Perhaps at any other time I should have argued against his request, but I let the rum run from the bottle until the tumbler was quite half-full. He clutched it with trembling hand, and poured the contents at one gulp down his throat. ‘Thanks, thanks,’ he said, as he recovered his breath and placed the glass on the table. ‘That will put new life into me. I feel better already.’ He rose, shook with a shudder as he did so, and taking his sou’-wester and oilskin from a peg donned himself in them. He put a hand on each of my shoulders, and looking me in the face, said with an impressive earnestness: ‘Mr. Gibling, I am more than obliged to you. Add to my obligation, will you, by promising not to mention to anyone that you have seen me in one of my strange moods.’ ‘Certainly I will,’ I replied with perfect frankness. ‘You may trust me. And, as I have said, if I can be of service command me.’ ‘Very well; some day I may put you to the test,’ he answered; ‘good-night, and God bless you.’ He left me, and I heard him clatter up the gangway in his great boots. As I crossed towards my own cabin the Spanish lady was still sitting at the cuddy table. ‘Have you been with the captain?’ she asked. ‘I have,’ I replied. ‘How is he?’ ‘He is all right,’ I answered lightly. She glanced about the cuddy as if to make sure no one was listening, and then, bending towards me as if inviting confidence, she said in a half whisper: ‘Do you know, Mr. Gibling, when the captain came down from the deck a little while ago there was such a peculiar look in his face that I could almost have fancied he----’ She stopped suddenly in her speech, visibly shuddered, and put her pretty white fingers before her eyes. After an awkward pause I broke the silence by saying: ‘Almost fancied he--what?’ ‘He had seen some gruesome and unnatural sight.’ I laughed, though I had an inkling of her meaning, for strangely enough a vague, phantom-like thought had been troubling me; but I could not define it, could not give it shape; now at her words it was clear enough, and an uncontrollable impulse impelled me to give it utterance: ‘Ghosts, you mean,’ and I laughed at my own words, for the idea seemed to me--a prosy, staid, unromantic, London citizen--so utterly ridiculous. But not so to the lady. Her face assumed a graver aspect, and her eyes betrayed that whatever my views might be her mind was made up. ‘What I mean is, he has seen a vision,’ she remarked, with awe in her voice. ‘Oh, nonsense,’ I exclaimed. ‘Hobgoblins and bogeys belong to the period of our childhood. When we come to years of discretion we should cease to be childish.’ My remark annoyed her. She rose and curled her lip disdainfully. ‘I am not childish and I don’t talk nonsense,’ she said, as she swept past me without so much as giving me a chance to apologise. I felt annoyed with myself for having been so tactless, but otherwise laughed mentally at what I considered the absurdity of the position.