“If they’re immaterial then, they’re spirits?” he questioned.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “It’s so hard to say what I really think, you know.  I’ve got a queer idea, that my head-piece likes to think good; but I don’t believe my tummy believes it.”

“Go on!” he said.

“Well,” I said.  “Suppose the earth were inhabited by two kinds of life.  We’re one, and they’re the other.”

“Go on!” he said.

“Well,” I said.  “Don’t you see, in a normal state we may not be capable of appreciating the realness of the other?  But they may be just as real and material to them, as we are to us.  Do you see?”

“Yes,” he said.  “Go on!”

“Well,” I said.  “The earth may be just as real to them, as to us.  I mean that it may have qualities as material to them, as it has to us; but neither of us could appreciate the other’s realness, or the quality of realness in the earth, which was real to the other.  It’s so difficult to explain.  Don’t you understand?”

“Yes,” he said.  “Go on!”

“Well, if we were in what I might call a healthy atmosphere, they would be quite beyond our power to see or feel, or anything.  And the same with them; but the more we’re like this, the more real and actual they could grow to us.  See?  That is, the more we should become able to appreciate their form of materialness.  That’s all.  I can’t make it any clearer.”

“Then, after all, you really think they’re ghosts, or something of that sort?” Tammy said.

“I suppose it does come to that,” I answered.  “I mean that, anyway, I don’t think they’re our ideas of flesh and blood.  But, of course, it’s silly to say much; and, after all, you must remember that I may be all wrong.”

“I think you ought to tell the Second Mate all this,” he said.  “If it’s really as you say, the ship ought to be put into the nearest port, and jolly well burnt.”

“The Second Mate couldn’t do anything,” I replied.  “Even if he believed it all; which we’re not certain he would.”

“Perhaps not,” Tammy answered.  “But if you could get him to believe it, he might explain the whole business to the Skipper, and then something might be done.  It’s not safe as it is.”

“He’d only get jeered at again,” I said, rather hopelessly.

“No,” said Tammy.  “Not after what’s happened tonight.”

“Perhaps not,” I replied, doubtfully.  And just then the Second Mate came back on to the poop, and Tammy cleared away from the wheel-box, leaving me with a worrying feeling that I ought to do something.

VII

The Coming of the Mist and That Which It Ushered

We buried Williams at midday.  Poor beggar!  It had been so sudden.  All day the men were awed and gloomy, and there was a lot of talk about there being a Jonah aboard.  If they’d only known what Tammy and I, and perhaps the Second Mate, knew!