or dead?"

At this, the captain's brows came together in a terrible frown; the scar
across his cheek and chin turned very white; and he glared under his
eyebrows dangerously at the complacent Third Vice-President. His lips
parted, showing his white teeth clenched tight together. He started to
speak through his clenched teeth, and leveled his pistol straight at the
Third Vice-President's breast; but at that moment a cry from the
Churchwarden startled everybody.

"Bless my soul! Why didn't I never once think of this before? These men
ain't real persons at all! How could they be, after two hundred years?
They're no better than wicked spirits! That's what they are, wicked
spirits! Why didn't we think of that before? Aha! my fine friends, I've
got a little medicine here for you! Ha! ha!"

He drew forth from his back pocket a little perfume bottle, and waved it
over his head.

"Hurrah!" he cried. "Hurrah for the Odour of Sanctity!" And with these
words the Churchwarden uncorked the bottle and sprinkled a few drops of
his perfume on the floor, directly at the feet of Captain Lingo.

A sharp odour instantly filled the air; so sharp that it brought tears
to the eyes of everyone. Captain Lingo and his men stepped quickly
backward, but it was too late. A look of pained surprise crept over
their faces, and remained fixed there. Their feet stood rooted to the
floor, and the hands which held the cutlasses and pistols stiffened and
became rigid. Not one of them could move an eye-lash. Their outlines
began to waver; their faces began to be dim and vague, as if covered
with close white veils; from their outsides inward they slowly faded,
melted, dissolved; nothing remained of any of them but a wraith, a
vapor, a puff of smoke, remotely in the shape of a human being; and then
that also vanished; nothing remained; the place where they had been was
empty.

All eyes turned to the table where the thirteen murdered pirates had
been sitting. They were gone. Their chairs were vacant.

The Churchwarden calmly put the stopper in his bottle and restored it to
his pocket.

"Humph!" said he. "Nothing like Odour of Sanctity. Never knew it to
fail. No harm to human persons, but no wicked spirit as ever lived can
stand against it; and a blessed good thing the bottle didn't break as we
came down the water-fall. No perfumery in this world like Odour of
Sanctity!"

CHAPTER XIX

A KNOCK AT THE DOOR

The Third Vice-President and his