till he got another ship. It's no use to talk to a man when he gets like
+that, any more than it is to send a boy to the main truck when he has
+lost his nerve.
+
+Jack Benton never spoke of what happened that evening. I don't know
+whether he knew about the two forks, or not; or whether he understood
+what the trouble was. Whatever he knew from the other men, he was
+evidently living under a hard strain. He was quiet enough, and too
+quiet; but his face was set, and sometimes it twitched oddly when he was
+at the wheel, and he would turn his head round sharp to look behind him.
+A man doesn't do that naturally, unless there's a vessel that he thinks
+is creeping up on the quarter. When that happens, if the man at the
+wheel takes a pride in his ship, he will almost always keep glancing
+over his shoulder to see whether the other fellow is gaining. But Jack
+Benton used to look round when there was nothing there; and what is
+curious, the other men seemed to catch the trick when they were
+steering. One day the Old Man turned out just as the man at the wheel
+looked behind him.
+
+"What are you looking at?" asked the captain.
+
+"Nothing, sir," answered the man.
+
+"Then keep your eye on the mizzen-royal," said the Old Man, as if he
+were forgetting that we weren't a square-rigger.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said the man.
+
+The captain told me to go below and work up the latitude from the
+dead-reckoning, and he went forward of the deck-house and sat down to
+read, as he often did. When I came up, the man at the wheel was looking
+round again, and I stood beside him and just asked him quietly what
+everybody was looking at, for it was getting to be a general habit. He
+wouldn't say anything at first, but just answered that it was nothing.
+But when he saw that I didn't seem to care, and just stood there as if
+there were nothing more to be said, he naturally began to talk.
+
+He said that it wasn't that he saw anything, because there wasn't
+anything to see except the spanker sheet just straining a little, and
+working in the sheaves of the blocks as the schooner rose to the short
+seas. There wasn't anything to be seen, but it seemed to him that the
+sheet made a queer noise in the blocks. It was a new manilla sheet; and
+in dry weather it did make a little noise, something between a creak and
+a wheeze. I looked at it and looked at the man, and said nothing; and
+presently he went on. He asked me if I didn't notice anything peculiar
+about the noise. I listened awhile, and said I didn't notice anything.
+
+Then he looked rather sheepish, but said he didn't think it could be his
+own ears, because every man who steered his trick heard the same thing
+now and then,--sometimes once in a day, sometimes once in a night,
+sometimes it would go on a whole hour.
+
+"It sounds like sawing wood," I said, just like that.
+
+"To us it sounds a good deal more like a man whistling 'Nancy Lee.'" He
+started nervously as he spoke the last words. "There, sir, don't you
+hear it?" he asked suddenly.
+
+I heard nothing but the creaking of the manilla sheet. It was getting
+near noon, and fine, clear weather in southern waters,--just the sort of
+day and the time when you would least expect to feel creepy. But I
+remembered how I had heard that same tune overhead at night in a gale of
+wind a fortnight earlier, and I am not ashamed to say that the same
+sensation came over me now, and I wished myself well out of the _Helen
+B._, and aboard of any old cargo-dragger, with a windmill on deck, and
+an eighty-nine-forty-eighter for captain, and a fresh leak whenever it
+breezed up.
+
+Little by little during the next few days life on board that vessel came
+to be about as unbearable as you can imagine. It wasn't that there was
+much talk, for I think the men were shy even of speaking to each other
+freely about what they thought. The whole ship's company grew silent,
+until one hardly ever heard a voice, except giving an order and the
+answer. The men didn't sit over their meals when their watch was below,
+but either turned in at once or sat about on the forecastle, smoking
+their pipes without saying a word. We were all thinking of the same
+thing. We all felt as if there were a hand on board, sometimes below,
+sometimes about decks, sometimes aloft, sometimes on the boom end;
+taking his full share of what the others got, but doing no work for it.
+We didn't only feel it, we knew it. He took up no room, he cast no
+shadow, and we never heard his footfall on deck; but he took his whack
+with the rest as regular as the bells, and--he whistled "Nancy Lee." It
+was like the worst sort of dream you can imagine; and I daresay a good
+many of us tried to believe it was nothing else sometimes, when we stood
+looking over the weather rail in fine weather with the breeze in our
+faces; but if we happened to turn round and look into each other's eyes,
+we knew it was something worse than any dream could be; and we would
+turn away from each other with a queer, sick feeling, wishing that we
+could just for once see somebody who didn't know what we knew.
+
+There's not much more to tell about the _Helen B. Jackson_, so far as I
+am concerned. We were more like a shipload of lunatics than anything
+else when we ran in under Morro Castle and anchored in Havana. The cook
+had brain fever, and was raving mad in his delirium; and the rest of the
+men weren't far from the same state. The last three or four days had
+been awful, and we had been as near to having a mutiny on board as I
+ever want to be. The men didn't want to hurt anybody; but they wanted to
+get away out of that ship, if they had to swim for it; to get away from
+that whistling, from that dead shipmate who had come back, and who
+filled the ship with his unseen self! I know that if the Old Man and I
+hadn't kept a sharp lookout, the men would have put a boat over quietly
+on one of those calm nights, and pulled away, leaving the captain and
+me and the mad cook to work the schooner into harbour. We should have
+done it somehow, of course, for we hadn't far to run if we could get a
+breeze; and once or twice I found myself wishing that the crew were
+really gone, for the awful state of fright in which they lived was
+beginning to work on me too. You see I partly believed and partly
+didn't; but, anyhow, I didn't mean to let the thing get the better of
+me, whatever it was. I turned crusty, too, and kept the men at work on
+all sorts of jobs, and drove them to it until they wished I was
+overboard, too. It wasn't that the Old Man and I were trying to drive
+them to desert without their pay, as I am sorry to say a good many
+skippers and mates do, even now. Captain Hackstaff was as straight as a
+string, and I didn't mean those poor fellows should be cheated out of a
+single cent; and I didn't blame them for wanting to leave the ship, but
+it seemed to me that the only chance to keep everybody sane through
+those last days was to work the men till they dropped. When they were
+dead tired they slept a little, and forgot the thing until they had to
+tumble up on deck and face it again. That was a good many years ago. Do
+you believe that I can't hear "Nancy Lee" now, without feeling cold down
+my back? For I heard it, too, now and then, after the man had explained
+why he was always looking over his shoulder. Perhaps it was
+imagination. I don't know. When I look back it seems to me that I only
+remember a long fight against something I couldn't see, against an
+appalling presence, against something worse than cholera or Yellow Jack
+or the plague--and, goodness knows, the mildest of them is bad enough
+when it breaks out at sea. The men got as white as chalk, and wouldn't
+go about decks alone at night, no matter what I said to them. With the
+cook raving in his bunk, the forecastle would have been a perfect hell,
+and there wasn't a spare cabin on board. There never is on a
+fore-and-after. So I put him into mine, and he was more quiet there, and
+at last fell into a sort of stupor as if he were going to die. I don't
+know what became of him, for we put him ashore alive and left him in the
+hospital.
+
+The men came aft in a body, quiet enough, and asked the captain if he
+wouldn't pay them off, and let them go ashore. Some men wouldn't have
+done it, for they had shipped for the voyage, and had signed articles.
+But the captain knew that when sailors get an idea into their heads,
+they're no better than children; and if he forced them to stay aboard,
+he wouldn't get much work out of them, and couldn't rely on them in a
+difficulty. So he paid them off, and let them go. When they had gone
+forward to get their kits, he asked me whether I wanted to go, too, and
+for a minute I had a sort of weak feeling that I might just as well. But
+I didn't, and he was a good friend to me afterwards. Perhaps he was
+grateful to me for sticking to him.
+
+When the men went off he didn't come on deck; but it was my duty to
+stand by while they left the ship. They owed me a grudge for making them
+work during the last few days, and most of them dropped into the boat
+without so much as a word or a look, as sailors will. Jack Benton was
+the last to go over the side, and he stood still a minute and looked at
+me, and his white face twitched. I thought he wanted to say something.
+
+"Take care of yourself, Jack," said I. "So long!"
+
+It seemed as if he couldn't speak for two or three seconds; then his
+words came thick.
+
+"It wasn't my fault, Mr. Torkeldsen. I swear it wasn't my fault!"
+
+That was all; and he dropped over the side, leaving me to wonder what he
+meant.
+
+The captain and I stayed on board, and the ship-chandler got a West
+India boy to cook for us.
+
+That evening, before turning in, we were standing by the rail having a
+quiet smoke, watching the lights of the city, a quarter of a mile off,
+reflected in the still water. There was music of some sort ashore, in a
+sailors' dance-house, I daresay; and I had no doubt that most of the men
+who had left the ship were there, and already full of jiggy-jiggy. The
+music played a lot of sailors' tunes that ran into each other, and we
+could hear the men's voices in the chorus now and then. One followed
+another, and then it was "Nancy Lee," loud and clear, and the men
+singing "Yo-ho, heave-ho!"
+
+"I have no ear for music," said Captain Hackstaff, "but it appears to me
+that's the tune that man was whistling the night we lost the man
+overboard. I don't know why it has stuck in my head, and of course it's
+all nonsense; but it seems to me that I have heard it all the rest of
+the trip."
+
+I didn't say anything to that, but I wondered just how much the Old Man
+had understood. Then we turned in, and I slept ten hours without opening
+my eyes.
+
+I stuck to the _Helen B. Jackson_ after that as long as I could stand a
+fore-and-after; but that night when we lay in Havana was the last time I
+ever heard "Nancy Lee" on board of her. The spare hand had gone ashore
+with the rest, and he never came back, and he took his tune with him;
+but all those things are just as clear in my memory as if they had
+happened yesterday.
+
+After that I was in deep water for a year or more, and after I came home
+I got my certificate, and what with having friends and having saved a
+little money, and having had a small legacy from an uncle in Norway, I
+got the command of a coastwise vessel, with a small share in her. I was
+at home three weeks before going to sea, and Jack Benton saw my name in
+the local papers, and wrote to me.
+
+He said that he had left the sea, and was trying farming, and he was
+going to be married, and he asked if I wouldn't come over for that, for
+it wasn't more than forty minutes by train; and he and Mamie would be
+proud to have me at the wedding. I remembered how I had heard one
+brother ask the other whether Mamie knew. That meant, whether she knew
+he wanted to marry her, I suppose. She had taken her time about it, for
+it was pretty nearly three years then since we had lost Jim Benton
+overboard.
+
+I had nothing particular to do while we were getting ready for sea;
+nothing to prevent me from going over for a day, I mean; and I thought
+I'd like to see Jack Benton, and have a look at the girl he was going to
+marry. I wondered whether he had grown cheerful again, and had got rid
+of that drawn look he had when he told me it wasn't his fault. How could
+it have been his fault, anyhow? So I wrote to Jack that I would come
+down and see him married; and when the day came I took the train and
+got there about ten o'clock in the morning. I wish I hadn't. Jack met me
+at the station, and he told me that the wedding was to be late in the
+afternoon, and that they weren't going off on any silly wedding trip, he
+and Mamie, but were just going to walk home from her mother's house to
+his cottage. That was good enough for him, he said. I looked at him hard
+for a minute after we met. When we had parted I had a sort of idea that
+he might take to drink, but he hadn't. He looked very respectable and
+well-to-do in his black coat and high city collar; but he was thinner
+and bonier than when I had known him, and there were lines in his face,
+and I thought his eyes had a queer look in them, half shifty, half
+scared. He needn't have been afraid of me, for I didn't mean to talk to
+his bride about the _Helen B. Jackson._
+
+He took me to his cottage first, and I could see that he was proud of
+it. It wasn't above a cable's length from high-water mark, but the tide
+was running out, and there was already a broad stretch of hard, wet sand
+on the other side of the beach road. Jack's bit of land ran back behind
+the cottage about a quarter of a mile, and he said that some of the
+trees we saw were his. The fences were neat and well kept, and there was
+a fair-sized barn a little way from the cottage, and I saw some
+nice-looking cattle in the meadows; but it didn't look to me to be much
+of a farm, and I thought that before long Jack would have to leave his
+wife to take care of it, and go to sea again. But I said it was a nice
+farm, so as to seem pleasant, and as I don't know much about these
+things, I daresay it was, all the same. I never saw it but that once.
+Jack told me that he and his brother had been born in the cottage, and
+that when their father and mother died they leased the land to Mamie's
+father, but had kept the cottage to live in when they came home from sea
+for a spell. It was as neat a little place as you would care to see: the
+floors as clean as the decks of a yacht, and the paint as fresh as a
+man-o'-war. Jack always was a good painter. There was a nice parlour on
+the ground floor, and Jack had papered it and had hung the walls with
+photographs of ships and foreign ports, and with things he had brought
+home from his voyages: a boomerang, a South Sea club, Japanese straw
+hats, and a Gibraltar fan with a bull-fight on it, and all that sort of
+gear. It looked to me as if Miss Mamie had taken a hand in arranging it.
+There was a brand-new polished iron Franklin stove set into the old
+fireplace, and a red table-cloth from Alexandria embroidered with those
+outlandish Egyptian letters. It was all as bright and homelike as
+possible, and he showed me everything, and was proud of everything, and
+I liked him the better for it. But I wished that his voice would sound
+more cheerful, as it did when we first sailed in the _Helen B._, and
+that the drawn look would go out of his face for a minute. Jack showed
+me everything, and took me upstairs, and it was all the same: bright and
+fresh and ready for the bride. But on the upper landing there was a door
+that Jack didn't open. When we came out of the bedroom I noticed that it
+was ajar, and Jack shut it quickly and turned the key.
+
+"That lock's no good," he said, half to himself. "The door is always
+open."
+
+I didn't pay much attention to what he said, but as we went down the
+short stairs, freshly painted and varnished so that I was almost afraid
+to step on them, he spoke again.
+
+"That was his room, sir. I have made a sort of store-room of it."
+
+"You may be wanting it in a year or so," I said, wishing to be pleasant.
+
+"I guess we won't use his room for that," Jack answered in a low voice.
+
+Then he offered me a cigar from a fresh box in the parlour, and he took
+one, and we lit them, and went out; and as we opened the front door
+there was Mamie Brewster standing in the path as if she were waiting for
+us. She was a fine-looking girl, and I didn't wonder that Jack had been
+willing to wait three years for her. I could see that she hadn't been
+brought up on steam-heat and cold storage, but had grown into a woman by
+the sea-shore. She had brown eyes, and fine brown hair, and a good
+figure.
+
+"This is Captain Torkeldsen," said Jack. "This is Miss Brewster,
+captain; and she is glad to see you."
+
+"Well, I am," said Miss Mamie, "for Jack has often talked to us about
+you, captain."
+
+She put out her hand, and took mine and shook it heartily, and I suppose
+I said something, but I know I didn't say much.
+
+The front door of the cottage looked toward the sea, and there was a
+straight path leading to the gate on the beach road. There was another
+path from the steps of the cottage that turned to the right, broad
+enough for two people to walk easily, and it led straight across the
+fields through gates to a larger house about a quarter of a mile away.
+That was where Mamie's mother lived, and the wedding was to be there.
+Jack asked me whether I would like to look round the farm before dinner,
+but I told him I didn't know much about farms. Then he said he just
+wanted to look round himself a bit, as he mightn't have much more chance
+that day; and he smiled, and Mamie laughed.
+
+"Show the captain the way to the house, Mamie," he said. "I'll be along
+in a minute."
+
+So Mamie and I began to walk along the path, and Jack went up toward the
+barn.
+
+"It was sweet of you to come, captain," Miss Mamie began, "for I have
+always wanted to see you."
+
+"Yes," I said, expecting something more.
+
+"You see, I always knew them both," she went on. "They used to take me
+out in a dory to catch codfish when I was a little girl, and I liked
+them both," she added thoughtfully. "Jack doesn't care to talk about his
+brother now. That's natural. But you won't mind telling me how it
+happened, will you? I should so much like to know."
+
+Well, I told her about the voyage and what happened that night when we
+fell in with a gale of wind, and that it hadn't been anybody's fault,
+for I wasn't going to admit that it was my old captain's, if it was. But
+I didn't tell her anything about what happened afterwards. As she didn't
+speak, I just went on talking about the two brothers, and how like they
+had been, and how when poor Jim was drowned and Jack was left, I took
+Jack for him. I told her that none of us had ever been sure which was
+which.
+
+"I wasn't always sure myself," she said, "unless they were together.
+Leastways, not for a day or two after they came home from sea. And now
+it seems to me that Jack is more like poor Jim, as I remember him, than
+he ever was, for Jim was always more quiet, as if he were thinking."
+
+I told her I thought so, too. We passed the gate and went into the next
+field, walking side by side. Then she turned her head to look for Jack,
+but he wasn't in sight. I shan't forget what she said next.
+
+"Are you sure now?" she asked.
+
+I stood stock-still, and she went on a step, and then turned and looked
+at me. We must have looked at each other while you could count five or
+six.
+
+"I know it's silly," she went on, "it's silly, and it's awful, too, and
+I have got no right to think it, but sometimes I can't help it. You see
+it was always Jack I meant to marry."
+
+"Yes," I said stupidly, "I suppose so."
+
+She waited a minute, and began walking on slowly before she went on
+again.
+
+"I am talking to you as if you were an old friend, captain, and I have
+only known you five minutes. It was Jack I meant to marry, but now he is
+so like the other one."
+
+When a woman gets a wrong idea into her head, there is only one way to
+make her tired of it, and that is to agree with her. That's what I did,
+and she went on talking the same way for a little while, and I kept on
+agreeing and agreeing until she turned round on me.
+
+"You know you don't believe what you say," she said, and laughed. "You
+know that Jack is Jack, right enough; and it's Jack I am going to
+marry."
+
+Of course I said so, for I didn't care whether she thought me a weak
+creature or not. I wasn't going to say a word that could interfere with
+her happiness, and I didn't intend to go back on Jack Benton; but I
+remembered what he had said when he left the ship in Havana: that it
+wasn't his fault.
+
+"All the same," Miss Mamie went on, as a woman will, without realising
+what she was saying, "all the same, I wish I had seen it happen. Then I
+should know."
+
+Next minute she knew that she didn't mean that, and was afraid that I
+would think her heartless, and began to explain that she would really
+rather have died herself than have seen poor Jim go overboard. Women
+haven't got much sense, anyhow. All the same, I wondered how she could
+marry Jack if she had a doubt that he might be Jim after all. I suppose
+she had really got used to him since he had given up the sea and had
+stayed ashore, and she cared for him.
+
+Before long we heard Jack coming up behind us, for we had walked very
+slowly to wait for him.
+
+"Promise not to tell anybody what I said, captain," said Mamie, as girls
+do as soon as they have told their secrets.
+
+Anyhow, I know I never did tell any one but you. This is the first time
+I have talked of all that, the first time since I took the train from
+that place. I am not going to tell you all about the day. Miss Mamie
+introduced me to her mother, who was a quiet, hard-faced old New England
+farmer's widow, and to her cousins and relations; and there were plenty
+of them, too, at dinner, and there was the parson besides. He was what
+they call a Hard-shell Baptist in those parts, with a long, shaven upper
+lip and a whacking appetite, and a sort of superior look, as if he
+didn't expect to see many of us hereafter--the way a New York pilot
+looks round, and orders things about when he boards an Italian
+cargo-dragger, as if the ship weren't up to much anyway, though it was
+his business to see that she didn't get aground. That's the way a good
+many parsons look, I think. He said grace as if he were ordering the men
+to sheet home the topgallant-sail and get the helm up. After dinner we
+went out on the piazza, for it was warm autumn weather; and the young
+folks went off in pairs along the beach road, and the tide had turned
+and was beginning to come in. The morning had been clear and fine, but
+by four o'clock it began to look like a fog, and the damp came up out of
+the sea and settled on everything. Jack said he'd go down to his cottage
+and have a last look, for the wedding was to be at five o'clock, or soon
+after, and he wanted to light the lights, so as to have things look
+cheerful.
+
+"I will just take a last look," he said again, as we reached the house.
+We went in, and he offered me another cigar, and I lit it and sat down
+in the parlour. I could hear him moving about, first in the kitchen and
+then upstairs, and then I heard him in the kitchen again; and then
+before I knew anything I heard somebody moving upstairs again. I knew he
+couldn't have got up those stairs as quick as that. He came into the
+parlour, and he took a cigar himself, and while he was lighting it I
+heard those steps again overhead. His hand shook, and he dropped the
+match.
+
+"Have you got in somebody to help?" I asked.
+
+"No," Jack answered sharply, and struck another match.
+
+"There's somebody upstairs, Jack," I said. "Don't you hear footsteps?"
+
+"It's the wind, captain," Jack answered; but I could see he was
+trembling.
+
+"That isn't any wind, Jack," I said; "it's still and foggy. I'm sure
+there's somebody upstairs."
+
+"If you are so sure of it, you'd better go and see for yourself,
+captain," Jack answered, almost angrily.
