But, when we got up to the entrance, we saw a sight that stopped us at once, Hiram dropping to the ground as if he had been shot.
There, sitting on the very rock at the back which Tom Bullover had joked about on the previous day as being the ‘ghost’s pulpit’ was the dim apparition of a man, the very image of our whilom negro cook, leaning back and playing the banjo, just as Sam used to do on board the Denver City.
But, stranger still, even as I looked, a queer supernatural sort of light suddenly illumined the interior of the cavern, and I saw another apparition rise, as it were, out of the darkness, immediately behind the one on the rock, the last spectral form raising its hand threateningly.
I stood there at the mouth of the cave, almost paralysed with terror, watching the weird scene that was being enacted within, the wonderful electrical glare making every detail come out in strong relief and lighting up the whole place, so that it was as bright as day.
Not the slightest incident escaped my notice.
As the second apparition rose from behind the rock at the back of the cavern, the first figure, which I had believed up to now really to be the negro cook’s ghost or spirit, permitted for some occult purpose or other to revisit the earth, also jumped up out of the corner, dropping the banjo incontinently.
Not only this, the original ghost, spirit, or what you will, displayed an abject fright that was too real for any inhabitant of the other world to assume; for the face of the ghost in an instant grew as long as my arm, while its woolly hair crinkled up on top of its head until it became erect and stiff as a wire brush.
At the same time, the eyes of this first ‘ghost,’ distended with fear, rolled round and round, the white eyeballs contrasting with the darker skin of the face, which, however, appeared to have become of an ashy grey colour, instead of black—though whether this was from the effects of fear or owing to the peculiar light that shone full upon it I could not tell, nor, indeed, puzzled my mind at the time to inquire.
The two figures thus confronted each other for about the space of a second, the headless apparition rising and rising till it seemed to touch the roof of the cave, when it extended its wide arms and made a clutch at the other, and now trembling, figure in front.
This was too much for the banjo-playing spectre.