‘I could see him tossing and twisting in that bunk, and I couldn’t get to sleep for ages; I suppose I must have dropped off at last, though, because I didn’t hear two bells go. I woke suddenly out of an awfully jolly dream about home and my people. The moon was down, but it wasn’t very dark; there was just that light that comes before the dawn, you know. Oh! yes, I could see all right; I could see pretty clearly right to the starboard hatchway leading up to the poop--that was just facing me as my hammock was slung. It was frightfully hot, suffocating--there wasn’t a breath of air, not a breath. I lay awake a few minutes, and then I suppose I dozed off again; but though my eyes were shut, I seemed to have the feeling that something was coming towards me. It grew upon me, so that I must have half raised myself in my hammock, because when I woke again I was sitting up. There _was_ something--a figure; it came from under the starboard hatch out of the saloon. I could hardly see it in that horrible, misty, unreal light, but it came slowly along the deck close to the bulwark without making any noise. I don’t know why I was in a ghastly funk, but it seemed somehow uncanny--I wasn’t properly awake, you see. I waited for it--it seemed hours coming. When it was almost within touch, I saw what--it was--it was--_him_. His head was bent back and his hands thrown up; he was like a shot bird that’s towering for air, you know, but there was no sound, no choke or gasp--I listened for it, but there was none, not even a sigh’--he paused. ‘There ought, there must have been a gasp, if it _was_ he,’ he muttered to himself; ‘he couldn’t have stood like that without a sound. Oh! Armand, the face!’ He spoke in short broken sentences, and his hands twisted here and there in the full agony of recollection. ‘The eyes were staring open, as they were before you--and nothing moved in it--it was a _dead_ face ... and then it went away again, you know,--I don’t know _how_ it went. I shall never get that look out of my head--never!’ He drew his hands across his eyes. ‘It was far worse than _that_ dead face,’ he said solemnly, pointing to the bunk; ‘it was the dead face of a _living_ man.’ ‘Then?’ said the mate. ‘Then I lay back in my hammock, not more than a minute, I think,--and then I got out and came here, and as I crossed the deck the first of the breeze crossed it too--too late!--he died for want of air, I _know_ he did--just too late, you see.’ ‘Too late!’ echoed the mate softly, nodding his head. ‘_That_ is the joke.’ ‘He was lying here as you found him. I didn’t touch him before I came and told you. And, look here! Armand, what have I seen? It scared me.’ An infinite and sombre gentleness was in the look the mate bent to meet the trouble in the young face turned to him, but he only said, ‘That is most interésting. You are not to be pitied, you know, you are to be envied; a man does not often see these things, you know.’