+
+He was angry because he was frightened. I left him before the fireplace,
+and went upstairs. There was no power on earth that could make me
+believe I hadn't heard a man's footsteps overhead. I knew there was
+somebody there. But there wasn't. I went into the bedroom, and it was
+all quiet, and the evening light was streaming in, reddish through the
+foggy air; and I went out on the landing and looked in the little back
+room that was meant for a servant-girl or a child. And as I came back
+again I saw that the door of the other room was wide open, though I knew
+Jack had locked it. He had said the lock was no good. I looked in. It
+was a room as big as the bedroom, but almost dark, for it had shutters,
+and they were closed. There was a musty smell, as of old gear, and I
+could make out that the floor was littered with sea-chests, and that
+there were oilskins and such stuff piled on the bed. But I still
+believed that there was somebody upstairs, and I went in and struck a
+match and looked round. I could see the four walls and the shabby old
+paper, an iron bed and a cracked looking-glass, and the stuff on the
+floor. But there was nobody there. So I put out the match, and came out
+and shut the door and turned the key. Now, what I am telling you is the
+truth. When I had turned the key, I heard footsteps walking away from
+the door inside the room. Then I felt queer for a minute, and when I
+went downstairs I looked behind me, as the men at the wheel used to look
+behind them on board the _Helen B._
+
+Jack was already outside on the steps, smoking. I have an idea that he
+didn't like to stay inside alone.
+
+"Well?" he asked, trying to seem careless.
+
+"I didn't find anybody," I answered, "but I heard somebody moving
+about."
+
+"I told you it was the wind," said Jack contemptuously. "I ought to
+know, for I live here, and I hear it often."
+
+There was nothing to be said to that, so we began to walk down toward
+the beach. Jack said there wasn't any hurry, as it would take Miss Mamie
+some time to dress for the wedding. So we strolled along, and the sun
+was setting through the fog, and the tide was coming in. I knew the
+moon was full, and that when she rose the fog would roll away from the
+land, as it does sometimes. I felt that Jack didn't like my having heard
+that noise, so I talked of other things, and asked him about his
+prospects, and before long we were chatting as pleasantly as possible.
+
+I haven't been at many weddings in my life, and I don't suppose you
+have, but that one seemed to me to be all right until it was pretty near
+over; and then, I don't know whether it was part of the ceremony or not,
+but Jack put out his hand and took Mamie's and held it a minute, and
+looked at her, while the parson was still speaking.
+
+Mamie turned as white as a sheet and screamed. It wasn't a loud scream,
+but just a sort of stifled little shriek, as if she were half frightened
+to death; and the parson stopped, and asked her what was the matter, and
+the family gathered round.
+
+"Your hand's like ice," said Mamie to Jack, "and it's all wet!"
+
+She kept looking at it, as she got hold of herself again.
+
+"It don't feel cold to me," said Jack, and he held the back of his hand
+against his cheek. "Try it again."
+
+Mamie held out hers, and touched the back of his hand, timidly at
+first, and then took hold of it.
+
+"Why, that's funny," she said.
+
+"She's been as nervous as a witch all day," said Mrs. Brewster severely.
+
+"It is natural," said the parson, "that young Mrs. Benton should
+experience a little agitation at such a moment."
+
+Most of the bride's relations lived at a distance, and were busy people,
+so it had been arranged that the dinner we'd had in the middle of the
+day was to take the place of a dinner afterwards, and that we should
+just have a bite after the wedding was over, and then that everybody
+should go home, and the young couple would walk down to the cottage by
+themselves. When I looked out I could see the light burning brightly in
+Jack's cottage, a quarter of a mile away. I said I didn't think I could
+get any train to take me back before half-past nine, but Mrs. Brewster
+begged me to stay until it was time, as she said her daughter would want
+to take off her wedding dress before she went home; for she had put on
+something white with a wreath that was very pretty, and she couldn't
+walk home like that, could she?
+
+So when we had all had a little supper the party began to break up, and
+when they were all gone Mrs. Brewster and Mamie went upstairs, and Jack
+and I went out on the piazza to have a smoke, as the old lady didn't
+like tobacco in the house.
+
+The full moon had risen now, and it was behind me as I looked down
+toward Jack's cottage, so that everything was clear and white, and there
+was only the light burning in the window. The fog had rolled down to the
+water's edge, and a little beyond, for the tide was high, or nearly, and
+was lapping up over the last reach of sand within fifty feet of the
+beach road.
+
+Jack didn't say much as we sat smoking, but he thanked me for coming to
+his wedding, and I told him I hoped he would be happy, and so I did. I
+daresay both of us were thinking of those footsteps upstairs, just then,
+and that the house wouldn't seem so lonely with a woman in it. By and by
+we heard Mamie's voice talking to her mother on the stairs, and in a
+minute she was ready to go. She had put on again the dress she had worn
+in the morning.
+
+Well, they were ready to go now. It was all very quiet after the day's
+excitement, and I knew they would like to walk down that path alone now
+that they were man and wife at last. I bade them good-night, although
+Jack made a show of pressing me to go with them by the path as far as
+the cottage, instead of going to the station by the beach road. It was
+all very quiet, and it seemed to me a sensible way of getting married;
+and when Mamie kissed her mother good-night, I just looked the other
+way, and knocked my ashes over the rail of the piazza. So they started
+down the straight path to Jack's cottage, and I waited a minute with
+Mrs. Brewster, looking after them, before taking my hat to go. They
+walked side by side, a little shyly at first, and then I saw Jack put
+his arm round her waist. As I looked he was on her left and I saw the
+outline of the two figures very distinctly against the moonlight on the
+path; and the shadow on Mamie's right was broad and black as ink, and it
+moved along, lengthening and shortening with the unevenness of the
+ground beside the path.
+
+I thanked Mrs. Brewster, and bade her good-night; and though she was a
+hard New England woman, her voice trembled a little as she answered, but
+being a sensible person, she went in and shut the door behind her as I
+stepped out on the path. I looked after the couple in the distance a
+last time, meaning to go down to the road, so as not to overtake them;
+but when I had made a few steps I stopped and looked again, for I knew I
+had seen something queer, though I had only realised it afterwards. I
+looked again, and it was plain enough now; and I stood stock-still,
+staring at what I saw. Mamie was walking between two men. The second man
+was just the same height as Jack, both being about a half a head taller
+than she; Jack on her left in his black tail-coat and round hat, and the
+other man on her right--well, he was a sailor-man in wet oilskins. I
+could see the moonlight shining on the water that ran down him, and on
+the little puddle that had settled where the flap of his sou'wester was
+turned up behind: and one of his wet, shiny arms was round Mamie's
+waist, just above Jack's. I was fast to the spot where I stood, and for
+a minute I thought I was crazy. We'd had nothing but some cider for
+dinner, and tea in the evening, otherwise I'd have thought something had
+got into my head, though I was never drunk in my life. It was more like
+a bad dream after that.
+
+I was glad Mrs. Brewster had gone in. As for me, I couldn't help
+following the three, in a sort of wonder to see what would happen, to
+see whether the sailor-man in his wet togs would just melt away into the
+moonshine. But he didn't.
+
+I moved slowly, and I remembered afterwards that I walked on the grass,
+instead of on the path, as if I were afraid they might hear me coming. I
+suppose it all happened in less than five minutes after that, but it
+seemed as if it must have taken an hour. Neither Jack nor Mamie seemed
+to notice the sailor. She didn't seem to know that his wet arm was round
+her, and little by little they got near the cottage, and I wasn't a
+hundred yards from them when they reached the door. Something made me
+stand still then. Perhaps it was fright, for I saw everything that
+happened just as I see you now.
+
+Mamie set her foot on the step to go up, and as she went forward, I saw
+the sailor slowly lock his arm in Jack's, and Jack didn't move to go up.
+Then Mamie turned round on the step, and they all three stood that way
+for a second or two. She cried out then--I heard a man cry like that
+once, when his arm was taken off by a steam-crane--and she fell back in
+a heap on the little piazza.
+
+I tried to jump forward, but I couldn't move, and I felt my hair rising
+under my hat. The sailor turned slowly where he stood, and swung Jack
+round by the arm steadily and easily, and began to walk him down the
+pathway from the house. He walked him straight down that path, as
+steadily as Fate; and all the time I saw the moonlight shining on his
+wet oilskins. He walked him through the gate, and across the beach road,
+and out upon the wet sand, where the tide was high. Then I got my breath
+with a gulp, and ran for them across the grass, and vaulted over the
+fence, and stumbled across the road. But when I felt the sand under my
+feet, the two were at the water's edge; and when I reached the water
+they were far out, and up to their waists; and I saw that Jack Benton's
+head had fallen forward on his breast, and his free arm hung limp beside
+him, while his dead brother steadily marched him to his death. The
+moonlight was on the dark water, but the fog-bank was white beyond, and
+I saw them against it; and they went slowly and steadily down. The water
+was up to their armpits, and then up to their shoulders, and then I saw
+it rise up to the black rim of Jack's hat. But they never wavered; and
+the two heads went straight on, straight on, till they were under, and
+there was just a ripple in the moonlight where Jack had been.
+
+It has been on my mind to tell you that story, whenever I got a chance.
+You have known me, man and boy, a good many years; and I thought I would
+like to hear your opinion. Yes, that's what I always thought. It wasn't
+Jim that went overboard; it was Jack, and Jim just let him go when he
+might have saved him; and then Jim passed himself off for Jack with us,
+and with the girl. If that's what happened, he got what he deserved.
+People said the next day that Mamie found it out as they reached the
+house, and that her husband just walked out into the sea, and drowned
+himself; and they would have blamed me for not stopping him if they'd
+known that I was there. But I never told what I had seen, for they
+wouldn't have believed me. I just let them think I had come too late.
+
+When I reached the cottage and lifted Mamie up, she was raving mad. She
+got better afterwards, but she was never right in her head again.
+
+Oh, you want to know if they found Jack's body? I don't know whether it
+was his, but I read in a paper at a Southern port where I was with my
+new ship that two dead bodies had come ashore in a gale down East, in
+pretty bad shape. They were locked together, and one was a skeleton in
+oilskins.
+
+
+
+
+FOR THE BLOOD IS THE LIFE
+
+
+We had dined at sunset on the broad roof of the old tower, because it
+was cooler there during the great heat of summer. Besides, the little
+kitchen was built at one corner of the great square platform, which made
+it more convenient than if the dishes had to be carried down the steep
+stone steps, broken in places and everywhere worn with age. The tower
+was one of those built all down the west coast of Calabria by the
+Emperor Charles V. early in the sixteenth century, to keep off the
+Barbary pirates, when the unbelievers were allied with Francis I.
+against the Emperor and the Church. They have gone to ruin, a few still
+stand intact, and mine is one of the largest. How it came into my
+possession ten years ago, and why I spend a part of each year in it, are
+matters which do not concern this tale. The tower stands in one of the
+loneliest spots in Southern Italy, at the extremity of a curving rocky
+promontory, which forms a small but safe natural harbour at the southern
+extremity of the Gulf of Policastro, and just north of Cape Scalea, the
+birthplace of Judas Iscariot, according to the old local legend. The
+tower stands alone on this hooked spur of the rock, and there is not a
+house to be seen within three miles of it. When I go there I take a
+couple of sailors, one of whom is a fair cook, and when I am away it is
+in charge of a gnome-like little being who was once a miner and who
+attached himself to me long ago.
+
+My friend, who sometimes visits me in my summer solitude, is an artist
+by profession, a Scandinavian by birth, and a cosmopolitan by force of
+circumstances. We had dined at sunset; the sunset glow had reddened and
+faded again, and the evening purple steeped the vast chain of the
+mountains that embrace the deep gulf to eastward and rear themselves
+higher and higher toward the south. It was hot, and we sat at the
+landward corner of the platform, waiting for the night breeze to come
+down from the lower hills. The colour sank out of the air, there was a
+little interval of deep-grey twilight, and a lamp sent a yellow streak
+from the open door of the kitchen, where the men were getting their
+supper.
+
+Then the moon rose suddenly above the crest of the promontory, flooding
+the platform and lighting up every little spur of rock and knoll of
+grass below us, down to the edge of the motionless water. My friend
+lighted his pipe and sat looking at a spot on the hillside. I knew that
+he was looking at it, and for a long time past I had wondered whether he
+would ever see anything there that would fix his attention. I knew that
+spot well. It was clear that he was interested at last, though it was a
+long time before he spoke. Like most painters, he trusts to his own
+eyesight, as a lion trusts his strength and a stag his speed, and he is
+always disturbed when he cannot reconcile what he sees with what he
+believes that he ought to see.
+
+"It's strange," he said. "Do you see that little mound just on this side
+of the boulder?"
+
+"Yes," I said, and I guessed what was coming.
+
+"It looks like a grave," observed Holger.
+
+"Very true. It does look like a grave."
+
+"Yes," continued my friend, his eyes still fixed on the spot. "But the
+strange thing is that I see the body lying on the top of it. Of course,"
+continued Holger, turning his head on one side as artists do, "it must
+be an effect of light. In the first place, it is not a grave at all.
+Secondly, if it were, the body would be inside and not outside.
+Therefore, it's an effect of the moonlight. Don't you see it?"
+
+"Perfectly; I always see it on moonlight nights."
+
+"It doesn't seem to interest you much," said Holger.
+
+"On the contrary, it does interest me, though I am used to it. You're
+not so far wrong, either. The mound is really a grave."
+
+"Nonsense!" cried Holger, incredulously. "I suppose you'll tell me what
+I see lying on it is really a corpse!"
+
+"No," I answered, "it's not. I know, because I have taken the trouble to
+go down and see."
+
+"Then what is it?" asked Holger.
+
+"It's nothing."
+
+"You mean that it's an effect of light, I suppose?"
+
+"Perhaps it is. But the inexplicable part of the matter is that it makes
+no difference whether the moon is rising or setting, or waxing or
+waning. If there's any moonlight at all, from east or west or overhead,
+so long as it shines on the grave you can see the outline of the body on
+top."
+
+Holger stirred up his pipe with the point of his knife, and then used
+his finger for a stopper. When the tobacco burned well he rose from his
+chair.
+
+"If you don't mind," he said, "I'll go down and take a look at it."
+
+He left me, crossed the roof, and disappeared down the dark steps. I did
+not move, but sat looking down until he came out of the tower below. I
+heard him humming an old Danish song as he crossed the open space in the
+bright moonlight, going straight to the mysterious mound. When he was
+ten paces from it, Holger stopped short, made two steps forward, and
+then three or four backward, and then stopped again. I know what that
+meant. He had reached the spot where the Thing ceased to be
+visible--where, as he would have said, the effect of light changed.
+
+Then he went on till he reached the mound and stood upon it. I could see
+the Thing still, but it was no longer lying down; it was on its knees
+now, winding its white arms round Holger's body and looking up into his
+face. A cool breeze stirred my hair at that moment, as the night wind
+began to come down from the hills, but it felt like a breath from
+another world.
+
+The Thing seemed to be trying to climb to its feet, helping itself up by
+Holger's body while he stood upright, quite unconscious of it and
+apparently looking toward the tower, which is very picturesque when the
+moonlight falls upon it on that side.
+
+"Come along!" I shouted. "Don't stay there all night!"
+
+It seemed to me that he moved reluctantly as he stepped from the mound,
+or else with difficulty. That was it. The Thing's arms were still round
+his waist, but its feet could not leave the grave. As he came slowly
+forward it was drawn and lengthened like a wreath of mist, thin and
+white, till I saw distinctly that Holger shook himself, as a man does
+who feels a chill. At the same instant a little wail of pain came to me
+on the breeze--it might have been the cry of the small owl that lives
+among the rocks--and the misty presence floated swiftly back from
+Holger's advancing figure and lay once more at its length upon the
+mound.
+
+Again I felt the cool breeze in my hair, and this time an icy thrill of
+dread ran down my spine. I remembered very well that I had once gone
+down there alone in the moonlight; that presently, being near, I had
+seen nothing; that, like Holger, I had gone and had stood upon the
+mound; and I remembered how, when I came back, sure that there was
+nothing there, I had felt the sudden conviction that there was something
+after all if I would only look behind me. I remembered the strong
+temptation to look back, a temptation I had resisted as unworthy of a
+man of sense, until, to get rid of it, I had shaken myself just as
+Holger did.
+
+And now I knew that those white, misty arms had been round me too; I
+knew it in a flash, and I shuddered as I remembered that I had heard the
+night owl then too. But it had not been the night owl. It was the cry of
+the Thing.
+
+I refilled my pipe and poured out a cup of strong southern wine; in less
+than a minute Holger was seated beside me again.
+
+"Of course there's nothing there," he said, "but it's creepy, all the
+same. Do you know, when I was coming back I was so sure that there was
+something behind me that I wanted to turn round and look? It was an
+effort not to."
+
+He laughed a little, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and poured
+himself out some wine. For a while neither of us spoke, and the moon
+rose higher, and we both looked at the Thing that lay on the mound.
+
+"You might make a story about that," said Holger after a long time.
+
+"There is one," I answered. "If you're not sleepy, I'll tell it to you."
+
+"Go ahead," said Holger, who likes stories.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Old Alario was dying up there in the village behind the hill. You
+remember him, I have no doubt. They say that he made his money by
+selling sham jewellery in South America, and escaped with his gains when
+he was found out. Like all those fellows, if they bring anything back
+with them, he at once set to work to enlarge his house, and as there are
+no masons here, he sent all the way to Paola for two workmen. They were
+a rough-looking pair of scoundrels--a Neapolitan who had lost one eye
+and a Sicilian with an old scar half an inch deep across his left cheek.
+I often saw them, for on Sundays they used to come down here and fish
+off the rocks. When Alario caught the fever that killed him the masons
+were still at work. As he had agreed that part of their pay should be
+their board and lodging, he made them sleep in the house. His wife was
+dead, and he had an only son called Angelo, who was a much better sort
+than himself. Angelo was to marry the daughter of the richest man in the
+village, and, strange to say, though the marriage was arranged by their
+parents, the young people were said to be in love with each other.
+
+For that matter, the whole village was in love with Angelo, and among
+the rest a wild, good-looking creature called Cristina, who was more
+like a gipsy than any girl I ever saw about here. She had very red lips
+and very black eyes, she was built like a greyhound, and had the tongue
+of the devil. But Angelo did not care a straw for her. He was rather a
+simple-minded fellow, quite different from his old scoundrel of a
+father, and under what I should call normal circumstances I really
+believe that he would never have looked at any girl except the nice
+plump little creature, with a fat dowry, whom his father meant him to
+marry. But things turned up which were neither normal nor natural.
+
+On the other hand, a very handsome young shepherd from the hills above
+Maratea was in love with Cristina, who seems to have been quite
+indifferent to him. Cristina had no regular means of subsistence, but
+she was a good girl and willing to do any work or go on errands to any
+distance for the sake of a loaf of bread or a mess of beans, and
+permission to sleep under cover. She was especially glad when she could
+get something to do about the house of Angelo's father. There is no
+doctor in the village, and when the neighbours saw that old Alario was
+dying they sent Cristina to Scalea to fetch one. That was late in the
+afternoon, and if they had waited so long, it was because the dying
+miser refused to allow any such extravagance while he was able to speak.
+But while Cristina was gone matters grew rapidly worse, the priest was
+brought to the bedside, and when he had done what he could he gave it as
+his opinion to the bystanders that the old man was dead, and left the
+house.
+
+You know these people. They have a physical horror of death. Until the
+priest spoke, the room had been full of people. The words were hardly
+out of his mouth before it was empty. It was night now. They hurried
+down the dark steps and out into the street.
+
+Angelo, as I have said, was away, Cristina had not come back--the simple
+woman-servant who had nursed the sick man fled with the rest, and the
+body was left alone in the flickering light of the earthen oil lamp.
+
+Five minutes later two men looked in cautiously and crept forward toward
+the bed. They were the one-eyed Neapolitan mason and his Sicilian
+companion. They knew what they wanted. In a moment they had dragged from
+under the bed a small but heavy iron-bound box, and long before any one
+thought of coming back to the dead man they had left the house and the
+village under cover of the darkness. It was easy enough, for Alario's
+house is the last toward the gorge which leads down here, and the
+thieves merely went out by the back door, got over the stone wall, and
+had nothing to risk after that except the possibility of meeting some
+belated countryman, which was very small indeed, since few of the people
+use that path. They had a mattock and shovel, and they made their way
+here without accident.
+
+I am telling you this story as it must have happened, for, of course,
+there were no witnesses to this part of it. The men brought the box down
+by the gorge, intending to bury it until they should be able to come
+back and take it away in a boat. They must have been clever enough to
+guess that some of the money would be in paper notes, for they would
+otherwise have buried it on the beach in the wet sand, where it would
+have been much safer. But the paper would have rotted if they had been
+obliged to leave it there long, so they dug their hole down there, close
+to that boulder. Yes, just where the mound is now.
