'Where have ye searched?' The boatswain named all sorts of places. 'All right!' said the captain, springing to his feet. 'It's happened right or wrong, and must take time to wear off. The dew is heavy: I recommend Miss Otway to go below.' CHAPTER VII A RACE AND A ROLLER Mrs. Burke talked with me in my cabin for some time. She wondered that her husband could be so credulous as to believe in ghosts, and said she had never before suspected he was superstitious. She kissed me and said good-night, and went away thinking, I dare say, she had left me fairly cheerful; and so indeed I was while she was with me, but when she was gone, and I lay alone in the darkness, I felt very uneasy. The cabin porthole was high above the low bunk in which I rested; I could not see the stars in it, but the noise of waters fretted by a gentle catspaw of wind came through very clearly, along with a dim sifting of moonshine that ruled the gloom in a spectral spoke of light which was like dreaming to see; it was a dismal, sobbing, moaning noise of waters whilst it lasted, and made me think of the dead men deep down in the sea, and of the apparition that had moved upon the forecastle, and vanished seemingly as smoke goes out, till I was too afraid to sleep. The last bells I heard stealing faintly through the calm were eight--four o'clock in the morning. However, I was at the breakfast table at the usual hour; Captain Burke and his wife and the doctor came below from the deck and seated themselves. Presently I said: 'Are we making good way, Captain Burke?' 'Noble way. We've taken a fine royal breeze right abeam. It's hit our heels to a hair.' I looked at him as he spoke, and observed a certain dulness in his countenance. The arch expression was gone out of his eyes, and if they seemed merry it was through their blue glitter, not their spirit. It may have been his face which made me ask: 'Was anything more seen of the ghost during the night?' 'No, miss,' he answered abruptly. 'It was no ghost, Miss Marie,' exclaimed my old nurse. 'Why, as Mr. Owen justly says, you can't have no better ingredients for a spectre than moonshine and the moving shadows of rigging.' 'For such a noodle as the fellow that saw the thing,' said the doctor, with a half-glance of interest and speculation at the captain. 'You're not going to get correct likenesses of living people out of moonshine and shadow,' said the captain. 'Why, yes, out of light and shade merely, captain,' said Mr. Owen. 'What else would you do work with in pencil or crayon?' 'I wonder you can be so silly, Edward,' said Mrs. Burke. I looked at her inquiringly, perceiving that something lay behind this: on which she said, 'The man who saw the ghost has frightened Edward by saying he thought it was the captain at first, the face was so like.'