something seriously wrong, which could not be accounted for on
ordinary theories, nor laughed down as a common superstition. To some
extent, too, his reputation was at stake, as well as the reputation of
the ship. It is no light thing to lose passengers overboard, and he knew
it.

About ten o'clock that evening, as I was smoking a last cigar, he came
up to me and drew me aside from the beat of the other passengers who
were patrolling the deck in the warm darkness.

"This is a serious matter, Mr. Brisbane," he said. "We must make up our
minds either way--to be disappointed or to have a pretty rough time of
it. You see, I cannot afford to laugh at the affair, and I will ask you
to sign your name to a statement of whatever occurs. If nothing happens
to-night we will try it again to-morrow and next day. Are you ready?"

So we went below, and entered the state-room. As we went in I could see
Robert the steward, who stood a little further down the passage,
watching us, with his usual grin, as though certain that something
dreadful was about to happen. The captain closed the door behind us and
bolted it.

"Supposing we put your portmanteau before the door," he suggested. "One
of us can sit on it. Nothing can get out then. Is the port screwed
down?"

I found it as I had left it in the morning. Indeed, without using a
lever, as I had done, no one could have opened it. I drew back the
curtains of the upper berth so that I could see well into it. By the
captain's advice I lighted my reading-lantern, and placed it so that it
shone upon the white sheets above. He insisted upon sitting on the
portmanteau, declaring that he wished to be able to swear that he had
sat before the door.

Then he requested me to search the state-room thoroughly, an operation
very soon accomplished, as it consisted merely in looking beneath the
lower berth and under the couch below the porthole. The spaces were
quite empty.

"It is impossible for any human being to get in," I said, "or for any
human being to open the port."

"Very good," said the captain, calmly. "If we see anything now, it must
be either imagination or something supernatural."

I sat down on the edge of the lower berth.

"The first time it happened," said the captain, crossing his legs and
leaning back against the door, "was in March. The passenger who slept
here, in the upper berth, turned out to have been a lunatic--at all
events, he was known to have been a little touched,