+
+Cristina did not find the doctor in Scalea, for he had been sent for
+from a place up the valley, halfway to San Domenico. If she had found
+him, he would have come on his mule by the upper road, which is smoother
+but much longer. But Cristina took the short cut by the rocks, which
+passes about fifty feet above the mound, and goes round that corner. The
+men were digging when she passed, and she heard them at work. It would
+not have been like her to go by without finding out what the noise was,
+for she was never afraid of anything in her life, and, besides, the
+fishermen sometimes come ashore here at night to get a stone for an
+anchor or to gather sticks to make a little fire. The night was dark,
+and Cristina probably came close to the two men before she could see
+what they were doing. She knew them, of course, and they knew her, and
+understood instantly that they were in her power. There was only one
+thing to be done for their safety, and they did it. They knocked her on
+the head, they dug the hole deep, and they buried her quickly with the
+iron-bound chest. They must have understood that their only chance of
+escaping suspicion lay in getting back to the village before their
+absence was noticed, for they returned immediately, and were found half
+an hour later gossiping quietly with the man who was making Alario's
+coffin. He was a crony of theirs, and had been working at the repairs in
+the old man's house. So far as I have been able to make out, the only
+persons who were supposed to know where Alario kept his treasure were
+Angelo and the one woman-servant I have mentioned. Angelo was away; it
+was the woman who discovered the theft.
+
+It is easy enough to understand why no one else knew where the money
+was. The old man kept his door locked and the key in his pocket when he
+was out, and did not let the woman enter to clean the place unless he
+was there himself. The whole village knew that he had money somewhere,
+however, and the masons had probably discovered the whereabouts of the
+chest by climbing in at the window in his absence. If the old man had
+not been delirious until he lost consciousness, he would have been in
+frightful agony of mind for his riches. The faithful woman-servant
+forgot their existence only for a few moments when she fled with the
+rest, overcome by the horror of death. Twenty minutes had not passed
+before she returned with the two hideous old hags who are always called
+in to prepare the dead for burial. Even then she had not at first the
+courage to go near the bed with them, but she made a pretence of
+dropping something, went down on her knees as if to find it, and looked
+under the bedstead. The walls of the room were newly whitewashed down to
+the floor, and she saw at a glance that the chest was gone. It had been
+there in the afternoon, it had therefore been stolen in the short
+interval since she had left the room.
+
+There are no carabineers stationed in the village; there is not so much
+as a municipal watchman, for there is no municipality. There never was
+such a place, I believe. Scalea is supposed to look after it in some
+mysterious way, and it takes a couple of hours to get anybody from
+there. As the old woman had lived in the village all her life, it did
+not even occur to her to apply to any civil authority for help. She
+simply set up a howl and ran through the village in the dark, screaming
+out that her dead master's house had been robbed. Many of the people
+looked out, but at first no one seemed inclined to help her. Most of
+them, judging her by themselves, whispered to each other that she had
+probably stolen the money herself. The first man to move was the father
+of the girl whom Angelo was to marry; having collected his household,
+all of whom felt a personal interest in the wealth which was to have
+come into the family, he declared it to be his opinion that the chest
+had been stolen by the two journeyman masons who lodged in the house. He
+headed a search for them, which naturally began in Alario's house and
+ended in the carpenter's workshop, where the thieves were found
+discussing a measure of wine with the carpenter over the half-finished
+coffin, by the light of one earthen lamp filled with oil and tallow. The
+search party at once accused the delinquents of the crime, and
+threatened to lock them up in the cellar till the carabineers could be
+fetched from Scalea. The two men looked at each other for one moment,
+and then without the slightest hesitation they put out the single light,
+seized the unfinished coffin between them, and using it as a sort of
+battering ram, dashed upon their assailants in the dark. In a few
+moments they were beyond pursuit.
+
+That is the end of the first part of the story. The treasure had
+disappeared, and as no trace of it could be found the people naturally
+supposed that the thieves had succeeded in carrying it off. The old man
+was buried, and when Angelo came back at last he had to borrow money to
+pay for the miserable funeral, and had some difficulty in doing so. He
+hardly needed to be told that in losing his inheritance he had lost his
+bride. In this part of the world marriages are made on strictly
+business principles, and if the promised cash is not forthcoming on the
+appointed day the bride or the bridegroom whose parents have failed to
+produce it may as well take themselves off, for there will be no
+wedding. Poor Angelo knew that well enough. His father had been
+possessed of hardly any land, and now that the hard cash which he had
+brought from South America was gone, there was nothing left but debts
+for the building materials that were to have been used for enlarging and
+improving the old house. Angelo was beggared, and the nice plump little
+creature who was to have been his turned up her nose at him in the most
+approved fashion. As for Cristina, it was several days before she was
+missed, for no one remembered that she had been sent to Scalea for the
+doctor, who had never come. She often disappeared in the same way for
+days together, when she could find a little work here and there at the
+distant farms among the hills. But when she did not come back at all,
+people began to wonder, and at last made up their minds that she had
+connived with the masons and had escaped with them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+_I paused and emptied my glass._
+
+_"That sort of thing could not happen anywhere else," observed Holger,
+filling his everlasting pipe again. "It is wonderful what a natural
+charm there is about murder and sudden death in a romantic country like
+this. Deeds that would be simply brutal and disgusting anywhere else
+become dramatic and mysterious because this is Italy and we are living
+in a genuine tower of Charles V. built against genuine Barbary
+pirates."_
+
+_"There's something in that" I admitted. Holger is the most romantic man
+in the world inside of himself, but he always thinks it necessary to
+explain why he feels anything._
+
+_"I suppose they found the poor girl's body with the box," he said
+presently._
+
+_"As it seems to interest you," I answered, "I'll tell you the rest of
+the story."_
+
+_The moon had risen high by this time; the outline of the Thing on the
+mound was clearer to our eyes than before._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The village very soon settled down to its small, dull life. No one
+missed old Alario, who had been away so much on his voyages to South
+America that he had never been a familiar figure in his native place.
+Angelo lived in the half-finished house, and because he had no money to
+pay the old woman-servant she would not stay with him, but once in a
+long time she would come and wash a shirt for him for old acquaintance'
+sake. Besides the house, he had inherited a small patch of ground at
+some distance from the village; he tried to cultivate it, but he had no
+heart in the work, for he knew he could never pay the taxes on it and on
+the house, which would certainly be confiscated by the Government, or
+seized for the debt of the building material, which the man who had
+supplied it refused to take back.
+
+Angelo was very unhappy. So long as his father had been alive and rich,
+every girl in the village had been in love with him; but that was all
+changed now. It had been pleasant to be admired and courted, and invited
+to drink wine by fathers who had girls to marry. It was hard to be
+stared at coldly, and sometimes laughed at because he had been robbed of
+his inheritance. He cooked his miserable meals for himself, and from
+being sad became melancholy and morose.
+
+At twilight, when the day's work was done, instead of hanging about in
+the open space before the church with young fellows of his own age, he
+took to wandering in lonely places on the outskirts of the village till
+it was quite dark. Then he slunk home and went to bed to save the
+expense of a light. But in those lonely twilight hours he began to have
+strange waking dreams. He was not always alone, for often when he sat on
+the stump of a tree, where the narrow path turns down the gorge, he was
+sure that a woman came up noiselessly over the rough stones, as if her
+feet were bare; and she stood under a clump of chestnut trees only half
+a dozen yards down the path, and beckoned to him without speaking.
+Though she was in the shadow he knew that her lips were red, and that
+when they parted a little and smiled at him she showed two small sharp
+teeth. He knew this at first rather than saw it, and he knew that it was
+Cristina, and that she was dead. Yet he was not afraid; he only wondered
+whether it was a dream, for he thought that if he had been awake he
+should have been frightened.
+
+Besides, the dead woman had red lips, and that could only happen in a
+dream. Whenever he went near the gorge after sunset she was already
+there waiting for him, or else she very soon appeared, and he began to
+be sure that she came a little nearer to him every day. At first he had
+only been sure of her blood-red mouth, but now each feature grew
+distinct, and the pale face looked at him with deep and hungry eyes.
+
+It was the eyes that grew dim. Little by little he came to know that
+some day the dream would not end when he turned away to go home, but
+would lead him down the gorge out of which the vision rose. She was
+nearer now when she beckoned to him. Her cheeks were not livid like
+those of the dead, but pale with starvation, with the furious and
+unappeased physical hunger of her eyes that devoured him. They feasted
+on his soul and cast a spell over him, and at last they were close to
+his own and held him. He could not tell whether her breath was as hot as
+fire or as cold as ice; he could not tell whether her red lips burned
+his or froze them, or whether her five fingers on his wrists seared
+scorching scars or bit his flesh like frost; he could not tell whether
+he was awake or asleep, whether she was alive or dead, but he knew that
+she loved him, she alone of all creatures, earthly or unearthly, and her
+spell had power over him.
+
+When the moon rose high that night the shadow of that Thing was not
+alone down there upon the mound.
+
+Angelo awoke in the cool dawn, drenched with dew and chilled through
+flesh, and blood, and bone. He opened his eyes to the faint grey light,
+and saw the stars still shining overhead. He was very weak, and his
+heart was beating so slowly that he was almost like a man fainting.
+Slowly he turned his head on the mound, as on a pillow, but the other
+face was not there. Fear seized him suddenly, a fear unspeakable and
+unknown; he sprang to his feet and fled up the gorge, and he never
+looked behind him until he reached the door of the house on the
+outskirts of the village. Drearily he went to his work that day, and
+wearily the hours dragged themselves after the sun, till at last he
+touched the sea and sank, and the great sharp hills above Maratea turned
+purple against the dove-coloured eastern sky.
+
+Angelo shouldered his heavy hoe and left the field. He felt less tired
+now than in the morning when he had begun to work, but he promised
+himself that he would go home without lingering by the gorge, and eat
+the best supper he could get himself, and sleep all night in his bed
+like a Christian man. Not again would he be tempted down the narrow way
+by a shadow with red lips and icy breath; not again would he dream that
+dream of terror and delight. He was near the village now; it was half an
+hour since the sun had set, and the cracked church bell sent little
+discordant echoes across the rocks and ravines to tell all good people
+that the day was done. Angelo stood still a moment where the path
+forked, where it led toward the village on the left, and down to the
+gorge on the right, where a clump of chestnut trees overhung the narrow
+way. He stood still a minute, lifting his battered hat from his head and
+gazing at the fast-fading sea westward, and his lips moved as he
+silently repeated the familiar evening prayer. His lips moved, but the
+words that followed them in his brain lost their meaning and turned into
+others, and ended in a name that he spoke aloud--Cristina! With the
+name, the tension of his will relaxed suddenly, reality went out and the
+dream took him again, and bore him on swiftly and surely like a man
+walking in his sleep, down, down, by the steep path in the gathering
+darkness. And as she glided beside him, Cristina whispered strange,
+sweet things in his ear, which somehow, if he had been awake, he knew
+that he could not quite have understood; but now they were the most
+wonderful words he had ever heard in his life. And she kissed him also,
+but not upon his mouth. He felt her sharp kisses upon his white throat,
+and he knew that her lips were red. So the wild dream sped on through
+twilight and darkness and moonrise, and all the glory of the summer's
+night. But in the chilly dawn he lay as one half dead upon the mound
+down there, recalling and not recalling, drained of his blood, yet
+strangely longing to give those red lips more. Then came the fear, the
+awful nameless panic, the mortal horror that guards the confines of the
+world we see not, neither know of as we know of other things, but which
+we feel when its icy chill freezes our bones and stirs our hair with the
+touch of a ghostly hand. Once more Angelo sprang from the mound and
+fled up the gorge in the breaking day, but his step was less sure this
+time, and he panted for breath as he ran; and when he came to the bright
+spring of water that rises halfway up the hillside, he dropped upon his
+knees and hands and plunged his whole face in and drank as he had never
+drunk before--for it was the thirst of the wounded man who has lain
+bleeding all night long upon the battle-field.
+
+She had him fast now, and he could not escape her, but would come to her
+every evening at dusk until she had drained him of his last drop of
+blood. It was in vain that when the day was done he tried to take
+another turning and to go home by a path that did not lead near the
+gorge. It was in vain that he made promises to himself each morning at
+dawn when he climbed the lonely way up from the shore to the village. It
+was all in vain, for when the sun sank burning into the sea, and the
+coolness of the evening stole out as from a hiding-place to delight the
+weary world, his feet turned toward the old way, and she was waiting for
+him in the shadow under the chestnut trees; and then all happened as
+before, and she fell to kissing his white throat even as she flitted
+lightly down the way, winding one arm about him. And as his blood
+failed, she grew more hungry and more thirsty every day, and every day
+when he awoke in the early dawn it was harder to rouse himself to the
+effort of climbing the steep path to the village; and when he went to
+his work his feet dragged painfully, and there was hardly strength in
+his arms to wield the heavy hoe. He scarcely spoke to any one now, but
+the people said he was "consuming himself" for love of the girl he was
+to have married when he lost his inheritance; and they laughed heartily
+at the thought, for this is not a very romantic country. At this time,
+Antonio, the man who stays here to look after the tower, returned from a
+visit to his people, who live near Salerno. He had been away all the
+time since before Alario's death and knew nothing of what had happened.
+He has told me that he came back late in the afternoon and shut himself
+up in the tower to eat and sleep, for he was very tired. It was past
+midnight when he awoke, and when he looked out the waning moon was
+rising over the shoulder of the hill. He looked out toward the mound,
+and he saw something, and he did not sleep again that night. When he
+went out again in the morning it was broad daylight, and there was
+nothing to be seen on the mound but loose stones and driven sand. Yet he
+did not go very near it; he went straight up the path to the village and
+directly to the house of the old priest.
+
+"I have seen an evil thing this night," he said; "I have seen how the
+dead drink the blood of the living. And the blood is the life."
+
+"Tell me what you have seen," said the priest in reply.
+
+Antonio told him everything he had seen.
+
+"You must bring your book and your holy water to-night," he added. "I
+will be here before sunset to go down with you, and if it pleases your
+reverence to sup with me while we wait, I will make ready."
+
+"I will come," the priest answered, "for I have read in old books of
+these strange beings which are neither quick nor dead, and which lie
+ever fresh in their graves, stealing out in the dusk to taste life and
+blood."
+
+Antonio cannot read, but he was glad to see that the priest understood
+the business; for, of course, the books must have instructed him as to
+the best means of quieting the half-living Thing for ever.
+
+So Antonio went away to his work, which consists largely in sitting on
+the shady side of the tower, when he is not perched upon a rock with a
+fishing-line catching nothing. But on that day he went twice to look at
+the mound in the bright sunlight, and he searched round and round it for
+some hole through which the being might get in and out; but he found
+none. When the sun began to sink and the air was cooler in the shadows,
+he went up to fetch the old priest, carrying a little wicker basket with
+him; and in this they placed a bottle of holy water, and the basin, and
+sprinkler, and the stole which the priest would need; and they came down
+and waited in the door of the tower till it should be dark. But while
+the light still lingered very grey and faint, they saw something moving,
+just there, two figures, a man's that walked, and a woman's that flitted
+beside him, and while her head lay on his shoulder she kissed his
+throat. The priest has told me that, too, and that his teeth chattered
+and he grasped Antonio's arm. The vision passed and disappeared into the
+shadow. Then Antonio got the leathern flask of strong liquor, which he
+kept for great occasions, and poured such a draught as made the old man
+feel almost young again; and he got the lantern, and his pick and
+shovel, and gave the priest his stole to put on and the holy water to
+carry, and they went out together toward the spot where the work was to
+be done. Antonio says that in spite of the rum his own knees shook
+together, and the priest stumbled over his Latin. For when they were yet
+a few yards from the mound the flickering light of the lantern fell upon
+Angelo's white face, unconscious as if in sleep, and on his upturned
+throat, over which a very thin red line of blood trickled down into his
+collar; and the flickering light of the lantern played upon another face
+that looked up from the feast--upon two deep, dead eyes that saw in
+spite of death--upon parted lips redder than life itself--upon two
+gleaming teeth on which glistened a rosy drop. Then the priest, good old
+man, shut his eyes tight and showered holy water before him, and his
+cracked voice rose almost to a scream; and then Antonio, who is no
+coward after all, raised his pick in one hand and the lantern in the
+other, as he sprang forward, not knowing what the end should be; and
+then he swears that he heard a woman's cry, and the Thing was gone, and
+Angelo lay alone on the mound unconscious, with the red line on his
+throat and the beads of deathly sweat on his cold forehead. They lifted
+him, half-dead as he was, and laid him on the ground close by; then
+Antonio went to work, and the priest helped him, though he was old and
+could not do much; and they dug deep, and at last Antonio, standing in
+the grave, stooped down with his lantern to see what he might see.
+
+His hair used to be dark brown, with grizzled streaks about the temples;
+in less than a month from that day he was as grey as a badger. He was a
+miner when he was young, and most of these fellows have seen ugly
+sights now and then, when accidents have happened, but he had never seen
+what he saw that night--that Thing which is neither alive nor dead, that
+Thing that will abide neither above ground nor in the grave. Antonio had
+brought something with him which the priest had not noticed. He had made
+it that afternoon--a sharp stake shaped from a piece of tough old
+driftwood. He had it with him now, and he had his heavy pick, and he had
+taken the lantern down into the grave. I don't think any power on earth
+could make him speak of what happened then, and the old priest was too
+frightened to look in. He says he heard Antonio breathing like a wild
+beast, and moving as if he were fighting with something almost as strong
+as himself; and he heard an evil sound also, with blows, as of something
+violently driven through flesh and bone; and then the most awful sound
+of all--a woman's shriek, the unearthly scream of a woman neither dead
+nor alive, but buried deep for many days. And he, the poor old priest,
+could only rock himself as he knelt there in the sand, crying aloud his
+prayers and exorcisms to drown these dreadful sounds. Then suddenly a
+small iron-bound chest was thrown up and rolled over against the old
+man's knee, and in a moment more Antonio was beside him, his face as
+white as tallow in the flickering light of the lantern, shovelling the
+sand and pebbles into the grave with furious haste, and looking over the
+edge till the pit was half full; and the priest said that there was much
+fresh blood on Antonio's hands and on his clothes.
+
+
+_I had come to the end of my story. Holger finished his wine and leaned
+back in his chair._
+
+_"So Angelo got his own again," he said. "Did he marry the prim and
+plump young person to whom he had been betrothed?"_
+
+_"No; he had been badly frightened. He went to South America, and has
+not been heard of since."_
+
+_"And that poor thing's body is there still, I suppose," said Holger.
+"Is it quite dead yet, I wonder?"_
+
+_I wonder, too. But whether it be dead or alive, I should hardly care to
+see it, even in broad daylight. Antonio is as grey as a badger, and he
+has never been quite the same man since that night._
+
+
+
+
+THE UPPER BERTH
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Somebody asked for the cigars. We had talked long, and the conversation
+was beginning to languish; the tobacco smoke had got into the heavy
+curtains, the wine had got into those brains which were liable to become
+heavy, and it was already perfectly evident that, unless somebody did
+something to rouse our oppressed spirits, the meeting would soon come to
+its natural conclusion, and we, the guests, would speedily go home to
+bed, and most certainly to sleep. No one had said anything very
+remarkable; it may be that no one had anything very remarkable to say.
+Jones had given us every particular of his last hunting adventure in
+Yorkshire. Mr. Tompkins, of Boston, had explained at elaborate length
+those working principles, by the due and careful maintenance of which
+the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad not only extended its
+territory, increased its departmental influence, and transported live
+stock without starving them to death before the day of actual delivery,
+but, also, had for years succeeded in deceiving those passengers who
+bought its tickets into the fallacious belief that the corporation
+aforesaid was really able to transport human life without destroying it.
+Signor Tombola had endeavoured to persuade us, by arguments which we
+took no trouble to oppose, that the unity of his country in no way
+resembled the average modern torpedo, carefully planned, constructed
+with all the skill of the greatest European arsenals, but, when
+constructed, destined to be directed by feeble hands into a region where
+it must undoubtedly explode, unseen, unfeared, and unheard, into the
+illimitable wastes of political chaos.
+
+It is unnecessary to go into further details. The conversation had
+assumed proportions which would have bored Prometheus on his rock, which
+would have driven Tantalus to distraction, and which would have impelled
+Ixion to seek relaxation in the simple but instructive dialogues of Herr
+Ollendorff, rather than submit to the greater evil of listening to our
+talk. We had sat at table for hours; we were bored, we were tired, and
+nobody showed signs of moving.
+
+Somebody called for cigars. We all instinctively looked towards the
+speaker. Brisbane was a man of five-and-thirty years of age, and
+remarkable for those gifts which chiefly attract the attention of men.
+He was a strong man. The external proportions of his figure presented
+nothing extraordinary to the common eye, though his size was about the
+average. He was a little over six feet in height, and moderately broad
+in the shoulder; he did not appear to be stout, but, on the other hand,
+he was certainly not thin; his small head, was supported by a strong and
+sinewy neck; his broad, muscular hands appeared to possess a peculiar
+skill in breaking walnuts without the assistance of the ordinary
+cracker, and seeing him in profile, one could not help remarking the
+extraordinary breadth of his sleeves, and the unusual thickness of his
+chest. He was one of those men who are commonly spoken of among men as
+deceptive; that is to say, that though he looked exceedingly strong he
+was in reality very much stronger than he looked. Of his features I need
+say little. His head is small, his hair is thin, his eyes are blue, his
+nose is large, he has a small moustache and a square jaw. Everybody
+knows Brisbane, and when he asked for a cigar everybody looked at him.
