He would, for instance, discourse on the improvement of morality to be
expected from the establishment of general and close intercourse with
the spirits of the departed. The spirits, Captain Johns thought, would
consent to associate familiarly with the living if it were not for the
unbelief of the great mass of mankind. He himself would not care to
have anything to do with a crowd that would not believe in his--Captain
Johns'--existence. Then why should a spirit? This was asking too much.

He went on breathing hard by the binnacle and trying to reach round his
shoulder-blades; then, with a thick, drowsy severity, declared:

"Incredulity, sir, is the evil of the age!"

It rejected the evidence of Professor Cranks and of the journalist chap.
It resisted the production of photographs.

For Captain Johns believed firmly that certain spirits had been
photographed. He had read something of it in the papers. And the idea of
it having been done had got a tremendous hold on him, because his mind
was not critical. Bunter said afterwards that nothing could be more
weird than this little man, swathed in a sleeping suit three sizes
too large for him, shuffling with excitement in the moonlight near the
wheel, and shaking his fist at the serene sea.

"Photographs! photographs!" he would repeat, in a voice as creaky as a
rusty hinge.

The very helmsman just behind him got uneasy at that performance, not
being capable of understanding exactly what the "old man was kicking up