for several days, but not on deck as yet--poor Bunter had something
startling enough to communicate. His hands covered his face. His legs
were stretched straight out, dismally.

"What's the news now?" croaked Captain Johns, not unkindly, because in
truth it always pleased him to see Bunter--as he expressed it--tamed.

"News!" exclaimed the crushed sceptic through his iands. "Ay, news
enough, Captain Johns. Who will be able to deny the awfulness, the
genuineness? Another man would have dropped dead. You want to know what
I had seen. All I can tell you is that since I've seen it my hair is
turning white."

Bunter detached his hands from his face, and they hung on each side of
his chair as if dead. He looked broken in the dusky cabin.

"You don't say!" stammered out Captain Johns. "Turned white! Hold on a
bit! I'll light the lamp!"

When the lamp was lit, the startling phenomenon could be seen plainly
enough. As if the dread, the horror, the anguish of the supernatural
were being exhaled through the pores of his skin, a sort of silvery mist
seemed to cling to the cheeks and the head of the mate. His short beard,
his cropped hair, were growing, not black, but gray--almost white.

When Mr. Bunter, thin-faced and shaky, came on deck for duty, he
was clean-shaven, and his head was white. The hands were awe-struck.
"Another man," they whispered to each other. It was generally and
mysteriously agreed that the mate had "seen something," with the
exception of the man at the wheel at the time, who maintained that the