+
+"It is a very singular thing," said Brisbane.
+
+Everybody stopped talking. Brisbane's voice was not loud, but possessed
+a peculiar quality of penetrating general conversation, and cutting it
+like a knife. Everybody listened. Brisbane, perceiving that he had
+attracted their general attention, lit his cigar with great equanimity.
+
+"It is very singular," he continued, "that thing about ghosts. People
+are always asking whether anybody has seen a ghost. I have."
+
+"Bosh! What, you? You don't mean to say so, Brisbane? Well, for a man of
+his intelligence!"
+
+A chorus of exclamations greeted Brisbane's remarkable statement.
+Everybody called for cigars, and Stubbs, the butler, suddenly appeared
+from the depths of nowhere with a fresh bottle of dry champagne. The
+situation was saved; Brisbane was going to tell a story.
+
+I am an old sailor, said Brisbane, and as I have to cross the Atlantic
+pretty often, I have my favourites. Most men have their favourites. I
+have seen a man wait in a Broadway bar for three-quarters of an hour for
+a particular car which he liked. I believe the bar-keeper made at least
+one-third of his living by that man's preference. I have a habit of
+waiting for certain ships when I am obliged to cross that duck-pond. It
+may be a prejudice, but I was never cheated out of a good passage but
+once in my life. I remember it very well; it was a warm morning in June,
+and the Custom House officials, who were hanging about waiting for a
+steamer already on her way up from the Quarantine, presented a
+peculiarly hazy and thoughtful appearance. I had not much luggage--I
+never have. I mingled with a crowd of passengers, porters, and
+officious individuals in blue coats and brass buttons, who seemed to
+spring up like mushrooms from the deck of a moored steamer to obtrude
+their unnecessary services upon the independent passenger. I have often
+noticed with a certain interest the spontaneous evolution of these
+fellows. They are not there when you arrive; five minutes after the
+pilot has called "Go ahead!" they, or at least their blue coats and
+brass buttons, have disappeared from deck and gangway as completely as
+though they had been consigned to that locker which tradition
+unanimously ascribes to Davy Jones. But, at the moment of starting, they
+are there, clean shaved, blue coated, and ravenous for fees. I hastened
+on board. The _Kamtschatka_ was one of my favourite ships. I say was,
+because she emphatically no longer is. I cannot conceive of any
+inducement which could entice me to make another voyage in her. Yes, I
+know what you are going to say. She is uncommonly clean in the run aft,
+she has enough bluffing off in the bows to keep her dry, and the lower
+berths are most of them double. She has a lot of advantages, but I won't
+cross in her again. Excuse the digression. I got on board. I hailed a
+steward, whose red nose and redder whiskers were equally familiar to me.
+
+"One hundred and five, lower berth," said I, in the businesslike tone
+peculiar to men who think no more of crossing the Atlantic than taking
+a whiskey cocktail at down-town Delmonico's.
+
+The steward took my portmanteau, greatcoat, and rug. I shall never
+forget the expression of his face. Not that he turned pale. It is
+maintained by the most eminent divines that even miracles cannot change
+the course of nature. I have no hesitation in saying that he did not
+turn pale; but, from his expression, I judged that he was either about
+to shed tears, to sneeze, or to drop my portmanteau. As the latter
+contained two bottles of particularly fine old sherry presented to me
+for my voyage by my old friend Snigginson van Pickyns, I felt extremely
+nervous. But the steward did none of these things.
+
+"Well, I'm d----d!" said he in a low voice, and led the way.
+
+I supposed my Hermes, as he led me to the lower regions, had had a
+little grog, but I said nothing and followed him. 105 was on the port
+side, well aft. There was nothing remarkable about the state-room. The
+lower berth, like most of those upon the _Kamtschatka_, was double.
+There was plenty of room; there was the usual washing apparatus,
+calculated to convey an idea of luxury to the mind of a North American
+Indian; there were the usual inefficient racks of brown wood, in which
+it is more easy to hang a large-sized umbrella than the common
+tooth-brush of commerce. Upon the uninviting mattresses were carefully
+folded together those blankets which a great modern humourist has aptly
+compared to cold buckwheat cakes. The question of towels was left
+entirely to the imagination. The glass decanters were filled with a
+transparent liquid faintly tinged with brown, but from which an odour
+less faint, but not more pleasing, ascended to the nostrils, like a
+far-off sea-sick reminiscence of oily machinery. Sad-coloured curtains
+half closed the upper berth. The hazy June daylight shed a faint
+illumination upon the desolate little scene. Ugh! how I hate that
+state-room!
+
+The steward deposited my traps and looked at me as though he wanted to
+get away--probably in search of more passengers and more fees. It is
+always a good plan to start in favour with those functionaries, and I
+accordingly gave him certain coins there and then.
+
+"I'll try and make yer comfortable all I can," he remarked, as he put
+the coins in his pocket. Nevertheless, there was a doubtful intonation
+in his voice which surprised me. Possibly his scale of fees had gone up,
+and he was not satisfied; but on the whole I was inclined to think that,
+as he himself would have expressed it, he was "the better for a glass."
+I was wrong, however, and did the man injustice.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Nothing especially worthy of mention occurred during that day. We left
+the pier punctually, and it was very pleasant to be fairly under way,
+for the weather was warm and sultry, and the motion of the steamer
+produced a refreshing breeze. Everybody knows what the first day at sea
+is like. People pace the decks and stare at each other, and occasionally
+meet acquaintances whom they did not know to be on board. There is the
+usual uncertainty as to whether the food will be good, bad, or
+indifferent, until the first two meals have put the matter beyond a
+doubt; there is the usual uncertainty about the weather, until the ship
+is fairly off Fire Island. The tables are crowded at first, and then
+suddenly thinned. Pale-faced people spring from their seats and
+precipitate themselves towards the door, and each old sailor breathes
+more freely as his seasick neighbour rushes from his side, leaving him
+plenty of elbow-room and an unlimited command over the mustard.
+
+One passage across the Atlantic is very much like another, and we who
+cross very often do not make the voyage for the sake of novelty. Whales
+and icebergs are indeed always objects of interest, but, after all, one
+whale is very much like another whale, and one rarely sees an iceberg at
+close quarters. To the majority of us the most delightful moment of the
+day on board an ocean steamer is when we have taken our last turn on
+deck, have smoked our last cigar, and having succeeded in tiring
+ourselves, feel at liberty to turn in with a clear conscience. On that
+first night of the voyage I felt particularly lazy, and went to bed in
+105 rather earlier than I usually do. As I turned in, I was amazed to
+see that I was to have a companion. A portmanteau, very like my own, lay
+in the opposite corner, and in the upper berth had been deposited a
+neatly folded rug, with a stick and umbrella. I had hoped to be alone,
+and I was disappointed; but I wondered who my room-mate was to be, and I
+determined to have a look at him.
+
+Before I had been long in bed he entered. He was, as far as I could see,
+a very tall man, very thin, very pale, with sandy hair and whiskers and
+colourless grey eyes. He had about him, I thought, an air of rather
+dubious fashion; the sort of man you might see in Wall Street, without
+being able precisely to say what he was doing there--the sort of man who
+frequents the Café Anglais, who always seems to be alone and who drinks
+champagne; you might meet him on a racecourse, but he would never appear
+to be doing anything there either. A little over-dressed--a little odd.
+There are three or four of his kind on every ocean steamer. I made up
+my mind that I did not care to make his acquaintance, and I went to
+sleep saying to myself that I would study his habits in order to avoid
+him. If he rose early, I would rise late; if he went to bed late I would
+go to bed early. I did not care to know him. If you once know people of
+that kind, they are always turning up. Poor fellow! I need not have
+taken the trouble to come to so many decisions about him, for I never
+saw him again after that first night in 105.
+
+I was sleeping soundly when I was suddenly waked by a loud noise. To
+judge from the sound, my room-mate must have sprung with a single leap
+from the upper berth to the floor. I heard him fumbling with the latch
+and bolt of the door, which opened almost immediately, and then I heard
+his footsteps as he ran at full speed down the passage, leaving the door
+open behind him. The ship was rolling a little, and I expected to hear
+him stumble or fall, but he ran as though he were running for his life.
+The door swung on its hinges with the motion of the vessel, and the
+sound annoyed me. I got up and shut it, and groped my way back to my
+berth in the darkness. I went to sleep again; but I have no idea how
+long I slept.
+
+When I awoke it was still quite dark, but I felt a disagreeable
+sensation of cold, and it seemed to me that the air was damp. You know
+the peculiar smell of a cabin which has been wet with sea-water. I
+covered myself up as well as I could and dozed off again, framing
+complaints to be made the next day, and selecting the most powerful
+epithets in the language. I could hear my room-mate turn over in the
+upper berth. He had probably returned while I was asleep. Once I thought
+I heard him groan, and I argued that he was sea-sick. That is
+particularly unpleasant when one is below. Nevertheless I dozed off and
+slept till early daylight.
+
+The ship was rolling heavily, much more than on the previous evening,
+and the grey light which came in through the porthole changed in tint
+with every movement according as the angle of the vessel's side turned
+the glass seawards or skywards. It was very cold--unaccountably so for
+the month of June. I turned my head and looked at the porthole, and saw
+to my surprise that it was wide open and hooked back. I believe I swore
+audibly. Then I got up and shut it. As I turned back I glanced at the
+upper berth. The curtains were drawn close together; my companion had
+probably felt cold as well as I. It struck me that I had slept enough.
+The state-room was uncomfortable, though, strange to say, I could not
+smell the dampness which had annoyed me in the night. My room-mate was
+still asleep--excellent opportunity for avoiding him, so I dressed at
+once and went on deck. The day was warm and cloudy, with an oily smell
+on the water. It was seven o'clock as I came out--much later than I had
+imagined. I came across the doctor, who was taking his first sniff of
+the morning air. He was a young man from the West of Ireland--a
+tremendous fellow, with black hair and blue eyes, already inclined to be
+stout; he had a happy-go-lucky, healthy look about him which was rather
+attractive.
+
+"Fine morning," I remarked, by way of introduction.
+
+"Well," said he, eyeing me with an air of ready interest, "it's a fine
+morning and it's not a fine morning. I don't think it's much of a
+morning."
+
+"Well, no--it is not so very fine," said I.
+
+"It's just what I call fuggly weather," replied the doctor.
+
+"It was very cold last night, I thought," I remarked. "However, when I
+looked about, I found that the porthole was wide open. I had not noticed
+it when I went to bed. And the state-room was damp, too."
+
+"Damp!" said he. "Whereabouts are you?"
+
+"One hundred and five--"
+
+To my surprise the doctor started visibly, and stared at me.
+
+"What is the matter?" I asked.
+
+"Oh--nothing," he answered; "only everybody has complained of that
+state-room for the last three trips."
+
+"I shall complain, too," I said. "It has certainly not been properly
+aired. It is a shame!"
+
+"I don't believe it can be helped," answered the doctor. "I believe
+there is something--well, it is not my business to frighten passengers."
+
+"You need not be afraid of frightening me," I replied. "I can stand any
+amount of damp. If I should get a bad cold, I will come to you."
+
+I offered the doctor a cigar, which he took and examined very
+critically.
+
+"It is not so much the damp," he remarked. "However, I dare say you will
+get on very well. Have you a room-mate?"
+
+"Yes; a deuce of a fellow, who bolts out in the middle of the night, and
+leaves the door open."
+
+Again the doctor glanced curiously at me. Then he lit the cigar and
+looked grave.
+
+"Did he come back?" he asked presently.
+
+"Yes. I was asleep, but I waked up, and heard him moving. Then I felt
+cold and went to sleep again. This morning I found the porthole open."
+
+"Look here," said the doctor quietly, "I don't care much for this ship.
+I don't care a rap for her reputation. I tell you what I will do. I have
+a good-sized place up here. I will share it with you, though I don't
+know you from Adam."
+
+I was very much surprised at the proposition. I could not imagine why he
+should take such a sudden interest in my welfare. However, his manner,
+as he spoke of the ship, was peculiar.
+
+"You are very good, doctor," I said. "But, really, I believe even now
+the cabin could be aired, or cleaned out, or something. Why do you not
+care for the ship?"
+
+"We are not superstitious in our profession, sir," replied the doctor,
+"but the sea makes people so. I don't want to prejudice you, and I don't
+want to frighten you, but if you will take my advice you will move in
+here. I would as soon see you overboard," he added earnestly, "as know
+that you or any other man was to sleep in 105."
+
+"Good gracious! Why?" I asked.
+
+"Just because on the three last trips the people who have slept there
+actually have gone overboard," he answered gravely.
+
+The intelligence was startling and exceedingly unpleasant, I confess. I
+looked hard at the doctor to see whether he was making game of me, but
+he looked perfectly serious. I thanked him warmly for his offer, but
+told him I intended to be the exception to the rule by which every one
+who slept in that particular state-room went overboard. He did not say
+much, but looked as grave as ever, and hinted that, before we got
+across, I should probably reconsider his proposal. In the course of time
+we went to breakfast, at which only an inconsiderable number of
+passengers assembled. I noticed that one or two of the officers who
+breakfasted with us looked grave. After breakfast I went into my
+state-room in order to get a book. The curtains of the upper berth were
+still closely drawn. Not a sound was to be heard. My room-mate was
+probably still asleep.
+
+As I came out I met the steward whose business it was to look after me.
+He whispered that the captain wanted to see me, and then scuttled away
+down the passage as if very anxious to avoid any questions. I went
+toward the captain's cabin, and found him waiting for me.
+
+"Sir," said he, "I want to ask a favour of you."
+
+I answered that I would do anything to oblige him.
+
+"Your room-mate has disappeared," he said. "He is known to have turned
+in early last night. Did you notice anything extraordinary in his
+manner?"
+
+The question, coming as it did in exact confirmation of the fears the
+doctor had expressed half an hour earlier, staggered me.
+
+"You don't mean to say he has gone overboard?" I asked.
+
+"I fear he has," answered the captain.
+
+"This is the most extraordinary thing--" I began.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"He is the fourth, then?" I explained. In answer to another question
+from the captain, I explained, without mentioning the doctor, that I had
+heard the story concerning 105. He seemed very much annoyed at hearing
+that I knew of it. I told him what had occurred in the night.
+
+"What you say," he replied, "coincides almost exactly with what was told
+me by the room-mates of two of the other three. They bolt out of bed and
+run down the passage. Two of them were seen to go overboard by the
+watch; we stopped and lowered boats, but they were not found. Nobody,
+however, saw or heard the man who was lost last night--if he is really
+lost. The steward, who is a superstitious fellow, perhaps, and expected
+something to go wrong, went to look for him this morning, and found his
+berth empty, but his clothes lying about, just as he had left them. The
+steward was the only man on board who knew him by sight, and he has
+been searching everywhere for him. He has disappeared! Now, sir, I want
+to beg you not to mention the circumstance to any of the passengers; I
+don't want the ship to get a bad name, and nothing hangs about an
+ocean-goer like stories of suicides. You shall have your choice of any
+one of the officers' cabins you like, including my own, for the rest of
+the passage. Is that a fair bargain?"
+
+"Very," said I; "and I am much obliged to you. But since I am alone, and
+have the state-room to myself, I would rather not move. If the steward
+will take out that unfortunate man's things, I would as lief stay where
+I am. I will not say anything about the matter, and I think I can
+promise you that I will not follow my room-mate."
+
+The captain tried to dissuade me from my intention, but I preferred
+having a state-room alone to being the chum of any officer on board. I
+do not know whether I acted foolishly, but if I had taken his advice I
+should have had nothing more to tell. There would have remained the
+disagreeable coincidence of several suicides occurring among men who had
+slept in the same cabin, but that would have been all.
+
+That was not the end of the matter, however, by any means. I
+obstinately made up my mind that I would not be disturbed by such tales,
+and I even went so far as to argue the question with the captain. There
+was something wrong about the state-room, I said. It was rather damp.
+The porthole had been left open last night. My room-mate might have been
+ill when he came on board, and he might have become delirious after he
+went to bed. He might even now be hiding somewhere on board, and might
+be found later. The place ought to be aired and the fastening of the
+port looked to. If the captain would give me leave, I would see that
+what I thought necessary were done immediately.
+
+"Of course you have a right to stay where you are if you please," he
+replied, rather petulantly; "but I wish you would turn out and let me
+lock the place up, and be done with it."
+
+I did not see it in the same light, and left the captain, after
+promising to be silent concerning the disappearance of my companion. The
+latter had had no acquaintances on board, and was not missed in the
+course of the day. Towards evening I met the doctor again, and he asked
+me whether I had changed my mind. I told him I had not.
+
+"Then you will before long," he said, very gravely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+We played whist in the evening, and I went to bed late. I will confess
+now that I felt a disagreeable sensation when I entered my state-room. I
+could not help thinking of the tall man I had seen on the previous
+night, who was now dead, drowned, tossing about in the long swell, two
+or three hundred miles astern. His face rose very distinctly before me
+as I undressed, and I even went so far as to draw back the curtains of
+the upper berth, as though to persuade myself that he was actually gone.
+I also bolted the door of the state-room. Suddenly I became aware that
+the porthole was open, and fastened back. This was more than I could
+stand. I hastily threw on my dressing-gown and went in search of Robert,
+the steward of my passage. I was very angry, I remember, and when I
+found him I dragged him roughly to the door of 105, and pushed him
+towards the open porthole.
+
+"What the deuce do you mean, you scoundrel, by leaving that port open
+every night? Don't you know it is against the regulations? Don't you
+know that if the ship heeled and the water began to come in, ten men
+could not shut it? I will report you to the captain, you blackguard, for
+endangering the ship!"
+
+I was exceedingly wroth. The man trembled and turned pale, and then
+began to shut the round glass plate with the heavy brass fittings.
+
+"Why don't you answer me?" I said roughly.
+
+"If you please, sir," faltered Robert, "there's nobody on board as can
+keep this 'ere port shut at night. You can try it yourself, sir. I ain't
+a-going to stop hany longer on board o' this vessel, sir; I ain't,
+indeed. But if I was you, sir, I'd just clear out and go and sleep with
+the surgeon, or something, I would. Look 'ere, sir, is that fastened
+what you may call securely, or not, sir? Try it, sir, see if it will
+move a hinch."
+
+I tried the port, and found it perfectly tight.
+
+"Well, sir," continued Robert, triumphantly, "I wager my reputation as a
+A1 steward that in 'arf an hour it will be open again; fastened back,
+too, sir, that's the horful thing--fastened back!"
+
+I examined the great screw and the looped nut that ran on it.
+
+"If I find it open in the night, Robert, I will give you a sovereign. It
+is not possible. You may go."
+
+"Soverin' did you say, sir? Very good, sir. Thank ye, sir. Good-night,
+sir. Pleasant reepose, sir, and all manner of hinchantin' dreams, sir."
+
+Robert scuttled away, delighted at being released. Of course, I thought
+he was trying to account for his negligence by a silly story, intended
+to frighten me, and I disbelieved him. The consequence was that he got
+his sovereign, and I spent a very peculiarly unpleasant night.
+
+I went to bed, and five minutes after I had rolled myself up in my
+blankets the inexorable Robert extinguished the light that burned
+steadily behind the ground-glass pane near the door. I lay quite still
+in the dark trying to go to sleep, but I soon found that impossible. It
+had been some satisfaction to be angry with the steward, and the
+diversion had banished that unpleasant sensation I had at first
+experienced when I thought of the drowned man who had been my chum; but
+I was no longer sleepy, and I lay awake for some time, occasionally
+glancing at the porthole, which I could just see from where I lay, and
+which, in the darkness, looked like a faintly luminous soup-plate
+suspended in blackness. I believe I must have lain there for an hour,
+and, as I remember, I was just dozing into sleep when I was roused by a
+draught of cold air, and by distinctly feeling the spray of the sea
+blown upon my face. I started to my feet, and not having allowed in the
+dark for the motion of the ship, I was instantly thrown violently across
+the state-room upon the couch which was placed beneath the porthole. I
+recovered myself immediately, however, and climbed upon my knees. The
+porthole was again wide open and fastened back!
+
+Now these things are facts. I was wide awake when I got up, and I
+should certainly have been waked by the fall had I still been dozing.
+Moreover, I bruised my elbows and knees badly, and the bruises were
+there on the following morning to testify to the fact, if I myself had
+doubted it. The porthole was wide open and fastened back--a thing so
+unaccountable that I remember very well feeling astonishment rather than
+fear when I discovered it. I at once closed the plate again, and screwed
+down the loop nut with all my strength. It was very dark in the
+state-room. I reflected that the port had certainly been opened within
+an hour after Robert had at first shut it in my presence, and I
+determined to watch it, and see whether it would open again. Those brass
+fittings are very heavy and by no means easy to move; I could not
+believe that the clump had been turned by the shaking of the screw. I
+stood peering out through the thick glass at the alternate white and
+grey streaks of the sea that foamed beneath the ship's side. I must have
+remained there a quarter of an hour.
