“It—it hasn’t got any face.”
“How could it grin—at you if it hasn’t any face?” I demanded impatiently. “Pull yourself together and tell me what you saw.”
It was some time before he could tell a connected story, and, when he did, I was inclined to suspect that he had heard us talking the night before, had heard Adams’s description of the intruder on the forecastle-head, and that, what with drink and terror, he had fancied the rest. And yet, I was not so sure.
“I was asleep, the first time,” he said. “I don’t know how long ago it was. I woke up cold, with the feeling that something was looking at me. I raised up in bed, and there was a thing at the window. It was looking in.”
“What sort of a thing?”
“What I told you—white.”
“A white head?”
“It wasn’t a head. For God’s sake, Leslie! I can’t tell you any more than that. I saw it. That’s enough. I saw it three times.”
“It isn’t enough for me,” I said doggedly. “It hadn’t any head or face, but it looked in! It’s dark out there. How could you see?”
For reply, he leaned over and, turning down the lamp, blew it out. We sat in the smoking darkness, and slowly, out of the thick night, the window outlined itself. I could see it distinctly. But how, white and faceless, had it stared in at the window, or reached through the bars, as Singleton declared it had done, and waved a fingerless hand at us?