He revelled in the hope. It was not exactly that, however. Still, Bunter, whom he saw sitting collapsed in a chair--he had been up for several days, but not on deck as yet--poor Bunter had something startling enough to communicate. His hands covered his face. His legs were stretched straight out, dismally. “What’s the news now?” croaked Captain Johns, not unkindly, because in truth it always pleased him to see Bunter--as he expressed it--tamed. “News!” exclaimed the crushed sceptic through his hands. “Ay, news enough, Captain Johns. Who will be able to deny the awfulness, the genuineness? Another man would have dropped dead. You want to know what I had seen. All I can tell you is that since I’ve seen it my hair is turning white.” Bunter detached his hands from his face, and they hung on each side of his chair as if dead. He looked broken in the dusky cabin. “You don’t say!” stammered out Captain Johns. “Turned white! Hold on a bit! I’ll light the lamp!” When the lamp was lit, the startling phenomenon could be seen plainly enough. As if the dread, the horror, the anguish of the supernatural were being exhaled through the pores of his skin, a sort of silvery mist seemed to cling to the cheeks and the head of the mate. His short beard, his cropped hair, were growing, not black, but gray--almost white. When Mr. Bunter, thin-faced and shaky, came on deck for duty, he was clean-shaven, and his head was white. The hands were awe-struck. “Another man,” they whispered to each other. It was generally and mysteriously agreed that the mate had “seen something,” with the exception of the man at the wheel at the time, who maintained that the mate was “struck by something.” This distinction hardly amounted to a difference. On the other hand, everybody admitted that, after he picked up his strength a bit, he seemed even smarter in his movements than before. One day in Calcutta, Captain Johns, pointing out to a visitor his white-headed chief mate standing by the main-hatch, was heard to say oracularly: “That man’s in the prime of life.” Of course, while Bunter was away, I called regularly on Mrs. Bunter every Saturday, just to see whether she had any use for my services. It was understood I would do that. She had just his half-pay to live on--it amounted to about a pound a week. She had taken one room in a quiet little square in the East End. And this was affluence to what I had heard that the couple were reduced to for a time after Bunter had to give up the Western Ocean trade--he used to go as mate of all sorts of hard packets after he lost his ship and his luck together--it was affluence to that time when Bunter would start at seven o’clock in the morning with but a glass of hot water and a crust of dry bread. It won’t stand thinking about, especially for those who know Mrs. Bunter. I had seen something of them, too, at that time; and it just makes me shudder to remember what that born lady had to put up with. Enough!