+
+Suddenly, as I stood, I distinctly heard something moving behind me in
+one of the berths, and a moment afterwards, just as I turned
+instinctively to look--though I could, of course, see nothing in the
+darkness--I heard a very faint groan. I sprang across the state-room,
+and tore the curtains of the upper berth aside, thrusting in my hands to
+discover if there were any one there. There was some one.
+
+I remember that the sensation as I put my hands forward was as though I
+were plunging them into the air of a damp cellar, and from behind the
+curtains came a gust of wind that smelled horribly of stagnant
+sea-water. I laid hold of something that had the shape of a man's arm,
+but was smooth, and wet, and icy cold. But suddenly, as I pulled, the
+creature sprang violently forward against me, a clammy, oozy mass, as it
+seemed to me, heavy and wet, yet endowed with a sort of supernatural
+strength. I reeled across the state-room, and in an instant the door
+opened and the thing rushed out. I had not had time to be frightened,
+and quickly recovering myself, I sprang through the door and gave chase
+at the top of my speed, but I was too late. Ten yards before me I could
+see--I am sure I saw it--a dark shadow moving in the dimly lighted
+passage, quickly as the shadow of a fast horse thrown before a dogcart
+by the lamp on a dark night. But in a moment it had disappeared, and I
+found myself holding on to the polished rail that ran along the bulkhead
+where the passage turned towards the companion. My hair stood on end,
+and the cold perspiration rolled down my face. I am not ashamed of it
+in the least: I was very badly frightened.
+
+Still I doubted my senses, and pulled myself together. It was absurd, I
+thought. The Welsh rarebit I had eaten had disagreed with me. I had been
+in a nightmare. I made my way back to my state-room, and entered it with
+an effort. The whole place smelled of stagnant sea-water, as it had when
+I had waked on the previous evening. It required my utmost strength to
+go in, and grope among my things for a box of wax lights. As I lighted a
+railway reading lantern which I always carry in case I want to read
+after the lamps are out, I perceived that the porthole was again open,
+and a sort of creeping horror began to take possession of me which I
+never felt before, nor wish to feel again. But I got a light and
+proceeded to examine the upper berth, expecting to find it drenched with
+sea-water.
+
+But I was disappointed. The bed had been slept in, and the smell of the
+sea was strong; but the bedding was as dry as a bone. I fancied that
+Robert had not had the courage to make the bed after the accident of the
+previous night--it had all been a hideous dream. I drew the curtains
+back as far as I could and examined the place very carefully. It was
+perfectly dry. But the porthole was open again. With a sort of dull
+bewilderment of horror I closed it and screwed it down, and thrusting
+my heavy stick through the brass loop, wrenched it with all my might,
+till the thick metal began to bend under the pressure. Then I hooked my
+reading lantern into the red velvet at the head of the couch, and sat
+down to recover my senses if I could. I sat there all night, unable to
+think of rest--hardly able to think at all. But the porthole remained
+closed, and I did not believe it would now open again without the
+application of a considerable force.
+
+The morning dawned at last, and I dressed myself slowly, thinking over
+all that had happened in the night. It was a beautiful day and I went on
+deck, glad to get out into the early, pure sunshine, and to smell the
+breeze from the blue water, so different from the noisome, stagnant
+odour of my state-room. Instinctively I turned aft, towards the
+surgeon's cabin. There he stood, with a pipe in his mouth, taking his
+morning airing precisely as on the preceding day.
+
+"Good-morning," said he quietly, but looking at me with evident
+curiosity.
+
+"Doctor, you were quite right," said I. "There is something wrong about
+that place."
+
+"I thought you would change your mind," he answered, rather
+triumphantly. "You have had a bad night, eh? Shall I make you a
+pick-me-up? I have a capital recipe."
+
+"No, thanks," I cried. "But I would like to tell you what happened."
+
+I then tried to explain as clearly as possible precisely what had
+occurred, not omitting to state that I had been scared as I had never
+been scared in my whole life before. I dwelt particularly on the
+phenomenon of the porthole, which was a fact to which I could testify,
+even if the rest had been an illusion. I had closed it twice in the
+night, and the second time I had actually bent the brass in wrenching it
+with my stick. I believe I insisted a good deal on this point.
+
+"You seem to think I am likely to doubt the story," said the doctor,
+smiling at the detailed account of the state of the porthole. "I do not
+doubt it in the least. I renew my invitation to you. Bring your traps
+here, and take half my cabin."
+
+"Come and take half of mine for one night," I said. "Help me to get at
+the bottom of this thing."
+
+"You will get to the bottom of something else if you try," answered the
+doctor.
+
+"What?" I asked.
+
+"The bottom of the sea. I am going to leave this ship. It is not canny."
+
+"Then you will not help me to find out--"
+
+"Not I," said the doctor, quickly. "It is my business to keep my wits
+about me--not to go fiddling about with ghosts and things."
+
+"Do you really believe it is a ghost?" I enquired, rather
+contemptuously. But as I spoke I remembered very well the horrible
+sensation of the supernatural which had got possession of me during the
+night. The doctor turned sharply on me.
+
+"Have you any reasonable explanation of these things to offer?" he
+asked. "No; you have not. Well, you say you will find an explanation. I
+say that you won't, sir, simply because there is not any."
+
+"But, my dear sir," I retorted, "do you, a man of science, mean to tell
+me that such things cannot be explained?"
+
+"I do," he answered stoutly. "And, if they could, I would not be
+concerned in the explanation."
+
+I did not care to spend another night alone in the state-room, and yet I
+was obstinately determined to get at the root of the disturbances. I do
+not believe there are many men who would have slept there alone, after
+passing two such nights. But I made up my mind to try it, if I could not
+get any one to share a watch with me. The doctor was evidently not
+inclined for such an experiment. He said he was a surgeon, and that in
+case any accident occurred on board he must be always in readiness. He
+could not afford to have his nerves unsettled. Perhaps he was quite
+right, but I am inclined to think that his precaution was prompted by
+his inclination. On enquiry, he informed me that there was no one on
+board who would be likely to join me in my investigations, and after a
+little more conversation I left him. A little later I met the captain,
+and told him my story. I said that, if no one would spend the night with
+me, I would ask leave to have the light burning all night, and would try
+it alone.
+
+"Look here," said he, "I will tell you what I will do. I will share your
+watch myself, and we will see what happens. It is my belief that we can
+find out between us. There may be some fellow skulking on board, who
+steals a passage by frightening the passengers. It is just possible that
+there may be something queer in the carpentering of that berth."
+
+I suggested taking the ship's carpenter below and examining the place;
+but I was overjoyed at the captain's offer to spend the night with me.
+He accordingly sent for the workman and ordered him to do anything I
+required. We went below at once. I had all the bedding cleared out of
+the upper berth, and we examined the place thoroughly to see if there
+was a board loose anywhere, or a panel which could be opened or pushed
+aside. We tried the planks everywhere, tapped the flooring, unscrewed
+the fittings of the lower berth and took it to pieces--in short, there
+was not a square inch of the state-room which was not searched and
+tested. Everything was in perfect order, and we put everything back in
+its place. As we were finishing our work, Robert came to the door and
+looked in.
+
+"Well, sir--find anything, sir?" he asked, with a ghastly grin.
+
+"You were right about the porthole, Robert," I said, and I gave him the
+promised sovereign. The carpenter did his work silently and skilfully,
+following my directions. When he had done he spoke.
+
+"I'm a plain man, sir," he said. "But it's my belief you had better just
+turn out your things, and let me run half a dozen four-inch screws
+through the door of this cabin. There's no good never came o' this cabin
+yet, sir, and that's all about it. There's been four lives lost out o'
+here to my own remembrance, and that in four trips. Better give it up,
+sir--better give it up!"
+
+"I will try it for one night more," I said.
+
+"Better give it up, sir--better give it up! It's a precious bad job,"
+repeated the workman, putting his tools in his bag and leaving the
+cabin.
+
+But my spirits had risen considerably at the prospect of having the
+captain's company, and I made up my mind not to be prevented from going
+to the end of the strange business. I abstained from Welsh rarebits and
+grog that evening, and did not even join in the customary game of whist.
+I wanted to be quite sure of my nerves, and my vanity made me anxious to
+make a good figure in the captain's eyes.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The captain was one of those splendidly tough and cheerful specimens of
+seafaring humanity whose combined courage, hardihood, and calmness in
+difficulty leads them naturally into high positions of trust. He was not
+the man to be led away by an idle tale, and the mere fact that he was
+willing to join me in the investigation was proof that he thought there
+was something seriously wrong, which could not be accounted for on
+ordinary theories, nor laughed down as a common superstition. To some
+extent, too, his reputation was at stake, as well as the reputation of
+the ship. It is no light thing to lose passengers overboard, and he knew
+it.
+
+About ten o'clock that evening, as I was smoking a last cigar, he came
+up to me, and drew me aside from the beat of the other passengers who
+were patrolling the deck in the warm darkness.
+
+"This is a serious matter, Mr. Brisbane," he said. "We must make up our
+minds either way--to be disappointed or to have a pretty rough time of
+it. You see I cannot afford to laugh at the affair, and I will ask you
+to sign your name to a statement of whatever occurs. If nothing happens
+to-night, we will try it again to-morrow and next day. Are you ready?"
+
+So we went below, and entered the state-room. As we went in I could see
+Robert the steward, who stood a little further down the passage,
+watching us, with his usual grin, as though certain that something
+dreadful was about to happen. The captain closed the door behind us and
+bolted it.
+
+"Supposing we put your portmanteau before the door," he suggested. "One
+of us can sit on it. Nothing can get out then. Is the port screwed
+down?"
+
+I found it as I had left it in the morning. Indeed, without using a
+lever, as I had done, no one could have opened it. I drew back the
+curtains of the upper berth so that I could see well into it. By the
+captain's advice I lighted my reading lantern, and placed it so that it
+shone upon the white sheets above. He insisted upon sitting on the
+portmanteau, declaring that he wished to be able to swear that he had
+sat before the door.
+
+Then he requested me to search the stateroom thoroughly, an operation
+very soon accomplished, as it consisted merely in looking beneath the
+lower berth and under the couch below the porthole. The spaces were
+quite empty.
+
+"It is impossible for any human being to get in," I said, "or for any
+human being to open the port."
+
+"Very good," said the captain, calmly. "If we see anything now, it must
+be either imagination or something supernatural."
+
+I sat down on the edge of the lower berth.
+
+"The first time it happened," said the captain, crossing his legs and
+leaning back against the door, "was in March. The passenger who slept
+here, in the upper berth, turned out to have been a lunatic--at all
+events, he was known to have been a little touched, and he had taken his
+passage without the knowledge of his friends. He rushed out in the
+middle of the night, and threw himself overboard, before the officer who
+had the watch could stop him. We stopped and lowered a boat; it was a
+quiet night, just before that heavy weather came on; but we could not
+find him. Of course his suicide was afterwards accounted for on the
+ground of his insanity."
+
+"I suppose that often happens?" I remarked, rather absently.
+
+"Not often--no," said the captain; "never before in my experience,
+though I have heard of it happening on board of other ships. Well, as I
+was saying, that occurred in March. On the very next trip--What are you
+looking at?" he asked, stopping suddenly in his narration.
+
+I believe I gave no answer. My eyes were riveted upon the porthole. It
+seemed to me that the brass loop-nut was beginning to turn very slowly
+upon the screw--so slowly, however, that I was not sure it moved at all.
+I watched it intently, fixing its position in my mind, and trying to
+ascertain whether it changed. Seeing where I was looking, the captain
+looked too.
+
+"It moves!" he exclaimed, in a tone of conviction. "No, it does not," he
+added, after a minute.
+
+"If it were the jarring of the screw," said I, "it would have opened
+during the day; but I found it this evening jammed tight as I left it
+this morning."
+
+I rose and tried the nut. It was certainly loosened, for by an effort I
+could move it with my hands.
+
+"The queer thing," said the captain, "is that the second man who was
+lost is supposed to have got through that very port. We had a terrible
+time over it. It was in the middle of the night, and the weather was
+very heavy; there was an alarm that one of the ports was open and the
+sea running in. I came below and found everything flooded, the water
+pouring in every time she rolled, and the whole port swinging from the
+top bolts--not the porthole in the middle. Well, we managed to shut it,
+but the water did some damage. Ever since that the place smells of
+sea-water from time to time. We supposed the passenger had thrown
+himself out, though the Lord only knows how he did it. The steward kept
+telling me that he cannot keep anything shut here. Upon my word--I can
+smell it now, cannot you?" he enquired, sniffing the air suspiciously.
+
+"Yes--distinctly," I said, and I shuddered as that same odour of
+stagnant sea-water grew stronger in the cabin. "Now, to smell like this,
+the place must be damp," I continued, "and yet when I examined it with
+the carpenter this morning everything was perfectly dry. It is most
+extraordinary--hallo!"
+
+My reading lantern, which had been placed in the upper berth, was
+suddenly extinguished. There was still a good deal of light from the
+pane of ground glass near the door, behind which loomed the regulation
+lamp. The ship rolled heavily, and the curtain of the upper berth swung
+far out into the state-room and back again. I rose quickly from my seat
+on the edge of the bed, and the captain at the same moment started to
+his feet with a loud cry of surprise. I had turned with the intention of
+taking down the lantern to examine it, when I heard his exclamation,
+and immediately afterwards his call for help. I sprang towards him. He
+was wrestling with all his might with the brass loop of the port. It
+seemed to turn against his hands in spite of all his efforts. I caught
+up my cane, a heavy oak stick I always used to carry, and thrust it
+through the ring and bore on it with all my strength. But the strong
+wood snapped suddenly, and I fell upon the couch. When I rose again the
+port was wide open, and the captain was standing with his back against
+the door, pale to the lips.
+
+"There is something in that berth!" he cried, in a strange voice, his
+eyes almost starting from his head. "Hold the door, while I look--it
+shall not escape us, whatever it is!"
+
+But instead of taking his place, I sprang upon the lower bed, and seized
+something which lay in the upper berth.
+
+It was something ghostly, horrible beyond words, and it moved in my
+grip. It was like the body of a man long drowned, and yet it moved, and
+had the strength of ten men living; but I gripped it with all my
+might--the slippery, oozy, horrible thing--the dead white eyes seemed to
+stare at me out of the dusk; the putrid odour of rank sea-water was
+about it, and its shiny hair hung in foul wet curls over its dead face.
+I wrestled with the dead thing; it thrust itself upon me and forced me
+back and nearly broke my arms; it wound its corpse's arms about my neck,
+the living death, and overpowered me, so that I, at last, cried aloud
+and fell, and left my hold.
+
+As I fell the thing sprang across me, and seemed to throw itself upon
+the captain. When I last saw him on his feet his face was white and his
+lips set. It seemed to me that he struck a violent blow at the dead
+being, and then he, too, fell forward upon his face, with an
+inarticulate cry of horror.
+
+The thing paused an instant, seeming to hover over his prostrate body,
+and I could have screamed again for very fright, but I had no voice
+left. The thing vanished suddenly, and it seemed to my disturbed senses
+that it made its exit through the open port, though how that was
+possible, considering the smallness of the aperture, is more than any
+one can tell. I lay a long time upon the floor, and the captain lay
+beside me. At last I partially recovered my senses and moved, and
+instantly I knew that my arm was broken--the small bone of the left
+forearm near the wrist.
+
+I got upon my feet somehow, and with my remaining hand I tried to raise
+the captain. He groaned and moved, and at last came to himself. He was
+not hurt, but he seemed badly stunned.
+
+Well, do you want to hear any more? There is nothing more. That is the
+end of my story. The carpenter carried out his scheme of running half a
+dozen four-inch screws through the door of 105; and if ever you take a
+passage in the _Kamtschatka_, you may ask for a berth in that
+state-room. You will be told that it is engaged--yes--it is engaged by
+that dead thing.
+
+I finished the trip in the surgeon's cabin. He doctored my broken arm,
+and advised me not to "fiddle about with ghosts and things" any more.
+The captain was very silent, and never sailed again in that ship, though
+it is still running. And I will not sail in her either. It was a very
+disagreeable experience, and I was very badly frightened, which is a
+thing I do not like. That is all. That is how I saw a ghost--if it was a
+ghost. It was dead, anyhow.
+
+
+
+
+BY THE WATERS OF PARADISE
+
+
+I remember my childhood very distinctly. I do not think that the fact
+argues a good memory, for I have never been clever at learning words by
+heart, in prose or rhyme; so that I believe my remembrance of events
+depends much more upon the events themselves than upon my possessing any
+special facility for recalling them. Perhaps I am too imaginative, and
+the earliest impressions I received were of a kind to stimulate the
+imagination abnormally. A long series of little misfortunes, connected
+with each other so as to suggest a sort of weird fatality, so worked
+upon my melancholy temperament when I was a boy that, before I was of
+age, I sincerely believed myself to be under a curse, and not only
+myself, but my whole family, and every individual who bore my name.
+
+I was born in the old place where my father, and his father, and all his
+predecessors had been born, beyond the memory of man. It is a very old
+house, and the greater part of it was originally a castle, strongly
+fortified, and surrounded by a deep moat supplied with abundant water
+from the hills by a hidden aqueduct. Many of the fortifications have
+been destroyed, and the moat has been filled up. The water from the
+aqueduct supplies great fountains, and runs down into huge oblong basins
+in the terraced gardens, one below the other, each surrounded by a broad
+pavement of marble between the water and the flower-beds. The waste
+surplus finally escapes through an artificial grotto, some thirty yards
+long, into a stream, flowing down through the park to the meadows
+beyond, and thence to the distant river. The buildings were extended a
+little and greatly altered more than two hundred years ago, in the time
+of Charles II., but since then little has been done to improve them,
+though they have been kept in fairly good repair, according to our
+fortunes.
+
+In the gardens there are terraces and huge hedges of box and evergreen,
+some of which used to be clipped into shapes of animals, in the Italian
+style. I can remember when I was a lad how I used to try to make out
+what the trees were cut to represent, and how I used to appeal for
+explanations to Judith, my Welsh nurse. She dealt in a strange mythology
+of her own, and peopled the gardens with griffins, dragons, good genii
+and bad, and filled my mind with them at the same time. My nursery
+window afforded a view of the great fountains at the head of the upper
+basin, and on moonlight nights the Welshwoman would hold me up to the
+glass, and bid me look at the mist and spray rising into mysterious
+shapes, moving mystically in the white light like living things.
+
+"It's the Woman of the Water," she used to say; and sometimes she would
+threaten that, if I did not go to sleep, the Woman of the Water would
+steal up to the high window and carry me away in her wet arms.
+
+The place was gloomy. The broad basins of water and the tall evergreen
+hedges gave it a funereal look, and the damp-stained marble causeways by
+the pools might have been made of tombstones. The grey and
+weather-beaten walls and towers without, the dark and massively
+furnished rooms within, the deep, mysterious recesses and the heavy
+curtains, all affected my spirits. I was silent and sad from my
+childhood. There was a great clock-tower above, from which the hours
+rang dismally during the day and tolled like a knell in the dead of
+night. There was no light nor life in the house, for my mother was a
+helpless invalid, and my father had grown melancholy in his long task of
+caring for her. He was a thin, dark man, with sad eyes; kind, I think,
+but silent and unhappy. Next to my mother, I believe he loved me better
+than anything on earth, for he took immense pains and trouble in
+teaching me, and what he taught me I have never forgotten. Perhaps it
+was his only amusement, and that may be the reason why I had no nursery
+governess or teacher of any kind while he lived.
+
+I used to be taken to see my mother every day, and sometimes twice a
+day, for an hour at a time. Then I sat upon a little stool near her
+feet, and she would ask me what I had been doing, and what I wanted to
+do. I dare say she saw already the seeds of a profound melancholy in my
+nature, for she looked at me always with a sad smile, and kissed me with
+a sigh when I was taken away.
+
+One night, when I was just six years old, I lay awake in the nursery.
+The door was not quite shut, and the Welsh nurse was sitting sewing in
+the next room. Suddenly I heard her groan, and say in a strange voice.
+"One--two--one--two!" I was frightened, and I jumped up and ran to the
+door, barefooted as I was.
+
+"What is it, Judith?" I cried, clinging to her skirts. I can remember
+the look in her strange dark eyes as she answered.
+
+"One--two leaden coffins, fallen from the ceiling!" she crooned, working
+herself in her chair. "One--two--a light coffin and a heavy coffin,
+falling to the floor!"
+
+Then she seemed to notice me, and she took me back to bed and sang me to
+sleep with a queer old Welsh song.
+
+I do not know how it was, but the impression got hold of me that she
+had meant that my father and mother were going to die very soon. They
+died in the very room where she had been sitting that night. It was a
+great room, my day nursery, full of sun when there was any; and when the
+days were dark it was the most cheerful place in the house. My mother
+grew rapidly worse, and I was transferred to another part of the
+building to make place for her. They thought my nursery was gayer for
+her, I suppose; but she could not live. She was beautiful when she was
+dead, and I cried bitterly.
