e.

I thought he was dead. The watch to my shouts came tumbling to the
braces, and in a few minutes the captain made his appearance. The ship
was got to her course afresh, by which time the man who had been
steering was so far recovered as to be able to sit on the grating
abaft the wheel and relate what had happened.

He was a Dane, and spoke with a strong foreign accent, beyond my art
to reproduce. He said he had been looking away to leeward, believing
he saw a light out upon the horizon, when on turning his head he
beheld a ghost at his side.

"A what?" said the captain.

"A ghost, sir, so help me--" and here the little Dane indulged in some
very violent language, all designed to convince us that he spoke the
truth.

"What was it like?" asked the captain.

"It was dressed in white and stood looking at me. I tried to run and
could not, but fell, and maybe fainted."

"The durned idiot slept," said the captain to me, "and dreamt, and
dropped on his nut."

"Had I dropped on my nut, should not have woke up then?" cried the
Dane, in a passion of candour.

"Go forward and turn in," said the captain. "The doctor shall see you
and report to me."

When the man was gone the captain asked me if I had seen anything
likely to produce the impression of a ghost on an ignorant, credulous
man's mind? I answered no, wondering that he should ask such a
question.

"How long was the man in a fit, d'ye think?" said he, "that is, before
you found out that the wheel was deserted?"

"Three or four minutes."

He looked into the binnacle, took a turn about the decks, and, without
saying anything more about the ghost, went below.

The doctor next day reported that the Dane was perfectly well, and of
sound mind, and that he stuck with many imprecations to his story. He
described the ghost as a figure in white that looked at him with
sparkling eyes, and yet blindly. He was unable to describe the
features. Fright, no doubt, stood in the way of perception. He could
not imagine where the thing had come from. He was, as he had said,
gazing at what looked like a spark or star to leeward, when turning
his head he found the Shape close beside him.

The captain and the doctor talked the thing over in my presence, and
we decided to consider it a delusion on the part of the Dane, a
phantom of his imagination, mainly because the man swooned after he
saw the thing, letting go the wheel so that the ship came up into the
wind, and it was im