ve him now, because then I would be there by myself.
"Durned, though, if Sam's ghostess or any other cuss 'll kep me back
now. Come on, Cholly!"

But, when we got up to the entrance, we saw a sight that stopped us at
once, Hiram dropping to the ground as if he had been shot.

There, sitting on the very rock at the back which Tom Bullover had joked
about on the previous day as being the `ghost's pulpit' was the dim
apparition of a man, the very image of our whilom negro cook, leaning
back and playing the banjo, just as Sam used to do on board the _Denver
City_.

But, stranger still, even as I looked, a queer supernatural sort of
light suddenly illumined the interior of the cavern, and I saw another
apparition rise, as it were, out of the darkness, immediately behind the
one on the rock, the last spectral form raising its hand threateningly.

I stood there at the mouth of the cave, almost paralysed with terror,
watching the weird scene that was being enacted within, the wonderful
electrical glare making every detail come out in strong relief and
lighting up the whole place, so that it was as bright as day.

Not the slightest incident escaped my notice.

As the second apparition rose from behind the rock at the back of the
cavern, the first figure, which I had believed up to now really to be
the negro cook's ghost or spirit, permitted for some occult purpose or
other to revisit the earth, also jumped up out of the corner, dropping
the banjo incontinently.

Not only this, the original ghost, spirit, or what you will, displayed
an abject fright that was too real for any inhabitant of the other world
to assume; for the face of the ghost in an instant grew as long as my
arm, while its woolly hair crinkled up on top of its head until it
became erect and stiff as a wire brush.

At the same time, the eyes of this first `ghost,' distended with fear,
rolled round and round, the white eyeballs contrasting with the darker
skin of the face, which, however, appeared to have become of an ashy
grey colour, instead of black--though whether this was from the effects
of fear or owing to the peculiar light that shone full upon it I could
not tell, nor, indeed, puzzled my mind at the time to inquire.

The two figures thus confronted each other for about the space of a
second, the headless apparition rising and rising till it seemed to
touch the roof of the cave, when it extended its wide arms and made a
clutch at the other, and now