+
+"The light one, the light one--the heavy one to come," crooned the
+Welshwoman. And she was right. My father took the room after my mother
+was gone, and day by day he grew thinner and paler and sadder.
+
+"The heavy one, the heavy one--all of lead," moaned my nurse, one night
+in December, standing still, just as she was going to take away the
+light after putting me to bed. Then she took me up again, and wrapped me
+in a little gown, and led me away to my father's room. She knocked, but
+no one answered. She opened the door, and we found him in his easy-chair
+before the fire, very white, quite dead.
+
+So I was alone with the Welshwoman till strange people came, and
+relations, whom I had never seen; and then I heard them saying that I
+must be taken away to some more cheerful place. They were kind people,
+and I will not believe that they were kind only because I was to be very
+rich when I grew to be a man. The world never seemed to be a very bad
+place to me, nor all the people to be miserable sinners, even when I was
+most melancholy. I do not remember that any one ever did me any great
+injustice, nor that I was ever oppressed or ill-treated in any way, even
+by the boys at school. I was sad, I suppose, because my childhood was so
+gloomy, and, later, because I was unlucky in everything I undertook,
+till I finally believed I was pursued by fate, and I used to dream that
+the old Welsh nurse and the Woman of the Water between them had vowed to
+pursue me to my end. But my natural disposition should have been
+cheerful, as I have often thought.
+
+Among lads of my age I was never last, or even among the last, in
+anything; but I was never first. If I trained for a race, I was sure to
+sprain my ankle on the day when I was to run. If I pulled an oar with
+others, my oar was sure to break. If I competed for a prize, some
+unforseen accident prevented my winning it at the last moment. Nothing
+to which I put my hand succeeded, and I got the reputation of being
+unlucky, until my companions felt it was always safe to bet against me,
+no matter what the appearances might be. I became discouraged and
+listless in everything. I gave up the idea of competing for any
+distinction at the University, comforting myself with the thought that I
+could not fail in the examination for the ordinary degree. The day
+before the examination began I fell ill; and when at last I recovered,
+after a narrow escape from death, I turned my back upon Oxford, and went
+down alone to visit the old place where I had been born, feeble in
+health and profoundly disgusted and discouraged. I was twenty-one years
+of age, master of myself and of my fortune; but so deeply had the long
+chain of small unlucky circumstances affected me, that I thought
+seriously of shutting myself up from the world to live the life of a
+hermit, and to die as soon as possible. Death seemed the only cheerful
+possibility in my existence, and my thoughts soon dwelt upon it
+altogether.
+
+I had never shown any wish to return to my own home since I had been
+taken away as a little boy, and no one had ever pressed me to do so. The
+place had been kept in order after a fashion, and did not seem to have
+suffered during the fifteen years or more of my absence. Nothing earthly
+could affect those old grey walls that had fought the elements for so
+many centuries. The garden was more wild than I remembered it; the
+marble causeways about the pools looked more yellow and damp than of
+old, and the whole place at first looked smaller. It was not until I had
+wandered about the house and grounds for many hours that I realised the
+huge size of the home where I was to live in solitude. Then I began to
+delight in it, and my resolution to live alone grew stronger.
+
+The people had turned out to welcome me, of course, and I tried to
+recognise the changed faces of the old gardener and the old housekeeper,
+and to call them by name. My old nurse I knew at once. She had grown
+very grey since she heard the coffins fall in the nursery fifteen years
+before, but her strange eyes were the same, and the look in them woke
+all my old memories. She went over the house with me.
+
+"And how is the Woman of the Water?" I asked, trying to laugh a little.
+"Does she still play in the moonlight?"
+
+"She is hungry," answered the Welshwoman, in a low voice.
+
+"Hungry? Then we will feed her." I laughed. But old Judith turned very
+pale, and looked at me strangely.
+
+"Feed her? Ay--you will feed her well," she muttered, glancing behind
+her at the ancient housekeeper, who tottered after us with feeble steps
+through the halls and passages.
+
+I did not think much of her words. She had always talked oddly, as
+Welshwomen will, and though I was very melancholy I am sure I was not
+superstitious, and I was certainly not timid. Only, as in a far-off
+dream, I seemed to see her standing with the light in her hand and
+muttering, "The heavy one--all of lead," and then leading a little boy
+through the long corridors to see his father lying dead in a great
+easy-chair before a smouldering fire. So we went over the house, and I
+chose the rooms where I would live; and the servants I had brought with
+me ordered and arranged everything, and I had no more trouble. I did not
+care what they did, provided I was left in peace, and was not expected
+to give directions; for I was more listless than ever, owing to the
+effects of my illness at college.
+
+I dined in solitary state, and the melancholy grandeur of the vast old
+dining-room pleased me. Then I went to the room I had selected for my
+study, and sat down in a deep chair, under a bright light, to think, or
+to let my thoughts meander through labyrinths of their own choosing,
+utterly indifferent to the course they might take.
+
+The tall windows of the room opened to the level of the ground upon the
+terrace at the head of the garden. It was in the end of July, and
+everything was open, for the weather was warm. As I sat alone I heard
+the unceasing plash of the great fountains, and I fell to thinking of
+the Woman of the Water. I rose, and went out into the still night, and
+sat down upon a seat on the terrace, between two gigantic Italian
+flower-pots. The air was deliciously soft and sweet with the smell of
+the flowers, and the garden was more congenial to me than the house. Sad
+people always like running water and the sound of it at night, though I
+cannot tell why. I sat and listened in the gloom, for it was dark below,
+and the pale moon had not yet climbed over the hills in front of me,
+though all the air above was light with her rising beams. Slowly the
+white halo in the eastern sky ascended in an arch above the wooded
+crests, making the outline of the mountains more intensely black by
+contrast, as though the head of some great white saint were rising from
+behind a screen in a vast cathedral, throwing misty glories from below.
+I longed to see the moon herself, and I tried to reckon the seconds
+before she must appear. Then she sprang up quickly, and in a moment more
+hung round and perfect in the sky. I gazed at her, and then at the
+floating spray of the tall fountains, and down at the pools, where the
+water-lilies were rocking softly in their sleep on the velvet surface
+of the moonlit water. Just then a great swan floated out silently into
+the midst of the basin, and wreathed his long neck, catching the water
+in his broad bill, and scattering showers of diamonds around him.
+
+Suddenly, as I gazed, something came between me and the light. I looked
+up instantly. Between me and the round disc of the moon rose a luminous
+face of a woman, with great strange eyes, and a woman's mouth, full and
+soft, but not smiling, hooded in black, staring at me as I sat still
+upon my bench. She was close to me--so close that I could have touched
+her with my hand. But I was transfixed and helpless. She stood still for
+a moment, but her expression did not change. Then she passed swiftly
+away, and my hair stood up on my head, while the cold breeze from her
+white dress was wafted to my temples as she moved. The moonlight,
+shining through the tossing spray of the fountain, made traceries of
+shadow on the gleaming folds of her garments. In an instant she was
+gone, and I was alone.
+
+I was strangely shaken by the vision, and some time passed before I
+could rise to my feet, for I was still weak from my illness, and the
+sight I had seen would have startled any one. I did not reason with
+myself, for I was certain that I had looked on the unearthly, and no
+argument could have destroyed that belief. At last I got up and stood
+unsteadily, gazing in the direction in which I thought the figure had
+gone; but there was nothing to be seen--nothing but the broad paths, the
+tall, dark evergreen hedges, the tossing water of the fountains and the
+smooth pool below. I fell back upon the seat and recalled the face I had
+seen. Strange to say, now that the first impression had passed, there
+was nothing startling in the recollection; on the contrary, I felt that
+I was fascinated by the face, and would give anything to see it again. I
+could retrace the beautiful straight features, the long dark eyes and
+the wonderful mouth, most exactly in my mind, and, when I had
+reconstructed every detail from memory, I knew that the whole was
+beautiful, and that I should love a woman with such a face.
+
+"I wonder whether she is the Woman of the Water!" I said to myself. Then
+rising once more I wandered down the garden, descending one short flight
+of steps after another, from terrace to terrace by the edge of the
+marble basins, through the shadow and through the moonlight; and I
+crossed the water by the rustic bridge above the artificial grotto, and
+climbed slowly up again to the highest terrace by the other side. The
+air seemed sweeter, and I was very calm, so that I think I smiled to
+myself as I walked, as though a new happiness had come to me. The
+woman's face seemed always before me, and the thought of it gave me an
+unwonted thrill of pleasure, unlike anything I had ever felt before.
+
+I turned, as I reached the house, and looked back upon the scene. It had
+certainly changed in the short hour since I had come out, and my mood
+had changed with it. Just like my luck, I thought, to fall in love with
+a ghost! But in old times I would have sighed, and gone to bed more sad
+than ever, at such a melancholy conclusion. To-night I felt happy,
+almost for the first time in my life. The gloomy old study seemed
+cheerful when I went in. The old pictures on the walls smiled at me, and
+I sat down in my deep chair with a new and delightful sensation that I
+was not alone. The idea of having seen a ghost, and of feeling much the
+better for it, was so absurd that I laughed softly, as I took up one of
+the books I had brought with me and began to read.
+
+That impression did not wear off. I slept peacefully, and in the morning
+I threw open my windows to the summer air, and looked down at the
+garden, at the stretches of green and at the coloured flower-beds, at
+the circling swallows, and at the bright water.
+
+"A man might make a paradise of this place," I exclaimed. "A man and a
+woman together!"
+
+From that day the old castle no longer seemed gloomy, and I think I
+ceased to be sad; for some time, too, I began to take an interest in the
+place, and to try and make it more alive. I avoided my old Welsh nurse,
+lest she should damp my humour with some dismal prophecy, and recall my
+old self by bringing back memories of my dismal childhood. But what I
+thought of most was the ghostly figure I had seen in the garden that
+first night after my arrival. I went out every evening and wandered
+through the walks and paths; but, try as I might, I did not see my
+vision again. At last, after many days, the memory grew more faint, and
+my old moody nature gradually overcame the temporary sense of lightness
+I had experienced. The summer turned to autumn, and I grew restless. It
+began to rain. The dampness pervaded the gardens, and the outer halls
+smelled musty, like tombs; the grey sky oppressed me intolerably. I left
+the place as it was and went abroad, determined to try anything which
+might possibly make a second break in the monotonous melancholy from
+which I suffered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Most people would be struck by the utter insignificance of the small
+events which, after the death of my parents influenced my life and made
+me unhappy. The gruesome forebodings of a Welsh nurse, which chanced to
+be realised by an odd coincidence of events, should not seem enough to
+change the nature of a child, and to direct the bent of his character in
+after years. The little disappointments of schoolboy life, and the
+somewhat less childish ones of an uneventful and undistinguished
+academic career, should not have sufficed to turn me out at
+one-and-twenty years of age a melancholic, listless idler. Some weakness
+of my own character may have contributed to the result, but in a greater
+degree it was due to my having a reputation for bad luck. However, I
+will not try to analyse the causes of my state, for I should satisfy
+nobody, least of all myself. Still less will I attempt to explain why I
+felt a temporary revival of my spirits after my adventure in the garden.
+It is certain that I was in love with the face I had seen, and that I
+longed to see it again; that I gave up all hope of a second visitation,
+grew more sad than ever, packed up my traps, and finally went abroad.
+But in my dreams I went back to my home, and it always appeared to me
+sunny and bright, as it had looked on that summer's morning after I had
+seen the woman by the fountain.
+
+I went to Paris. I went further, and wandered about Germany. I tried to
+amuse myself, and I failed miserably. With the aimless whims of an idle
+and useless man, came all sorts of suggestions for good resolutions. One
+day I made up my mind that I would go and bury myself in a German
+university for a time, and live simply like a poor student. I started
+with the intention of going to Leipzic, determined to stay there until
+some event should direct my life or change my humour, or make an end of
+me altogether. The express train stopped at some station of which I did
+not know the name. It was dusk on a winter's afternoon, and I peered
+through the thick glass from my seat. Suddenly another train came
+gliding in from the opposite direction, and stopped alongside of ours. I
+looked at the carriage which chanced to be abreast of mine, and idly
+read the black letters painted on a white board swinging from the brass
+handrail: "BERLIN--COLOGNE--PARIS." Then I looked up at the window
+above. I started violently and the cold perspiration broke out upon my
+forehead. In the dim light, not six feet from where I sat, I saw the
+face of a woman, the face I loved, the straight, fine features, the
+strange eyes, the wonderful mouth, the pale skin. Her head-dress was a
+dark veil which seemed to be tied about her head and passed over the
+shoulders under her chin. As I threw down the window and knelt on the
+cushioned seat, leaning far out to get a better view, a long whistle
+screamed through the station, followed by a quick series of dull,
+clanking sounds; then there was a slight jerk, and my train moved on.
+Luckily the window was narrow, being the one over the seat, beside the
+door, or I believe I would have jumped out of it then and there. In an
+instant the speed increased, and I was being carried swiftly away in the
+opposite direction from the thing I loved.
+
+For a quarter of an hour I lay back in my place, stunned by the
+suddenness of the apparition. At last one of the two other passengers, a
+large and gorgeous captain of the White Königsberg Cuirassiers, civilly
+but firmly suggested that I might shut my window, as the evening was
+cold. I did so, with an apology, and relapsed into silence. The train
+ran swiftly on for a long time, and it was already beginning to slacken
+speed before entering another station when I roused myself, and made a
+sudden resolution. As the carriage stopped before the brilliantly
+lighted platform, I seized my belongings, saluted my fellow-passengers,
+and got out, determined to take the first express back to Paris.
+
+This time the circumstances of the vision had been so natural that it
+did not strike me that there was anything unreal about the face, or
+about the woman to whom it belonged. I did not try to explain to myself
+how the face, and the woman, could be travelling by a fast train from
+Berlin to Paris on a winter's afternoon, when both were in my mind
+indelibly associated with the moonlight and the fountains in my own
+English home. I certainly would not have admitted that I had been
+mistaken in the dusk, attributing to what I had seen a resemblance to my
+former vision which did not really exist. There was not the slightest
+doubt in my mind, and I was positively sure that I had again seen the
+face I loved. I did not hesitate, and in a few hours I was on my way
+back to Paris. I could not help reflecting on my ill-luck. Wandering as
+I had been for many months, it might as easily have chanced that I
+should be travelling in the same train with that woman, instead of going
+the other way. But my luck was destined to turn for a time.
+
+I searched Paris for several days. I dined at the principal hotels; I
+went to the theatres; I rode in the Bois de Boulogne in the morning, and
+picked up an acquaintance, whom I forced to drive with me in the
+afternoon. I went to mass at the Madeleine, and I attended the services
+at the English Church. I hung about the Louvre and Notre Dame. I went
+to Versailles. I spent hours in parading the Rue de Rivoli, in the
+neighbourhood of Meurice's corner, where foreigners pass and re-pass
+from morning till night. At last I received an invitation to a reception
+at the English Embassy. I went, and I found what I had sought so long.
+
+There she was, sitting by an old lady in grey satin and diamonds, who
+had a wrinkled but kindly face and keen grey eyes that seemed to take in
+everything they saw, with very little inclination to give much in
+return. But I did not notice the chaperon. I saw only the face that had
+haunted me for months, and in the excitement of the moment I walked
+quickly towards the pair, forgetting such a trifle as the necessity for
+an introduction.
+
+She was far more beautiful than I had thought, but I never doubted that
+it was she herself and no other. Vision or no vision before, this was
+the reality, and I knew it. Twice her hair had been covered, now at last
+I saw it, and the added beauty of its magnificence glorified the whole
+woman. It was rich hair, fine and abundant, golden, with deep ruddy
+tints in it like red bronze spun fine. There was no ornament in it, not
+a rose, not a thread of gold, and I felt that it needed nothing to
+enhance its splendour; nothing but her pale face, her dark strange
+eyes, and her heavy eyebrows. I could see that she was slender, too, but
+strong withal, as she sat there quietly gazing at the moving scene in
+the midst of the brilliant lights and the hum of perpetual conversation.
+
+I recollected the detail of introduction in time, and turned aside to
+look for my host. I found him at last. I begged him to present me to the
+two ladies, pointing them out to him at the same time.
+
+"Yes--uh--by all means--uh--" replied his Excellency, with a pleasant
+smile. He evidently had no idea of my name, which was not to be wondered
+at.
+
+"I am Lord Cairngorm," I observed.
+
+"Oh--by all means," answered the Ambassador, with the same hospitable
+smile. "Yes--uh--the fact is, I must try and find out who they are; such
+lots of people, you know."
+
+"Oh, if you will present me, I will try and find out for you," said I,
+laughing.
+
+"Ah, yes--so kind of you--come along," said my host.
+
+We threaded the crowd, and in a few minutes we stood before the two
+ladies.
+
+"'Lowmintrduce L'd Cairngorm," he said; then, adding quickly to me,
+"Come and dine to-morrow, won't you?" He glided away with his pleasant
+smile, and disappeared in the crowd.
+
+I sat down beside the beautiful girl, conscious that the eyes of the
+duenna were upon me.
+
+"I think we have been very near meeting before," I remarked, by way of
+opening the conversation.
+
+My companion turned her eyes full upon me with an air of enquiry. She
+evidently did not recall my face, if she had ever seen me.
+
+"Really--I cannot remember," she observed, in a low and musical voice.
+"When?"
+
+"In the first place, you came down from Berlin by the express, ten days
+ago. I was going the other way, and our carriages stopped opposite each
+other. I saw you at the window."
+
+"Yes--we came that way, but I do not remember--" She hesitated.
+
+"Secondly," I continued, "I was sitting alone in my garden last
+summer--near the end of July--do you remember? You must have wandered in
+there through the park; you came up to the house and looked at me--"
+
+"Was that you?" she asked, in evident surprise. Then she broke into a
+laugh. "I told everybody I had seen a ghost; there had never been any
+Cairngorms in the place since the memory of man. We left the next day,
+and never heard that you had come there; indeed, I did not know the
+castle belonged to you."
+
+"Where were you staying?" I asked.
+
+"Where? Why, with my aunt, where I always stay. She is your neighbour,
+since it _is_ you."
+
+"I--beg your pardon--but then--is your aunt Lady Bluebell? I did not
+quite catch--"
+
+"Don't be afraid. She is amazingly deaf. Yes. She is the relict of my
+beloved uncle, the sixteenth or seventeenth Baron Bluebell--I forget
+exactly how many of them there have been. And I--do you know who I am?"
+She laughed, well knowing that I did not.
+
+"No," I answered frankly. "I have not the least idea. I asked to be
+introduced because I recognised you. Perhaps--perhaps you are a Miss
+Bluebell?"
+
+"Considering that you are a neighbour, I will tell you who I am," she
+answered. "No; I am of the tribe of Bluebells, but my name is Lammas,
+and I have been given to understand that I was christened Margaret.
+Being a floral family, they call me Daisy. A dreadful American man once
+told me that my aunt was a Bluebell and that I was a Harebell--with two
+l's and an e--because my hair is so thick. I warn you, so that you may
+avoid making such a bad pun."
+
+"Do I look like a man who makes puns?" I asked, being very conscious of
+my melancholy face and sad looks.
+
+Miss Lammas eyed me critically.
+
+"No; you have a mournful temperament. I think I can trust you," she
+answered. "Do you think you could communicate to my aunt the fact that
+you are a Cairngorm and a neighbour? I am sure she would like to know."
+
+I leaned towards the old lady, inflating my lungs for a yell. But Miss
+Lammas stopped me.
+
+"That is not of the slightest use," she remarked. "You can write it on a
+bit of paper. She is utterly deaf."
+
+"I have a pencil," I answered, "but I have no paper. Would my cuff do,
+do you think?"
+
+"Oh yes!" replied Miss Lammas, with alacrity; "men often do that."
+
+I wrote on my cuff: "Miss Lammas wishes me to explain that I am your
+neighbour, Cairngorm." Then I held out my arm before the old lady's
+nose. She seemed perfectly accustomed to the proceeding, put up her
+glasses, read the words, smiled, nodded, and addressed me in the
+unearthly voice peculiar to people who hear nothing.
+
+"I knew your grandfather very well," she said. Then she smiled and
+nodded to me again, and to her niece, and relapsed into silence.
+
+"It is all right," remarked Miss Lammas. "Aunt Bluebell knows she is
+deaf, and does not say much, like the parrot. You see, she knew your
+grandfather. How odd, that we should be neighbours! Why have we never
+met before?"
+
+"If you had told me you knew my grandfather when you appeared in the
+garden, I should not have been in the least surprised," I answered
+rather irrelevantly. "I really thought you were the ghost of the old
+fountain. How in the world did you come there at that hour?"
+
+"We were a large party, and we went out for a walk. Then we thought we
+should like to see what your park was like in the moonlight, and so we
+trespassed. I got separated from the rest, and came upon you by
+accident, just as I was admiring the extremely ghostly look of your
+house, and wondering whether anybody would ever come and live there
+again. It looks like the castle of Macbeth, or a scene from the opera.
