"What in blazes----!"
Lanyard replied with a gesture of bewilderment: "She was just going below. I'd stopped to light a cigarette, saw nothing to account for this. Wait: I'll fetch water."
He darted down the companionway, filled a glass from a silver thermos carafe, and hurried back. As he arrived at the top of steps, Collison announced: "It's all right. She's coming to."
Supported in the arms of the second mate, Liane was beginning to breathe deeply and looking round with dazed eyes. Lanyard dropped on a knee and set the glass to her lips. She gulped twice, mechanically, her gaze fixed to his face. Then suddenly memory cleared, and she uttered a bubbling gasp of returning dread.
"Popinot!" she cried, as Lanyard hastily took the glass away. "Popinot--he was there--I saw him--standing there!"
A trembling arm indicated the starboard deck just forward of the companion housing. But of course, when Lanyard looked, there was no one there ... if there had ever been....
[XXIII]
THE CIGARETTE
Lanyard found himself exchanging looks of mystification with Collison, and heard his own voice make the flat statement: "But there is nobody...." Collison muttered words which he took to be: No, and never was. "But you must have seen him from the bridge," Lanyard insisted blankly, "if...."
"I looked around as soon as I heard her call out," Collison replied; "but I didn't see anybody, only mademoiselle here--and you, of course, with that match."