see?"

"Yes," he said. "Go on!"

"Well," I said. "The earth may be just as _real_ to them, as to us. I
mean that it may have qualities as material to them, as it has to us;
but neither of us could appreciate the other's realness, or the quality
of realness in the earth, which was real to the other. It's so difficult
to explain. Don't you understand?"

"Yes," he said. "Go on!"

"Well, if we were in what I might call a healthy atmosphere, they would
be quite beyond our power to see or feel, or anything. And the same with
them; but the more we're like _this_, the more _real_ and actual they
could grow _to us_. See? That is, the more we should become able to
appreciate their form of materialness. That's all. I can't make it any
clearer."

"Then, after all, you _really_ think they're ghosts, or something of
that sort?" Tammy said.

"I suppose it does come to that," I answered. "I mean that, anyway, I
don't think they're our ideas of flesh and blood. But, of course, it's
silly to say much; and, after all, you must remember that I may be all
wrong."

"I think you ought to tell the Second Mate all this," he said. "If it's
really as you say, the ship ought to be put into the nearest port, and
jolly well burnt."

"The Second Mate couldn't do anything," I replied. "Even if he believed
it all; which we're not certain he would."

"Perhaps not," Tammy answered. "But if you could get him to believe it,
he might explain the whole business to the Skipper, and then something
might be done. It's not safe as it is."

"He'd only get jeered at again," I said, rather hopelessly.

"No," said Tammy. "Not after what's happened tonight."

"Perhaps not," I replied, doubtfully. And just then the Second Mate came
back on to the poop, and Tammy cleared away from the wheel-box, leaving
me with a worrying feeling that I ought to do something.

VII

_The Coming of the Mist and That Which It Ushered_

We buried Williams at midday. Poor beggar! It had been so sudden. All
day the men were awed and gloomy, and there was a lot of talk about
there being a Jonah aboard. If they'd only known what Tammy and I, and
perhaps the Second Mate, knew!

And then the next thing came--the mist. I cannot remember now, whether
it was on the day we buried Williams that we first saw it, or the day
after.

When first I noticed it, like everybody else aboard, I took it to be
some form of haze, due to the heat of the sun; for it was broad daylight