+Do you know anybody here?"
+
+"Hardly a soul. Do you?"
+
+"No. Aunt Bluebell said it was our duty to come. It is easy for her to
+go out; she does not bear the burden of the conversation."
+
+"I am sorry you find it a burden," said I. "Shall I go away?"
+
+Miss Lammas looked at me with a sudden gravity in her beautiful eyes,
+and there was a sort of hesitation about the lines of her full, soft
+mouth.
+
+"No," she said at last, quite simply, "don't go away. We may like each
+other, if you stay a little longer--and we ought to because we are
+neighbours in the country."
+
+I suppose I ought to have thought Miss Lammas a very odd girl. There is,
+indeed, a sort of freemasonry between people who discover that they live
+near each other, and that they ought to have known each other before.
+But there was a sort of unexpected frankness and simplicity in the
+girl's amusing manner which would have struck any one else as being
+singular, to say the least of it. To me, however, it all seemed natural
+enough. I had dreamed of her face too long not to be utterly happy when
+I met her at last, and could talk to her as much as I pleased. To me,
+the man of ill-luck in everything, the whole meeting seemed too good to
+be true. I felt again that strange sensation of lightness which I had
+experienced after I had seen her face in the garden. The great rooms
+seemed brighter, life seemed worth living; my sluggish, melancholy blood
+ran faster, and filled me with a new sense of strength. I said to myself
+that without this woman I was but an imperfect being, but that with her
+I could accomplish everything to which I should set my hand. Like the
+great Doctor, when he thought he had cheated Mephistopheles at last, I
+could have cried aloud to the fleeting moment, _Verweile doch du bist
+so schön_!
+
+"Are you always gay?" I asked suddenly. "How happy you must be!"
+
+"The days would sometimes seem very long if I were gloomy," she answered
+thoughtfully. "Yes, I think I find life very pleasant, and I tell it
+so."
+
+"How can you 'tell life' anything?" I enquired. "If I could catch my
+life and talk to it, I would abuse it prodigiously, I assure you."
+
+"I dare say. You have a melancholy temper. You ought to live out of
+doors, dig potatoes, make hay, shoot, hunt, tumble into ditches, and
+come home muddy and hungry for dinner. It would be much better for you
+than moping in your rook tower, and hating everything."
+
+"It is rather lonely down there," I murmured apologetically, feeling
+that Miss Lammas was quite right.
+
+"Then marry, and quarrel with your wife," she laughed. "Anything is
+better than being alone."
+
+"I am a very peaceable person. I never quarrel with anybody. You can try
+it. You will find it quite impossible."
+
+"Will you let me try?" she asked, still smiling.
+
+"By all means--especially if it is to be only a preliminary canter," I
+answered rashly.
+
+"What do you mean?" she enquired, turning quickly upon me.
+
+"Oh--nothing. You might try my paces with a view to quarrelling in the
+future. I cannot imagine how you are going to do it. You will have to
+resort to immediate and direct abuse."
+
+"No. I will only say that if you do not like your life, it is your own
+fault. How can a man of your age talk of being melancholy, or of the
+hollowness of existence? Are you consumptive? Are you subject to
+hereditary insanity? Are you deaf, like Aunt Bluebell? Are you poor,
+like--lots of people? Have you been crossed in love? Have you lost the
+world for a woman, or any particular woman for the sake of the world?
+Are you feebleminded, a cripple, an outcast? Are you--repulsively ugly?"
+She laughed again. "Is there any reason in the world why you should not
+enjoy all you have got in life?"
+
+"No. There is no reason whatever, except that I am dreadfully unlucky,
+especially in small things."
+
+"Then try big things, just for a change," suggested Miss Lammas. "Try
+and get married, for instance, and see how it turns out."
+
+"If it turned out badly, it would be rather serious."
+
+"Not half so serious as it is to abuse everything unreasonably. If
+abuse is your particular talent, abuse something that ought to be
+abused. Abuse the Conservatives--or the Liberals--it does not matter
+which, since they are always abusing each other. Make yourself felt by
+other people. You will like it, if they don't. It will make a man of
+you. Fill your mouth with pebbles, and howl at the sea, if you cannot do
+anything else. It did Demosthenes no end of good, you know. You will
+have the satisfaction of imitating a great man."
+
+"Really, Miss Lammas, I think the list of innocent exercises you
+propose--"
+
+"Very well--if you don't care for that sort of thing, care for some
+other sort of thing. Care for something, or hate something. Don't be
+idle. Life is short, and though art may be long, plenty of noise answers
+nearly as well."
+
+"I do care for something--I mean somebody," I said.
+
+"A woman? Then marry her. Don't hesitate."
+
+"I do not know whether she would marry me," I replied. "I have never
+asked her."
+
+"Then ask her at once," answered Miss Lammas. "I shall die happy if I
+feel I have persuaded a melancholy fellow-creature to rouse himself to
+action. Ask her, by all means, and see what she says. If she does not
+accept you at once, she may take you the next time. Meanwhile, you will
+have entered for the race. If you lose, there are the 'All-aged Trial
+Stakes,' and the 'Consolation Race.'"
+
+"And plenty of selling races into the bargain. Shall I take you at your
+word, Miss Lammas?"
+
+"I hope you will," she answered.
+
+"Since you yourself advise me, I will. Miss Lammas, will you do me the
+honour to marry me?"
+
+For the first time in my life the blood rushed to my head and my sight
+swam. I cannot tell why I said it. It would be useless to try to explain
+the extraordinary fascination the girl exercised over me, or the still
+more extraordinary feeling of intimacy with her which had grown in me
+during that half-hour. Lonely, sad, unlucky as I had been all my life, I
+was certainly not timid, nor even shy. But to propose to marry a woman
+after half an hour's acquaintance was a piece of madness of which I
+never believed myself capable, and of which I should never be capable
+again, could I be placed in the same situation. It was as though my
+whole being had been changed in a moment by magic--by the white magic of
+her nature brought into contact with mine. The blood sank back to my
+heart, and a moment later I found myself staring at her with anxious
+eyes. To my amazement she was as calm as ever, but her beautiful mouth
+smiled, and there was a mischievous light in her dark-brown eyes.
+
+"Fairly caught," she answered. "For an individual who pretends to be
+listless and sad you are not lacking in humour. I had really not the
+least idea what you were going to say. Wouldn't it be singularly awkward
+for you if I had said 'Yes'? I never saw anybody begin to practise so
+sharply what was preached to him--with so very little loss of time!"
+
+"You probably never met a man who had dreamed of you for seven months
+before being introduced."
+
+"No, I never did," she answered gaily. "It smacks of the romantic.
+Perhaps you are a romantic character after all. I should think you were,
+if I believed you. Very well; you have taken my advice, entered for a
+Stranger's Race and lost it. Try the All-aged Trial Stakes. You have
+another cuff, and a pencil. Propose to Aunt Bluebell; she would dance
+with astonishment, and she might recover her hearing."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+That was how I first asked Margaret Lammas to be my wife, and I will
+agree with any one who says I behaved very foolishly. But I have not
+repented of it, and I never shall. I have long ago understood that I was
+out of my mind that evening, but I think my temporary insanity on that
+occasion has had the effect of making me a saner man ever since. Her
+manner turned my head, for it was so different from what I had expected.
+To hear this lovely creature, who, in my imagination, was a heroine of
+romance, if not of tragedy, talking familiarly and laughing readily was
+more than my equanimity could bear, and I lost my head as well as my
+heart. But when I went back to England in the spring, I went to make
+certain arrangements at the Castle--certain changes and improvements
+which would be absolutely necessary. I had won the race for which I had
+entered myself so rashly, and we were to be married in June.
+
+Whether the change was due to the orders I had left with the gardener
+and the rest of the servants, or to my own state of mind, I cannot tell.
+At all events, the old place did not look the same to me when I opened
+my window on the morning after my arrival. There were the grey walls
+below me, and the grey turrets flanking the huge building; there were
+the fountains, the marble causeways, the smooth basins, the tall box
+hedges, the water-lilies and the swans, just as of old. But there was
+something else there, too--something in the air, in the water, and in
+the greenness that I did not recognise--a light over everything by which
+everything was transfigured. The clock in the tower struck seven, and
+the strokes of the ancient bell sounded like a wedding chime. The air
+sang with the thrilling treble of the song-birds, with the silvery music
+of the plashing water, and the softer harmony of the leaves stirred by
+the fresh morning wind. There was a smell of new-mown hay from the
+distant meadows, and of blooming roses from the beds below, wafted up
+together to my window. I stood in the pure sunshine and drank the air
+and all the sounds and the odours that were in it; and I looked down at
+my garden and said, "It is Paradise, after all. I think the men of old
+were right when they called heaven a garden, and Eden a garden inhabited
+by one man and one woman, the Earthly Paradise."
+
+I turned away, wondering what had become of the gloomy memories I had
+always associated with my home. I tried to recall the impression of my
+nurse's horrible prophecy before the death of my parents--an impression
+which hitherto had been vivid enough. I tried to remember my own self,
+my dejection, my listlessness, my bad luck, and my petty
+disappointments. I endeavoured to force myself to think as I used to
+think, if only to satisfy myself that I had not lost my individuality.
+But I succeeded in none of these efforts. I was a different man, a
+changed being, incapable of sorrow, of ill-luck, or of sadness. My life
+had been a dream, not evil, but infinitely gloomy and hopeless. It was
+now a reality, full of hope, gladness, and all manner of good. My home
+had been like a tomb; to-day it was Paradise. My heart had been as
+though it had not existed; to-day it beat with strength and youth, and
+the certainty of realised happiness. I revelled in the beauty of the
+world, and called loveliness out of the future to enjoy it before time
+should bring it to me, as a traveller in the plains looks up to the
+mountains, and already tastes the cool air through the dust of the road.
+
+Here, I thought, we will live and live for years. There we will sit by
+the fountain towards evening and in the deep moonlight. Down those paths
+we will wander together. On those benches we will rest and talk. Among
+those eastern hills we will ride through the soft twilight, and in the
+old house we will tell tales on winter nights, when the logs burn high,
+and the holly berries are red, and the old clock tolls out the dying
+year. On these old steps, in these dark passages and stately rooms,
+there will one day be the sound of little pattering feet, and laughing
+child-voices will ring up to the vaults of the ancient hall. Those tiny
+footsteps shall not be slow and sad as mine were, nor shall the childish
+words be spoken in an awed whisper. No gloomy Welshwoman shall people
+the dusky corners with weird horrors, nor utter horrid prophecies of
+death and ghastly things. All shall be young, and fresh, and joyful, and
+happy, and we will turn the old luck again, and forget that there was
+ever any sadness.
+
+So I thought, as I looked out of my window that morning and for many
+mornings after that, and every day it all seemed more real than ever
+before, and much nearer. But the old nurse looked at me askance, and
+muttered odd sayings about the Woman of the Water. I cared little what
+she said, for I was far too happy.
+
+At last the time came near for the wedding. Lady Bluebell and all the
+tribe of Bluebells, as Margaret called them, were at Bluebell Grange,
+for we had determined to be married in the country, and to come straight
+to the Castle afterwards. We cared little for travelling, and not at
+all for a crowded ceremony at St. George's in Hanover Square, with all
+the tiresome formalities afterwards. I used to ride over to the Grange
+every day, and very often Margaret would come with her aunt and some of
+her cousins to the Castle. I was suspicious of my own taste, and was
+only too glad to let her have her way about the alterations and
+improvements in our home.
+
+We were to be married on the thirtieth of July, and on the evening of
+the twenty-eighth Margaret drove over with some of the Bluebell party.
+In the long summer twilight we all went out into the garden. Naturally
+enough, Margaret and I were left to ourselves, and we wandered down by
+the marble basins.
+
+"It is an odd coincidence," I said; "it was on this very night last year
+that I first saw you."
+
+"Considering that it is the month of July," answered Margaret, with a
+laugh, "and that we have been here almost every day, I don't think the
+coincidence is so extraordinary, after all."
+
+"No, dear," said I, "I suppose not. I don't know why it struck me. We
+shall very likely be here a year from to-day, and a year from that. The
+odd thing, when I think of it, is that you should be here at all. But my
+luck has turned. I ought not to think anything odd that happens now that
+I have you. It is all sure to be good."
+
+"A slight change in your ideas since that remarkable performance of
+yours in Paris," said Margaret. "Do you know, I thought you were the
+most extraordinary man I had ever met."
+
+"I thought you were the most charming woman I have ever seen. I
+naturally did not want to lose any time in frivolities. I took you at
+your word, I followed your advice, I asked you to marry me, and this is
+the delightful result--what's the matter?"
+
+Margaret had started suddenly, and her hand tightened on my arm. An old
+woman was coming up the path, and was close to us before we saw her, for
+the moon had risen, and was shining full in our faces. The woman turned
+out to be my old nurse.
+
+"It's only old Judith, dear--don't be frightened," I said. Then I spoke
+to the Welshwoman: "What are you about, Judith? Have you been feeding
+the Woman of the Water?"
+
+"Ay--when the clock strikes, Willie--my lord, I mean," muttered the old
+creature, drawing aside to let us pass, and fixing her strange eyes on
+Margaret's face.
+
+"What does she mean?" asked Margaret, when we had gone by.
+
+"Nothing, darling. The old thing is mildly crazy, but she is a good
+soul."
+
+We went on in silence for a few moments, and came to the rustic bridge
+just above the artificial grotto through which the water ran out into
+the park, dark and swift in its narrow channel. We stopped, and leaned
+on the wooden rail. The moon was now behind us, and shone full upon the
+long vista of basins and on the huge walls and towers of the Castle
+above.
+
+"How proud you ought to be of such a grand old place!" said Margaret,
+softly.
+
+"It is yours now, darling," I answered. "You have as good a right to
+love it as I--but I only love it because you are to live in it, dear."
+
+Her hand stole out and lay on mine, and we were both silent. Just then
+the clock began to strike far off in the tower. I counted the
+strokes--eight--nine--ten--eleven--I looked at my
+watch--twelve--thirteen--I laughed. The bell went on striking.
+
+"The old clock has gone crazy, like Judith," I exclaimed. Still it went
+on, note after note ringing out monotonously through the still air. We
+leaned over the rail, instinctively looking in the direction whence the
+sound came. On and on it went. I counted nearly a hundred, out of sheer
+curiosity, for I understood that something had broken and that the thing
+was running itself down.
+
+Suddenly there was a crack as of breaking wood, a cry and a heavy
+splash, and I was alone, clinging to the broken end of the rail of the
+rustic bridge.
+
+I do not think I hesitated while my pulse beat twice. I sprang clear of
+the bridge into the black rushing water, dived to the bottom, came up
+again with empty hands, turned and swam downwards through the grotto in
+the thick darkness, plunging and diving at every stroke, striking my
+head and hands against jagged stones and sharp corners, clutching at
+last something in my fingers, and dragging it up with all my might. I
+spoke, I cried aloud, but there was no answer. I was alone in the pitchy
+blackness with my burden, and the house was five hundred yards away.
+Struggling still, I felt the ground beneath my feet, I saw a ray of
+moonlight--the grotto widened, and the deep water became a broad and
+shallow brook as I stumbled over the stones and at last laid Margaret's
+body on the bank in the park beyond.
+
+"Ay, Willie, as the clock struck!" said the voice of Judith, the Welsh
+nurse, as she bent down and looked at the white face. The old woman must
+have turned back and followed us, seen the accident, and slipped out by
+the lower gate of the garden. "Ay," she groaned, "you have fed the Woman
+of the Water this night, Willie, while the clock was striking."
+
+I scarcely heard her as I knelt beside the lifeless body of the woman I
+loved, chafing the wet white temples, and gazing wildly into the
+wide-staring eyes. I remember only the first returning look of
+consciousness, the first heaving breath, the first movement of those
+dear hands stretching out towards me.
+
+
+That is not much of a story, you say. It is the story of my life. That
+is all. It does not pretend to be anything else. Old Judith says my luck
+turned on that summer's night, when I was struggling in the water to
+save all that was worth living for. A month later there was a stone
+bridge above the grotto, and Margaret and I stood on it, and looked up
+at the moonlit Castle, as we had done once before, and as we have done
+many times since. For all those things happened ten years ago last
+summer, and this is the tenth Christmas Eve we have spent together by
+the roaring logs in the old hall, talking of old times; and every year
+there are more old times to talk of. There are curly-headed boys, too,
+with red-gold hair and dark-brown eyes like their mother's, and a little
+Margaret, with solemn black eyes like mine. Why could she not look like
+her mother, too, as well as the rest of them?
+
+The world is very bright at this glorious Christmas time, and perhaps
+there is little use in calling up the sadness of long ago, unless it be
+to make the jolly firelight seem more cheerful, the good wife's face
+look gladder, and to give the children's laughter a merrier ring, by
+contrast with all that is gone. Perhaps, too, some sad-faced, listless,
+melancholy youth, who feels that the world is very hollow, and that life
+is like a perpetual funeral service, just as I used to feel myself, may
+take courage from my example, and having found the woman of his heart,
+ask her to marry him after half an hour's acquaintance. But, on the
+whole, I would not advise any man to marry, for the simple reason that
+no man will ever find a wife like mine, and being obliged to go further,
+he will necessarily fare worse. My wife has done miracles, but I will
+not assert that any other woman is able to follow her example.
+
+Margaret always said that the old place was beautiful, and that I ought
+to be proud of it. I dare say she is right. She has even more
+imagination than I. But I have a good answer and a plain one, which is
+this--that all the beauty of the Castle comes from her. She has breathed
+upon it all, as the children blow upon the cold glass window-panes in
+winter; and as their warm breath crystallises into landscapes from
+fairyland, full of exquisite shapes and traceries upon the blank
+surface, so her spirit has transformed every grey stone of the old
+towers, every ancient tree and hedge in the gardens, every thought in my
+once melancholy self. All that was old is young, and all that was sad is
+glad, and I am the gladdest of all. Whatever heaven may be, there is no
+earthly paradise without woman, nor is there anywhere a place so
+desolate, so dreary, so unutterably miserable that a woman cannot make
+it seem heaven to the man she loves, and who loves her.
+
+I hear certain cynics laugh, and cry that all that has been said before.
+Do not laugh, my good cynic. You are too small a man to laugh at such a
+great thing as love. Prayers have been said before now by many, and
+perhaps you say yours, too. I do not think they lose anything by being
+repeated, nor you by repeating them. You say that the world is bitter,
+and full of the Waters of Bitterness. Love, and so live that you may be
+loved--the world will turn sweet for you, and you shall rest like me by
+the Waters of Paradise.
+
+
+
+
+THE DOLL'S GHOST
+
+
+It was a terrible accident, and for one moment the splendid machinery of
+Cranston House got out of gear and stood still. The butler emerged from
+the retirement in which he spent his elegant leisure, two grooms of the
+chambers appeared simultaneously from opposite directions, there were
+actually housemaids on the grand staircase, and those who remember the
+facts most exactly assert that Mrs. Pringle herself positively stood
+upon the landing. Mrs. Pringle was the housekeeper. As for the head
+nurse, the under nurse, and the nursery maid, their feelings cannot be
+described. The head nurse laid one hand upon the polished marble
+balustrade and stared stupidly before her, the under nurse stood rigid
+and pale, leaning against the polished marble wall, and the nursery-maid
+collapsed and sat down upon the polished marble step, just beyond the
+limits of the velvet carpet, and frankly burst into tears.
+
+The Lady Gwendolen Lancaster-Douglas-Scroop, youngest daughter of the
+ninth Duke of Cranston, and aged six years and three months, picked
+herself up quite alone, and sat down on the third step from the foot of
+the grand staircase in Cranston House.
+
+"Oh!" ejaculated the butler, and he disappeared again.
+
+"Ah!" responded the grooms of the chambers, as they also went away.
+
+"It's only that doll," Mrs. Pringle was distinctly heard to say, in a
+tone of contempt.
+
+The under nurse heard her say it. Then the three nurses gathered round
+Lady Gwendolen and patted her, and gave her unhealthy things out of
+their pockets, and hurried her out of Cranston House as fast as they
+could, lest it should be found out upstairs that they had allowed the
+Lady Gwendolen Lancaster-Douglas-Scroop to tumble down the grand
+staircase with her doll in her arms. And as the doll was badly broken,
+the nursery-maid carried it, with the pieces, wrapped up in Lady
+Gwendolen's little cloak. It was not far to Hyde Park, and when they had
+reached a quiet place they took means to find out that Lady Gwendolen
+had no bruises. For the carpet was very thick and soft, and there was
+thick stuff under it to make it softer.
+
+Lady Gwendolen Douglas-Scroop sometimes yelled, but she never cried. It
+was because she had yelled that the nurse had allowed her to go
+downstairs alone with Nina, the doll, under one arm, while she steadied
+herself with her other hand on the balustrade, and trod upon the
+polished marble steps beyond the edge of the carpet. So she had fallen,
+and Nina had come to grief.
