Bunter moved slightly his bandaged head, and fixed his cold blue stare on Captain Johns’ face, as if taking stock and appraising the value of every feature; the perplexed forehead, the credulous eyes, the inane droop of the mouth.  And he gazed so long that Captain Johns grew restive, and looked over his shoulder at the door.

“No accident,” breathed out Bunter, in a peculiar tone.

“You don’t mean to say you’ve got the falling sickness,” said Captain Johns.  “How would you call it signing as chief mate of a clipper ship with a thing like that on you?”

Bunter answered him only by a sinister look.  The skipper shuffled his feet a little.

“Well, what made you have that tumble, then?”

Bunter raised himself a little, and, looking straight into Captain Johns’ eyes said, in a very distinct whisper: 

“You—­were—­right!”

He fell back and closed his eyes.  Not a word more could Captain Johns get out of him; and, the steward coming into the cabin, the skipper withdrew.

But that very night, unobserved, Captain Johns, opening the door cautiously, entered again the mate’s cabin.  He could wait no longer.  The suppressed eagerness, the excitement expressed in all his mean, creeping little person, did not escape the chief mate, who was lying awake, looking frightfully pulled down and perfectly impassive.

“You are coming to gloat over me, I suppose,” said Bunter without moving, and yet making a palpable hit.

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed Captain Johns with a start, and assuming a sobered demeanour.  “There’s a thing to say!”

“Well, gloat, then!  You and your ghosts, you’ve managed to get over a live man.”

This was said by Bunter without stirring, in a low voice, and with not much expression.

“Do you mean to say,” inquired Captain Johns, in awe-struck whisper, “that you had a supernatural experience that night?  You saw an apparition, then, on board my ship?”

Reluctance, shame, disgust, would have been visible on poor Bunter’s countenance if the great part of it had not been swathed up in cotton-wool and bandages.  His ebony eyebrows, more sinister than ever amongst all that lot of white linen, came together in a frown as he made a mighty effort to say: 

“Yes, I have seen.”

The wretchedness in his eyes would have awakened the compassion of any other man than Captain Johns.  But Captain Johns was all agog with triumphant excitement.  He was just a little bit frightened, too.  He looked at that unbelieving scoffer laid low, and did not even dimly guess at his profound, humiliating distress.  He was not generally capable of taking much part in the anguish of his fellow-creatures.  This time, moreover, he was excessively anxious to know what had happened.  Fixing his credulous eyes on the bandaged head, he asked, trembling slightly: 

“And did it—­did it knock you down?”