Captain Johns shook his head.
‘There’s some mystery there.’
‘There’s special Providence that he didn’t crack his head like an eggshell on the quarter-deck mooring-bits, sir. The men tell me he couldn’t have missed them by more than an inch.*
And the steward vanished skilfully.
Captain Johns spent the rest of the night and the whole of the ensuing day between his own room and that of the mate.
In his own room he sat with his open hands reposing on his knees, his lips pursed up, and the horizontal furrows on his forehead marked very heavily. Now and then raising his arm by a slow, as if cautious movement, he scratched lightly the top of his bald head. In the mate’s room he stood for long periods of time with his hands to his lips, gazing at the half-conscious man.
For three days Mr Bun ter did not say a single word. He looked at people sensibly enough but did not seem to be able to hear any questions put to him. They cut off some more of his hair and swathed his head in wet cloths. He took some nourishment, and was made as comfortable as possible. At dinner on the third day the second mate remarked to the captain, in connection with the affair:
‘These half-round brass plates on the steps of the poop-ladders are beastly dangerous things!’
‘Are they?’ retorted Captain Johns, sourly. ‘It takes more than a brass plate to account for an able-bodied man crashing down in this fashion like a felled ox. ’
The second mate was impressed by that view. There was something in that, he thought.
‘And the weather fine, everything dry, and the ship going along as steady as a church!’ pursued Captain Johns, gruffly.
As Captain Johns continued to look extremely sour, the second mate did not open his lips any more during the dinner. Captain Johns was annoyed and hurt by an innocent remark, because the fitting of the aforesaid brass plates had been done at his suggestion only the voyage before, in order to smarten up the appearance of the poop-ladders.
On the fourth day Mr Bunter looked decidedly better; very languid yet, of course, but he heard and understood what was said to him, and even could say a few words in a feeble voice.
Captain Johns, coming* in, contemplated him attentively, without much visible sympathy.
‘Well, can you give us your account of this accident, Mr Burner?’
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 shipper 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?’
‘Come! Am I the sort of man to be knocked down by a ghost?’ protested Bunter in a little stronger tone. ‘Don’t you remember what you said yourself the other night? Better men than me - Ha! You’ll have to look a long time before you find a better man for a mate of your ship.’
Captain Johns pointed a solemn finger at Bunter’s bed-place.
‘You’ve been terrified,’ he said. ‘That’s what’s the matter. You’ve been terrified. Why, even the man at the wheel was scared, though he couldn’t see anything. He felt the supernatural. You are punished for your incredulity, Mr Bunter. You were terrified.’
‘And suppose I was,’ said Bunter. ‘Do you know what I had seen? Can you conceive the sort of ghost that would haunt a man like me? Do you think it was a ladyish, afternoon call, another-cup-of-tea-please apparition that visits your Professor Cranks and that journalist chap you are always talking about? No; I can’t tell you what it was like. Every man has his own ghosts. You couldn’t conceive. . .’
Bunter stopped, out of breath; and Captain Johns remarked, with the glow of inward satisfaction reflected in his tone:
‘I’ve always thought you were the sort of man that was ready for anything; from pitch-and-toss to wilful murder, as the saying goes. Well, well! So you were terrified.’
‘I stepped back,’ said Bunter, curtly. ‘I don’t remember anything else.’
‘The man at the wheel told me you went backwards as if something had hit you.’
‘It was a sort of inward blow,’ explained Bunter. ‘Something too deep for you, Captain Johns, to understand. Your life and mine haven’t been the same. Aren’t you satisfied to see me converted?’
‘And you can’t tell me any more?’ asked Captain Johns, anxiously.
‘No, I can’t. I wouldn’t. It would be no use if I did. That sort of experience must be gone through. Say I am being punished. Well, I take my punishment, but talk of it I won’t.’
‘Very well,’ said Captain Johns; ‘you won’t. But, mind, I can draw my own conclusions from that.’
‘Draw what you like; but be careful what you say, sir. You
don't terrify me. You aren’t a ghost.'
'One word. Has it any connection with what you said to me on that last night, when we had a talk together on spiritualism?'
Bunter looked weary and puzzled.
‘What did I say?’
‘You told me that I couldn’t know what a man like you was capable of.’
‘Yes, yes. Enough!’