sted that he was too tired in his watches below to
spare any time for reading, Captain Johns would smile nastily behind
his back, and remark that of course some people needed more sleep than
others to keep themselves fit for their work. If Mr. Bunter was afraid
of not keeping properly awake when on duty at night, that was another
matter.

"But I think you borrowed a novel to read from the second mate the other
day--a trashy pack of lies," Captain Johns sighed. "I am afraid you are
not a spiritually minded man, Mr. Bunter. That's what's the matter."

Sometimes he would appear on deck in the middle of the night, looking
very grotesque and bandy-legged in his sleeping suit. At that sight the
persecuted Bunter would wring his hands stealthily, and break out into
moisture all over his forehead. After standing sleepily by the binnacle,
scratching himself in an unpleasant manner, Captain Johns was sure to
start on some aspect or other of his only topic.

He would, for instance, discourse on the improvement of morality to be
expected from the establishment of general and close intercourse with
the spirits of the departed. The spirits, Captain Johns thought, would
consent to associate familiarly with the living if it were not for the
unbelief of the great mass of mankind. He himself would not care to
have anything to do with a crowd that would not believe in his--Captain
Johns'--existence. Then why should a spirit? This was asking too much.

He went on breathing hard by the binnacle and trying to reach round his
shoulder-blades; then, with a thick, drowsy severity, declared:

"Incredulity, sir, is the evil of the age!"

It rejected the evidence of Professor Cranks and of the journalist chap.
It resisted the production of photographs.

For Captain Johns believed firmly that certain spirits had been
photographed. He had read something of it in the papers. And the idea of
it having been done had got a tremendous hold on him, because his mind
was not critical. Bunter said afterwards that nothing could be more
weird than this little man, swathed in a sleeping suit three sizes
too large for him, shuffling with excitement in the moonlight near the
wheel, and shaking his fist at the serene sea.

"Photographs! photographs!" he would repeat, in a voice as creaky as a
rusty hinge.

The very helmsman just behind him got uneasy at that performance, not
being capable of understanding exactly what the "old man was kicking up
a row wi