The only valuable result of the amusing ghost story was that it brought
about a reconciliation between father and son, and the former, as a
matter of fact, felt such deep respect for priests and their ghosts in
consequence of the apparition that a short time after his wife had left
purgatory for the last time in order to talk with him--he turned
_Protestant_.



_Fear_


We went up on deck after dinner. Before us the Mediterranean lay
without a ripple and shimmering in the moonlight. The great ship glided
on, casting upward to the star-studded sky a long serpent of black
smoke. Behind us the dazzling white water, stirred by the rapid
progress of the heavy bark and beaten by the propeller, foamed, seemed
to writhe, gave off so much brilliancy that one could have called it
boiling moonlight.

There were six or eight of us silent with admiration and gazing toward
far-away Africa whither we were going. The commandant, who was smoking
a cigar with us, brusquely resumed the conversation begun at dinner.

"Yes, I was afraid then. My ship remained for six hours on that rock,
beaten by the wind and with a great hole in the side. Luckily we were
picked up toward evening by an English coaler which sighted us."

Then a tall man of sunburned face and grave demeanor, one of those men