and eyes open as one who is struck with
some overpowering surprise. He had some white stuff streaming from his
shoulders, and one hand was raised to his ear, the other crooked across
his breast. I saw him leap from the water into the air, and in the dead
calm the waves of his coming lapped up against the sides of the vessel.
Then his figure sank back into the water again, and I heard a rending,
crackling sound like a bundle of brushwood snapping in the fire on a
frosty night. There were no signs of him when I looked again, but a
swift swirl and eddy on the still sea still marked the spot where he had
been. How long I stood there, tingling to my finger-tips, holding up
an unconscious woman with one hand, clutching at the rail of the vessel
with the other, was more than I could afterwards tell. I had been noted
as a man of-slow and unresponsive emotions, but this time at least I was
shaken to the core. Once and twice I struck my foot upon the deck to be
certain that I was indeed the master of my own senses, and that this was
not some mad prank of an unruly brain. As I stood, still marvelling, the
woman shivered, opened her eyes, gasped, and then standing erect with
her hands upon the rail, looked out over the moonlit sea with a face
which had aged ten years in a summer night.

"You saw his vision?" she murmured.

"I saw something."

"It was he! It was John! He is dead!"

I muttered some lame words of doubt.

"Doubtless he died at this hour," she whispered. "In hospital at
Madeira. I have read of such things. His thoughts were with me. His
vision came to me. Oh, my John, my dear, dear, lost John!"

She broke out suddenly into a storm of weeping, and I led her down into
her cabin, where I left her with her sorrow. That night a brisk breeze
blew up from the east, and in the evening of the next day we passed the
two islets of Los Desertos, and dropped anchor at sundown in the Bay
of Funchal. The _Eastern Star_ lay no great distance from us, with the
quarantine flag flying from her main, and her Jack half-way up her peak.

"You see," said Mrs. Vansittart, quickly. She was dry-eyed now, for she
had known how it would be.

That night we received permission from the authorities to move on board
the _Eastern Star_. The captain, Hines, was waiting upon deck with
confusion and grief contending upon his bluff face as he sought for
words with which to break this heavy tidings, but she took the story
from his lips.

"I know