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“No; look here–deception is bad; but not to be able to keep it up after one has been forced into it. You know that since I’ve been squeezed out of the Western Ocean packets by younger men, just on account of my grizzled muzzle–you know how much chance I had to ever get a ship. And not a soul to turn to. We have been a lonely couple, we two–she threw away everything for me–and to see her want a piece of dry bread——“

He banged with his fist fit to split the Frenchman’s table in two.

“I would have turned a sanguinary pirate for her, let alone cheating my way into a berth by dyeing my hair. So when you came to me with your chemist’s wonderful stuff——“

He checked himself.

“By the way, that fellow’s got a fortune when he likes to pick it up. It is a wonderful stuff–you tell him salt water can do nothing to it. It stays on as long as your hair will.”

“All right,” I said. “Go on.”

Thereupon he went for Johns again with a fury that frightened his wife, and made me laugh till I cried.

“Just you try to think what it would have meant to be at the mercy of the meanest creature that ever commanded a ship! Just fancy what a life that crawling Johns would have led me! And I knew that in a week or so the white hair would begin to show. And the crew. Did you ever think of that? To be shown up as a low fraud before all hands. What a life for me till we got to Calcutta! And once there–kicked out, of course. Half-pay stopped. Annie here alone without a penny–starving; and I on the other side of the earth, ditto. You see?

“I thought of shaving twice a day. But could I shave my head, too? No way–no way at all. Unless I dropped Johns overboard; and even then——

“Do you wonder now that with all these things boiling in my head I didn’t know where I was putting down my foot that night? I just felt myself falling–then crash, and all dark.

“When I came to myself that bang on the head seemed to have steadied my wits somehow. I was so sick of everything that for two days I wouldn’t speak to anyone. They thought it was a slight concussion of the brain. Then the idea dawned upon me as I was looking at that ghost-ridden, wretched fool. ‘Ah, you love ghosts,’ I thought. ‘Well, you shall have something from beyond the grave.’

“I didn’t even trouble to invent a story. I couldn’t imagine a ghost if I wanted to. I wasn’t fit to lie connectedly if I had tried. I just bulled him on to it. Do you know, he got, quite by himself, a notion that at some time or other I had done somebody to death in some way, and that——“

“Oh, the horrible man!” cried Mrs. Bunter from the sofa. There was a silence.

“And didn’t he bore my head off on the home passage!” began Bunter again in a weary voice. “He loved me. He was proud of me. I was converted. I had had a manifestation. Do you know what he was after? He wanted me and him ‘to make a seance,’ in his own words, and to try to call up that ghost (the one that had turned my hair white–the ghost of my supposed victim), and, as he said, talk it over with him–the ghost–in a friendly way.

“‘Or else, Bunter,’ he says, ‘you may get another manifestation when you least expect it, and tumble overboard perhaps, or something. You ain’t really safe till we pacify the spirit-world in some way.’

“Can you conceive a lunatic like that? No–say?”

I said nothing. But Mrs. Bunter did, in a very decided tone.

“Winston, I don’t want you to go on board that ship again any more.”

“My dear,” says he, “I have all my things on board yet.”

“You don’t want the things. Don’t go near that ship at all.”

He stood still; then, dropping his eyes with a faint smile, said slowly, in a dreamy voice:

“The haunted ship.”

“And your last,” I added.

We carried him off, as he stood, by the night train. He was very quiet; but crossing the Channel, as we two had a smoke on deck, he turned to me suddenly, and, grinding his teeth, whispered:

“He’ll never know how near he was being dropped overboard!”

He meant Captain Johns. I said nothing.

But Captain Johns, I understand, made a great to-do about the disappearance of his chief mate. He set the French police scouring the country for the body. In the end, I fancy he got word from his owners’ office to drop all this fuss–that it was all right. I don’t suppose he ever understood anything of that mysterious occurrence.

To this day he tries at times (he’s retired now, and his conversation is not very coherent)–he tries to tell the story of a black mate he once had, “a murderous, gentlemanly ruffian, with raven-black hair which turned white all at once in consequence of a manifestation from beyond the grave.” An avenging apparition. What with reference to black and white hair, to poop-ladders, and to his own feelings and views, it is difficult to make head or tail of it. If his sister (she’s very vigorous still) should be present she cuts all this short–peremptorily:

“Don’t you mind what he says. He’s got devils on the brain.”