The Project Gutenberg EBook of Three at Table, by W.W. Jacobs

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Title: Three at Table
The Lady of the Barge and Others, Part 12.

Author: W.W. Jacobs

Release Date: April 22, 2004 [EBook #12132]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE AT TABLE ***

Produced by David Widger

THE LADY OF THE BARGE

AND OTHER STORIES

By W. W. Jacobs

THREE AT TABLE

The talk in the coffee-room had been of ghosts and apparitions, and
nearly everybody present had contributed his mite to the stock of
information upon a hazy and somewhat thread-bare subject. Opinions
ranged from rank incredulity to childlike faith, one believer going so
far as to denounce unbelief as impious, with a reference to the Witch of
Endor, which was somewhat marred by being complicated in an inexplicable
fashion with the story of Jonah.

"Talking of Jonah," he said solemnly, with a happy disregard of the fact
that he had declined to answer several eager questions put to him on the
subject, "look at the strange tales sailors tell us."

"I wouldn't advise you to believe all those," said a bluff, clean-shaven
man, who had been listening without speaking much. "You see when a
sailor gets ashore he's expected to have something to tell, and his
friends would be rather disappointed if he had not."

"It's a well-known fact," interrupted the first speaker firmly, "that
sailors are very prone to see visions."

"They are," said the other dryly, "they generally see them in pairs, and
the shock to the nervous system frequently causes headache next morning."

"You never saw anything yourself?" suggested an unbeliever.

"Man and boy," said the other, "I've been at sea thirty years, and the
only unpleasant incident of that kind occurred in a quiet English
countryside."

"And that?" said another man.

"I was a young man at the time," said the narrator, drawing at his pipe
and glancing good-humouredly at the company. "I, had just come back from
China, and my own people being away I went down into the country to
invite myself to stay with an uncle. When I got down to the place I
found it closed and the family in the South