world.

It was a dirty night, as the sailors say. The darkness was
something that could be felt as well as seen--it pressed down upon
one with a cold, clammy touch. Gazing into the hollow blackness,
all sorts of imaginable shapes seemed to start forth from vacancy--
brilliant colors, stars, prisms, and dancing lights. What boy,
lying awake at night, has not amused or terrified himself by
peopling the spaces around his bed with these phenomena of his own
eyes?

"I say," whispered Fred Langdon, at last, clutching my hand, "don't
you see things--out there--in the dark?"

"Yes, yes--Binny Wallace's face!"

I added to my own nervousness by making this avowal; though for the
last ten minutes I had seen little besides that star-pale face with
its angelic hair and brows. First a slim yellow circle, like the
nimbus round the dark moon, took shape and grew sharp against the
darkness; then this faded gradually, and there was the Face,
wearing the same sad, sweet look it wore when he waved his hand to
us across the awful water. This optical illusion kept repeating
itself.

"And I too," said Adams." I see it every now and then, outside
there. What wouldn't I give if it really was poor little Wallace
looking in at us! O boys, how shall we dare to go back to the town
without him? I've wished a hundred times, since we've been sitting
here, that I was in his place, alive or dead!"