w at once something elongated and
pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a
faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly
from the naked body of a man, flickered in the sleeping water with the
elusive, silent play of summer lightning in a night sky. With a gasp I
saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid
back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One
hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete
but for the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping
mouth with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute
stillness of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his
face, a dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship's side. But even then
I could only barely make out down there the shape of his black-haired
head. However, it was enough for the horrid, frost-bound sensation
which had gripped me about the chest to pass off. The moment of vain
exclamations was past, too. I only climbed on the spare spar and leaned
over the rail as far as I could, to bring my eyes nearer to that mystery
floating alongside.

As he hung by the ladder, like a resting swimmer, the sea lightning
played about his limbs at every stir; and he appeared in it ghastly,
silvery, fishlike. He remained as mute as a fish, too. He made no motion
to get out of the water, either. It was inconceivable that he should
not attempt to come on board, and strangely troubling to suspect that
perhaps he did not want to. And my first words were prompted by just
that troubled incertitude.

"What's the matter?" I asked in my ordinary tone, speaking down to the
face upturned exactly under mine.

"Cramp," it answered, no louder. Then slightly anxious, "I say, no need
to call anyone."

"I was not going to," I said.

"Are you alone on deck?"

"Yes."

I had somehow the impression that he was on the point of letting go the
ladder to swim away beyond my ken--mysterious as he came. But, for the
moment, this being appearing as if he had risen from the bottom of the
sea (it was certainly the nearest land to the ship) wanted only to know
the time. I told him. And he, down there, tentatively:

"I suppose your captain's turned in?"

"I am sure he isn't," I said.

He seemed to struggle with himself, for I heard something like the low,
bitter murmur of doubt. "What's the good?" His next words came out with
a he