+
+When the nurses were quite sure that she was not hurt, they unwrapped
+the doll and looked at her in her turn. She had been a very beautiful
+doll, very large, and fair, and healthy, with real yellow hair, and
+eyelids that would open and shut over very grown-up dark eyes. Moreover,
+when you moved her right arm up and down she said "Pa-pa," and when you
+moved the left she said "Ma-ma," very distinctly.
+
+"I heard her say 'Pa' when she fell," said the under nurse, who heard
+everything. "But she ought to have said 'Pa-pa.'"
+
+"That's because her arm went up when she hit the step," said the head
+nurse. "She'll say the other 'Pa' when I put it down again."
+
+"Pa," said Nina, as her right arm was pushed down, and speaking through
+her broken face. It was cracked right across, from the upper corner of
+the forehead, with a hideous gash, through the nose and down to the
+little frilled collar of the pale green silk Mother Hubbard frock, and
+two little three-cornered pieces of porcelain had fallen out.
+
+"I'm sure it's a wonder she can speak at all, being all smashed," said
+the under nurse.
+
+"You'll have to take her to Mr. Puckler," said her superior. "It's not
+far, and you'd better go at once."
+
+Lady Gwendolen was occupied in digging a hole in the ground with a
+little spade, and paid no attention to the nurses.
+
+"What are you doing?" enquired the nursery-maid, looking on.
+
+"Nina's dead, and I'm diggin' her a grave," replied her ladyship
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Oh, she'll come to life again all right," said the nursery-maid.
+
+The under nurse wrapped Nina up again and departed. Fortunately a kind
+soldier, with very long legs and a very small cap, happened to be there;
+and as he had nothing to do, he offered to see the under nurse safely to
+Mr. Puckler's and back.
+
+
+Mr. Bernard Puckler and his little daughter lived in a little house in a
+little alley, which led out off a quiet little street not very far from
+Belgrave Square. He was the great doll doctor, and his extensive
+practice lay in the most aristocratic quarter. He mended dolls of all
+sizes and ages, boy dolls and girl dolls, baby dolls in long clothes,
+and grown-up dolls in fashionable gowns, talking dolls and dumb dolls,
+those that shut their eyes when they lay down, and those whose eyes had
+to be shut for them by means of a mysterious wire. His daughter Else was
+only just over twelve years old, but she was already very clever at
+mending dolls' clothes, and at doing their hair, which is harder than
+you might think, though the dolls sit quite still while it is being
+done.
+
+Mr. Puckler had originally been a German, but he had dissolved his
+nationality in the ocean of London many years ago, like a great many
+foreigners. He still had one or two German friends, however, who came on
+Saturday evenings, and smoked with him and played picquet or "skat" with
+him for farthing points, and called him "Herr Doctor," which seemed to
+please Mr. Puckler very much.
+
+He looked older than he was, for his beard was rather long and ragged,
+his hair was grizzled and thin, and he wore horn-rimmed spectacles. As
+for Else, she was a thin, pale child, very quiet and neat, with dark
+eyes and brown hair that was plaited down her back and tied with a bit
+of black ribbon. She mended the dolls' clothes and took the dolls back
+to their homes when they were quite strong again.
+
+The house was a little one, but too big for the two people who lived in
+it. There was a small sitting-room on the street, and the workshop was
+at the back, and there were three rooms upstairs. But the father and
+daughter lived most of their time in the workshop, because they were
+generally at work, even in the evenings.
+
+Mr. Puckler laid Nina on the table and looked at her a long time, till
+the tears began to fill his eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles. He
+was a very susceptible man, and he often fell in love with the dolls he
+mended, and found it hard to part with them when they had smiled at him
+for a few days. They were real little people to him, with characters and
+thoughts and feelings of their own, and he was very tender with them
+all. But some attracted him especially from the first, and when they
+were brought to him maimed and injured, their state seemed so pitiful to
+him that the tears came easily. You must remember that he had lived
+among dolls during a great part of his life, and understood them.
+
+"How do you know that they feel nothing?" he went on to say to Else.
+"You must be gentle with them. It costs nothing to be kind to the little
+beings, and perhaps it makes a difference to them."
+
+And Else understood him, because she was a child, and she knew that she
+was more to him than all the dolls.
+
+He fell in love with Nina at first sight, perhaps because her beautiful
+brown glass eyes were something like Else's own, and he loved Else first
+and best, with all his heart. And, besides, it was a very sorrowful
+case. Nina had evidently not been long in the world, for her complexion
+was perfect, her hair was smooth where it should be smooth, and curly
+where it should be curly, and her silk clothes were perfectly new. But
+across her face was that frightful gash, like a sabre-cut, deep and
+shadowy within, but clean and sharp at the edges. When he tenderly
+pressed her head to close the gaping wound, the edges made a fine
+grating sound, that was painful to hear, and the lids of the dark eyes
+quivered and trembled as though Nina were suffering dreadfully.
+
+"Poor Nina!" he exclaimed sorrowfully. "But I shall not hurt you much,
+though you will take a long time to get strong."
+
+He always asked the names of the broken dolls when they were brought to
+him, and sometimes the people knew what the children called them, and
+told him. He liked "Nina" for a name. Altogether and in every way she
+pleased him more than any doll he had seen for many years, and he felt
+drawn to her, and made up his mind to make her perfectly strong and
+sound, no matter how much labour it might cost him.
+
+Mr. Puckler worked patiently a little at a time, and Else watched him.
+She could do nothing for poor Nina, whose clothes needed no mending. The
+longer the doll doctor worked, the more fond he became of the yellow
+hair and the beautiful brown glass eyes. He sometimes forgot all the
+other dolls that were waiting to be mended, lying side by side on a
+shelf, and sat for an hour gazing at Nina's face, while he racked his
+ingenuity for some new invention by which to hide even the smallest
+trace of the terrible accident.
+
+She was wonderfully mended. Even he was obliged to admit that; but the
+scar was still visible to his keen eyes, a very fine line right across
+the face, downwards from right to left. Yet all the conditions had been
+most favourable for a cure, since the cement had set quite hard at the
+first attempt and the weather had been fine and dry, which makes a great
+difference in a dolls' hospital.
+
+At last he knew that he could do no more, and the under nurse had
+already come twice to see whether the job was finished, as she coarsely
+expressed it.
+
+"Nina is not quite strong yet," Mr. Puckler had answered each time, for
+he could not make up his mind to face the parting.
+
+And now he sat before the square deal table at which he worked, and Nina
+lay before him for the last time with a big brown paper box beside her.
+It stood there like her coffin, waiting for her, he thought. He must put
+her into it, and lay tissue paper over her dear face, and then put on
+the lid, and at the thought of tying the string his sight was dim with
+tears again. He was never to look into the glassy depths of the
+beautiful brown eyes any more, nor to hear the little wooden voice say
+"Pa-pa" and "Ma-ma." It was a very painful moment.
+
+In the vain hope of gaining time before the separation, he took up the
+little sticky bottles of cement and glue and gum and colour, looking at
+each one in turn, and then at Nina's face. And all his small tools lay
+there, neatly arranged in a row, but he knew that he could not use them
+again for Nina. She was quite strong at last, and in a country where
+there should be no cruel children to hurt her she might live a hundred
+years, with only that almost imperceptible line across her face to tell
+of the fearful thing that had befallen her on the marble steps of
+Cranston House.
+
+Suddenly Mr. Puckler's heart was quite full, and he rose abruptly from
+his seat and turned away.
+
+"Else," he said unsteadily, "you must do it for me. I cannot bear to see
+her go into the box."
+
+So he went and stood at the window with his back turned, while Else did
+what he had not the heart to do.
+
+"Is it done?" he asked, not turning round. "Then take her away, my dear.
+Put on your hat, and take her to Cranston House quickly, and when you
+are gone I will turn round."
+
+Else was used to her father's queer ways with the dolls, and though she
+had never seen him so much moved by a parting, she was not much
+surprised.
+
+"Come back quickly," he said, when he heard her hand on the latch. "It
+is growing late, and I should not send you at this hour. But I cannot
+bear to look forward to it any more."
+
+When Else was gone, he left the window and sat down in his place before
+the table again, to wait for the child to come back. He touched the
+place where Nina had lain, very gently, and he recalled the softly
+tinted pink face, and the glass eyes, and the ringlets of yellow hair,
+till he could almost see them.
+
+The evenings were long, for it was late in the spring. But it began to
+grow dark soon, and Mr. Puckler wondered why Else did not come back. She
+had been gone an hour and a half, and that was much longer than he had
+expected, for it was barely half a mile from Belgrave Square to Cranston
+House. He reflected that the child might have been kept waiting, but as
+the twilight deepened he grew anxious, and walked up and down in the dim
+workshop, no longer thinking of Nina, but of Else, his own living child,
+whom he loved.
+
+An undefinable, disquieting sensation came upon him by fine degrees, a
+chilliness and a faint stirring of his thin hair, joined with a wish to
+be in any company rather than to be alone much longer. It was the
+beginning of fear.
+
+He told himself in strong German-English that he was a foolish old man,
+and he began to feel about for the matches in the dusk. He knew just
+where they should be, for he always kept them in the same place, close
+to the little tin box that held bits of sealing-wax of various colours,
+for some kinds of mending. But somehow he could not find the matches in
+the gloom.
+
+Something had happened to Else, he was sure, and as his fear increased,
+he felt as though it might be allayed if he could get a light and see
+what time it was. Then he called himself a foolish old man again, and
+the sound of his own voice startled him in the dark. He could not find
+the matches.
+
+The window was grey still; he might see what time it was if he went
+close to it, and he could go and get matches out of the cupboard
+afterwards. He stood back from the table, to get out of the way of the
+chair, and began to cross the board floor.
+
+Something was following him in the dark. There was a small pattering, as
+of tiny feet upon the boards. He stopped and listened, and the roots of
+his hair tingled. It was nothing, and he was a foolish old man. He made
+two steps more, and he was sure that he heard the little pattering
+again. He turned his back to the window, leaning against the sash so
+that the panes began to crack, and he faced the dark. Everything was
+quite still, and it smelt of paste and cement and wood-filings as usual.
+
+"Is that you, Else?" he asked, and he was surprised by the fear in his
+voice.
+
+There was no answer in the room, and he held up his watch and tried to
+make out what time it was by the grey dusk that was just not darkness.
+So far as he could see, it was within two or three minutes of ten
+o'clock. He had been a long time alone. He was shocked, and frightened
+for Else, out in London, so late, and he almost ran across the room to
+the door. As he fumbled for the latch, he distinctly heard the running
+of the little feet after him.
+
+"Mice!" he exclaimed feebly, just as he got the door open.
+
+He shut it quickly behind him, and felt as though some cold thing had
+settled on his back and were writhing upon him. The passage was quite
+dark, but he found his hat and was out in the alley in a moment,
+breathing more freely, and surprised to find how much light there still
+was in the open air. He could see the pavement clearly under his feet,
+and far off in the street to which the alley led he could hear the
+laughter and calls of children, playing some game out of doors. He
+wondered how he could have been so nervous, and for an instant he
+thought of going back into the house to wait quietly for Else. But
+instantly he felt that nervous fright of something stealing over him
+again. In any case it was better to walk up to Cranston House and ask
+the servants about the child. One of the women had perhaps taken a fancy
+to her, and was even now giving her tea and cake.
+
+He walked quickly to Belgrave Square, and then up the broad streets,
+listening as he went, whenever there was no other sound, for the tiny
+footsteps. But he heard nothing, and was laughing at himself when he
+rang the servants' bell at the big house. Of course, the child must be
+there.
+
+The person who opened the door was quite an inferior person, for it was
+a back door, but affected the manners of the front, and stared at Mr.
+Puckler superciliously under the strong light.
+
+No little girl had been seen, and he knew "nothing about no dolls."
+
+"She is my little girl," said Mr. Puckler tremulously, for all his
+anxiety was returning tenfold, "and I am afraid something has happened."
+
+The inferior person said rudely that "nothing could have happened to her
+in that house, because she had not been there, which was a jolly good
+reason why;" and Mr. Puckler was obliged to admit that the man ought to
+know, as it was his business to keep the door and let people in. He
+wished to be allowed to speak to the under nurse, who knew him; but the
+man was ruder than ever, and finally shut the door in his face.
+
+When the doll doctor was alone in the street, he steadied himself by the
+railing, for he felt as though he were breaking in two, just as some
+dolls break, in the middle of the backbone.
+
+Presently he knew that he must be doing something to find Else, and that
+gave him strength. He began to walk as quickly as he could through the
+streets, following every highway and byway which his little girl might
+have taken on her errand. He also asked several policemen in vain if
+they had seen her, and most of them answered him kindly, for they saw
+that he was a sober man and in his right senses, and some of them had
+little girls of their own.
+
+It was one o'clock in the morning when he went up to his own door
+again, worn out and hopeless and broken-hearted. As he turned the key in
+the lock, his heart stood still, for he knew that he was awake and not
+dreaming, and that he really heard those tiny footsteps pattering to
+meet him inside the house along the passage.
+
+But he was too unhappy to be much frightened any more, and his heart
+went on again with a dull regular pain, that found its way all through
+him with every pulse. So he went in, and hung up his hat in the dark,
+and found the matches in the cupboard and the candlestick in its place
+in the corner.
+
+Mr. Puckler was so much overcome and so completely worn out that he sat
+down in his chair before the work-table and almost fainted, as his face
+dropped forward upon his folded hands. Beside him the solitary candle
+burned steadily with a low flame in the still warm air.
+
+"Else! Else!" he moaned against his yellow knuckles. And that was all he
+could say, and it was no relief to him. On the contrary, the very sound
+of the name was a new and sharp pain that pierced his ears and his head
+and his very soul. For every time he repeated the name it meant that
+little Else was dead, somewhere out in the streets of London in the
+dark.
+
+He was so terribly hurt that he did not even feel something pulling
+gently at the skirt of his old coat, so gently that it was like the
+nibbling of a tiny mouse. He might have thought that it was really a
+mouse if he had noticed it.
+
+"Else! Else!" he groaned right against his hands.
+
+Then a cool breath stirred his thin hair, and the low flame of the one
+candle dropped down almost to a mere spark, not flickering as though a
+draught were going to blow it out, but just dropping down as if it were
+tired out. Mr. Puckler felt his hands stiffening with fright under his
+face; and there was a faint rustling sound, like some small silk thing
+blown in a gentle breeze. He sat up straight, stark and scared, and a
+small wooden voice spoke in the stillness.
+
+"Pa-pa," it said, with a break between the syllables.
+
+Mr. Puckler stood up in a single jump, and his chair fell over backwards
+with a smashing noise upon the wooden floor. The candle had almost gone
+out.
+
+It was Nina's doll voice that had spoken, and he should have known it
+among the voices of a hundred other dolls. And yet there was something
+more in it, a little human ring, with a pitiful cry and a call for help,
+and the wail of a hurt child. Mr. Puckler stood up, stark and stiff, and
+tried to look round, but at first he could not, for he seemed to be
+frozen from head to foot.
+
+Then he made a great effort, and he raised one hand to each of his
+temples, and pressed his own head round as he would have turned a
+doll's. The candle was burning so low that it might as well have been
+out altogether, for any light it gave, and the room seemed quite dark at
+first. Then he saw something. He would not have believed that he could
+be more frightened than he had been just before that. But he was, and
+his knees shook, for he saw the doll standing in the middle of the
+floor, shining with a faint and ghostly radiance, her beautiful glassy
+brown eyes fixed on his. And across her face the very thin line of the
+break he had mended shone as though it were drawn in light with a fine
+point of white flame.
+
+Yet there was something more in the eyes, too; there was something
+human, like Else's own, but as if only the doll saw him through them,
+and not Else. And there was enough of Else to bring back all his pain
+and to make him forget his fear.
+
+"Else! my little Else!" he cried aloud.
+
+The small ghost moved, and its doll-arm slowly rose and fell with a
+stiff, mechanical motion.
+
+"Pa-pa," it said.
+
+It seemed this time that there was even more of Else's tone echoing
+somewhere between the wooden notes that reached his ears so distinctly,
+and yet so far away. Else was calling him, he was sure.
+
+His face was perfectly white in the gloom, but his knees did not shake
+any more, and he felt that he was less frightened.
+
+"Yes, child! But where? Where?" he asked. "Where are you, Else?"
+
+"Pa-pa!"
+
+The syllables died away in the quiet room. There was a low rustling of
+silk, the glassy brown eyes turned slowly away, and Mr. Puckler heard
+the pitter-patter of the small feet in the bronze kid slippers as the
+figure ran straight to the door. Then the candle burned high again, the
+room was full of light, and he was alone.
+
+Mr. Puckler passed his hand over his eyes and looked about him. He could
+see everything quite clearly, and he felt that he must have been
+dreaming, though he was standing instead of sitting down, as he should
+have been if he had just waked up. The candle burned brightly now. There
+were the dolls to be mended, lying in a row with their toes up. The
+third one had lost her right shoe, and Else was making one. He knew
+that, and he was certainly not dreaming now. He had not been dreaming
+when he had come in from his fruitless search and had heard the doll's
+footsteps running to the door. He had not fallen asleep in his chair.
+How could he possibly have fallen asleep when his heart was breaking? He
+had been awake all the time.
+
+He steadied himself, set the fallen chair upon its legs, and said to
+himself again very emphatically that he was a foolish old man. He ought
+to be out in the streets looking for his child, asking questions, and
+enquiring at the police stations, where all accidents were reported as
+soon as they were known, or at the hospitals.
+
+"Pa-pa!"
+
+The longing, wailing, pitiful little wooden cry rang from the passage,
+outside the door, and Mr. Puckler stood for an instant with white face,
+transfixed and rooted to the spot. A moment later his hand was on the
+latch. Then he was in the passage, with the light streaming from the
+open door behind him.
+
+Quite at the other end he saw the little phantom shining clearly in the
+shadow, and the right hand seemed to beckon to him as the arm rose and
+fell once more. He knew all at once that it had not come to frighten him
+but to lead him, and when it disappeared, and he walked boldly towards
+the door, he knew that it was in the street outside, waiting for him. He
+forgot that he was tired and had eaten no supper, and had walked many
+miles, for a sudden hope ran through and through him, like a golden
+stream of life.
+
+And sure enough, at the corner of the alley, and at the corner of the
+street, and out in Belgrave Square, he saw the small ghost flitting
+before him. Sometimes it was only a shadow, where there was other light,
+but then the glare of the lamps made a pale green sheen on its little
+Mother Hubbard frock of silk; and sometimes, where the streets were dark
+and silent, the whole figure shone out brightly, with its yellow curls
+and rosy neck. It seemed to trot along like a tiny child, and Mr.
+Puckler could almost hear the pattering of the bronze kid slippers on
+the pavement as it ran. But it went very fast, and he could only just
+keep up with it, tearing along with his hat on the back of his head and
+his thin hair blown by the night breeze, and his horn-rimmed spectacles
+firmly set upon his broad nose.
+
+On and on he went, and he had no idea where he was. He did not even
+care, for he knew certainly that he was going the right way.
+
+Then at last, in a wide, quiet street, he was standing before a big,
+sober-looking door that had two lamps on each side of it, and a polished
+brass bell-handle, which he pulled.
+
+And just inside, when the door was opened, in the bright light, there
+was the little shadow, and the pale green sheen of the little silk
+dress, and once more the small cry came to his ears, less pitiful, more
+longing.
+
+"Pa-pa!"
+
+The shadow turned suddenly bright, and out of the brightness the
+beautiful brown glass eyes were turned up happily to his, while the rosy
+mouth smiled so divinely that the phantom doll looked almost like a
+little angel just then.
+
+"A little girl was brought in soon after ten o'clock," said the quiet
+voice of the hospital doorkeeper. "I think they thought she was only
+stunned. She was holding a big brown-paper box against her, and they
+could not get it out of her arms. She had a long plait of brown hair
+that hung down as they carried her."
+
+"She is my little girl," said Mr. Puckler, but he hardly heard his own
+voice.
+
+He leaned over Else's face in the gentle light of the children's ward,
+and when he had stood there a minute the beautiful brown eyes opened and
+looked up to his.
+
+"Pa-pa!" cried Else, softly, "I knew you would come!"
+
+Then Mr. Puckler did not know what he did or said for a moment, and what
+he felt was worth all the fear and terror and despair that had almost
+killed him that night. But by and by Else was telling her story, and the
+nurse let her speak, for there were only two other children in the room,
+who were getting well and were sound asleep.
+
+"They were big boys with bad faces," said Else, "and they tried to get
+Nina away from me, but I held on and fought as well as I could till one
+of them hit me with something, and I don't remember any more, for I
+tumbled down, and I suppose the boys ran away, and somebody found me
+there. But I'm afraid Nina is all smashed."
+
+"Here is the box," said the nurse. "We could not take it out of her arms
+till she came to herself. Should you like to see if the doll is broken?"
+
+And she undid the string cleverly, but Nina was all smashed to pieces.
+Only the gentle light of the children's ward made a pale green sheen in
+the folds of the little Mother Hubbard frock.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wandering Ghosts, by F. Marion Crawford
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40386 ***