The captain called to the man, who came and stood before us. The moonlight whitened him: he was a powerfully built fellow, with a quantity of black hair hanging about his ears and dark nervous eyes, which caught the light in silver stars. 'What's this about a strange man being aboard?' said the captain. 'There's a strange man in the ship, sir,' he answered. And now I observed that in the black shadow of the galley forward there stood a little group of men, apparently striving to hear what was spoken aft. 'Have you seen him?' 'Certainly I have, sir.' 'Go on,' exclaimed the captain, impatiently. 'I was on the fok'sle when he passed me. He walked slow. He looked at me as he passed, and his face was wet.' 'How could you tell _that_ in this light?' said Mr. Owen. 'The moonshine rippled in it, sir.' 'Go on,' said the captain. 'He was going aft as though just come out of the head. I made a step or two and lost him.' 'Where did he disappear?' said the boatswain in a voice of awe. 'Why, in the gloom about the foremast.' 'It'll be a stowaway come to light at a pretty late date,' exclaimed Captain Burke, stiffening himself in his chair with a start of temper. 'Bo'sun, get a lantern, and take and give everything forward a good overhaul.' 'It's no stowaway, sir,' said the man who had seen the stranger. 'Ho, d'ye know him, then?' cried the captain. 'He was no stowaway,' repeated the seaman in a sudden roaring voice of irrepressible excitement. The captain stared at him. 'You won't make him a ghost, will you?' said Mr. Owen. The man viewed the doctor in silence, then suddenly shouted, whipping round upon the boatswain: 'Tom Hartley saw him.' 'Call Tom Hartley aft,' exclaimed the captain. The name was bawled by the boatswain, and repeated in echoes like distant laughter aloft. Then a man stepped out of the huddle of figures in the shadow of the galley and came through the moonlight, followed by four or five who halted at the gangway. 'What's this you've seen, Hartley?' said Captain Burke. 'I was at the scuttle butt with the dipper in my hand, when, turning my head to look forrard, I see the shadow of a man with the glimmer of a face upon it standing near the foremast. I took a step, thinking it was one of the men, and lost it.' 'How d'ye mean, lost it?' said the captain. 'It sort of went out, sir.' 'Take a lantern and search the ship forward, bo'sun,' said the captain. The three of them went forward, but I heard the first man tell the boatswain that the way to see the stranger that had come aboard was not by showing a light. 'What's the meaning of it?' said Mrs. Burke. The captain rose in silence and walked the deck, going somewhat towards the gangway, and staring forward and around. The group of seamen had followed the boatswain, and were now on the forecastle, a knot of silvered figures with their shadows like carvings of jet lying at their feet.