determined, and who owned the stronger will seemed a doubtful
question.

For a time, since no conclusion could satisfy both, they abandoned
the centre of contention and debated, as their elders had done, on
the general question. Henry declared himself not wholly convinced.
He adopted an agnostic attitude, while Tom frankly disbelieved.
The one preserved an open mind, the other scoffed at apparitions
in general.

"It's humbug to say sailors are superstitious now," he asserted.
"They might have been, but my experience is that they are no more
credulous than other people in these days. Anyway, I'm not. Life
is a matter of chemistry. There's no mumbo jumbo about it, in my
opinion. Chemical analysis has reached down to hormones and
enzymes and all manner of subtle secretions discovered by this
generation of inquirers; but it's all organic. Nobody has ever
found anything that isn't. Existence depends on matter, and when
the chemical process breaks down, the organism perishes and leaves
nothing. When a man can't go on breathing, he's dead, and there's
an end of him."

But Henry had read modern science also.

"What about the vital spark, then? Biologists don't turn down the
theory of vitalism, do they?"

"Most of them do, who count, my dear chap. The presence of a vital
spark--a spark that cannot be put out--is merely a theory with
nothing to prove it. When he dies, the animating principle doesn't