d stared, astonished. I was astonished because
I had not seen her earlier. In that light breeze, I knew that she must
have been in sight for at least a couple of hours. Yet I could think of
nothing rational to satisfy my wonder. There she was--of that much, I
was certain. And yet, how had she come there without my seeing her,
before?

All at once, as I stood, staring, I heard the wheel behind me, spin
rapidly. Instinctively, I jumped to get hold of the spokes; for I did
not want the steering gear jammed. Then I turned again to have another
look at the other ship; but, to my utter bewilderment, _there was no
sign of her_--nothing but the calm ocean, spreading away to the distant
horizon. I blinked my eyelids a bit, and pushed the hair off my
forehead. Then, I stared again; but there was no vestige of her--
nothing, you know; and absolutely nothing unusual, except a faint,
tremulous quiver in the air. And the blank surface of the sea reaching
everywhere to the empty horizon.

Had she foundered? I asked myself, naturally enough; and, for the
moment, I really wondered. I searched round the sea for wreckage; but
there was nothing, not even an odd hen-coop, or a piece of deck
furniture; and so I threw away that idea, as impossible.

Then, as I stood, I got another thought, or, perhaps, an intuition and I
asked myself seriously whether this disappearing ship might not be in
some way connected with the other queer things. It occurred to me then,
that the vessel I had seen was nothing real, and, perhaps, did not exist
outside of my own brain. I considered the idea, gravely. It helped to
explain the thing, and I could think of nothing else that would. Had she
been real, I felt sure that others aboard us would have been bound to
have seen her long before I had--I got a bit muddled there, with trying
to think it out; and then, abruptly, the reality of the other ship, came
back to me--every rope and sail and spar, you know. And I remembered how
she had lifted to the heave of the sea, and how the sails had flapped in
the light breeze. And the string of flags! She had been signalling. At
that last, I found it just as impossible to believe that she had not
been real.

I had reached to this point of irresolution, and was standing with my
back, partly turned to the wheel. I was holding it steady with my left
hand, while I looked over the sea, to try to find something to help me
to understand.

All at once, as I stared, I seemed to