thrown overboard at once as it was too horrible a sight to see it
floundering about in the scuppers. At this the villain absolutely
gasped for breath, and turned his head slowly round upon his
companions, as if imploring some one to go up and perform the task.
No one, however, stirred, and it was quite evident that the whole
party were wound up to the highest pitch of nervous excitement.
Peters now made me the signal. I immediately threw open the door of
the companion-way, and, descending, without uttering a syllable,
stood erect in the midst of the party.

The intense effect produced by this sudden apparition is not at
all to be wondered at when the various circumstances are taken into
consideration. Usually, in cases of a similar nature, there is left
in the mind of the spectator some glimmering of doubt as to the
reality of the vision before his eyes; a degree of hope, however
feeble, that he is the victim of chicanery, and that the apparition
is not actually a visitant from the old world of shadows. It is not
too much to say that such remnants of doubt have been at the bottom
of almost every such visitation, and that the appalling horror which
has sometimes been brought about, is to be attributed, even in the
cases most in point, and where most suffering has been experienced,
more to a kind of anticipative horror, lest the apparition might
possibly be real, than to an unwavering belief in its reality. But,
in the present instance, it will be seen immediately, that in the
minds of the mutineers there was not even the shadow of a basis upon
which to rest a doubt that the apparition of Rogers was indeed a
revivification of his disgusting corpse, or at least its spiritual
image. The isolated situation of the brig, with its entire
inaccessibility on account of the gale, confined the apparently
possible means of deception within such narrow and definite limits,