In about five minutes one of them returned panting and out of breath. It was Jabez.
He came into the room looking so white that Miss Jackson screamed.
‘Well, what about the ghost?’ said George, quite bravely, smiling at Bess, upon whom the example of the other ladies seemed likely to have an effect.
‘I’m done,’ answered Jabez, dropping into a chair, and violently polishing his shiny head with his pocket-handkerchief till the gas globes were reflected in it; ‘I’m done. It’s the rummest thing I ever knew.’
‘But you never knew a ghost before, did you?’ asked George, keeping up a smile, meant to be reassuring.
‘Ghost be blowed!’ exclaimed Mr. Jabez, jumping up. ‘It’s no ghost. It’s Gurth Egerton himself.’
CHAPTER XV.
MR. GURTH EGERTON COMES TO LIFE.
Gurth Egerton’s first feeling when saved from the wreck of the Bon Espoir was one of intense thankfulness that his life had been spared. But as the fearful danger to which he had been exposed receded, he began to contemplate the past less and the future considerably more.
The most terrible situations are those which fade most rapidly from the mind. A man will remember going to the dentist’s to have a tooth drawn long after he has forgotten a surgical operation in which his life was at stake. There is nothing so soon forgotten by the ordinary mind as death. Many men would remember being best man at a wedding far more distinctly than being chief mourner at a funeral.
So it was with Gurth Egerton.