His startled eyes fell upon two awful and awesome figures.
The two boys, young Jack and Harry Girdwood, standing hand in hand, their faces bearing the ghastly pallor of the grave and their brows smeared with blood.
In the darkened cabin a flickering, phosphorescent light played upon them, a hint which had perhaps been borrowed from the practical joking in the chamber of the sham necromancer in Greece.
The two victims glared upon the sick man, while he could only stare in fearful silence.
He stared.
Then he closed his eyes and rubbed them, and opened them again, as if to assure himself that it was real.
But they never moved.
Never spoke.
He essayed to speak.
But his tongue refused to wag.