te cry of horror.
The thing paused an instant, seeming to hover over his prostrate body,
and I could have screamed again for very fright, but I had no voice
left. The thing vanished suddenly, and it seemed to my disturbed senses
that it made its exit through the open port, though how that was
possible, considering the smallness of the aperture, is more than any
one can tell. I lay a long time upon the floor, and the captain lay
beside me. At last I partially recovered my senses and moved, and I
instantly knew that my arm was broken--the small bone of the left
forearm near the wrist.
I got upon my feet somehow, and with my remaining hand I tried to raise
the captain. He groaned and moved, and at last came to himself. He was
not hurt, but he seemed badly stunned.
* * * * *
Well, do you want to hear any more? There is nothing more. That is the
end of my story. The carpenter carried out his scheme of running half a
dozen four-inch screws through the door of one hundred and five; and if
ever you take a passage in the _Kamtschatka_, you may ask for a berth in
that state-room. You will be told that it is engaged--yes--it is engaged
by that dead thing.
I finished the trip in the surgeon's cabin. He doctored my broken arm,
and advised me not to "fiddle about with ghosts and things" any more.
The captain was very silent, and never sailed again in that ship, though
it is still running. And I will not sail in her either. It was a very
disagreeable experience, and I was very badly frightened, which is a
thing I do not like. That is all. That is how I saw a ghost--if it was a
ghost. It was dead, anyhow.
BY THE WATERS OF PARADISE
_By the Waters of Paradise._
I remember my childhood very distinctly. I do not think that the fact
argues a good memory, for I have never been clever at learning words by
heart, in prose or rhyme; so that I believe my remembrance of events
depends much more upon the events themselves than upon my possessing any
special facility for recalling them. Perhaps I am too imaginative, and
the earliest impressions I received were of a kind to stimulate the
imagination abnormally. A long series of little misfortunes, connected
with each other as to suggest a sort of weird fatality, so worked upon
my melancholy temperament when I was a boy that, before I was of age, I
sincerely believed myself to be under a curse, and not only myself, but
my whole family, an
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