CHAPTER XIII
Higher Intelligence—A Visit From Out the Shadows
When the steward had gone forward to his bunk, I got a lunch, and was about to sit down by the dining-table to eat it, when I saw the door of the Captain's room open wide.
Then, to my utter amazement, I saw the chair that the dead Captain had sat in for years swing around upon its pivot ready to receive a visitor. I was so startled by the wonderful unseen force that I forgot my lunch and was starting to close the door in the hope of another uncanny experience, when I was halted by a cry from the deck above.
"Hard to starboard, you damned fool. Are you trying to cut her in two amidship?" shouted the second mate.
"Hard over she is," rang out from the man at the wheel.
Instantly I was on deck. The second mate was over in the lee mizzen-rigging. "What is it, Olsen?" I asked.
"A full-rigged ship away two points on the starboard bow."
To the man at the wheel I said: "Put your helm down and pass to windward of him before you jibe the spanker over, or you will knock Hell out of these old sails." Then to the second mate: "Why do you have to sail all over the ocean to get by that old pea-soup hulk? Don't you see that he has the wind free? Luff her up half a point," I ordered the wheel-man.
We passed so close to windward that we took the wind out of his lower sails. The moon was in the last quarter, and we could see plainly the watch on her deck, and hear the officer swear at the helmsman, saying: