Van Hise sat down, trembling, his face dead white.
"You must have been asleep," he said decidedly.
"No, I have not slept to-night. Doc was down and gave me a sedative, but it seemed only a few minutes later that Nita came to me, and since Lizette took her away I've been lying here in a happy waking dream."
The soldier repressed a groan, and thought:
"He has dreamed the whole thing, or he has seen poor Nita's wraith. I should not like the seamen to know it, for only last night they were talking together, and I heard them say that to see a ghost on board ship was a sign of shipwreck. Decidedly they must not know of this, not even the good captain, or they might desert the yacht in a body!"
He waited until Dorian seemed to fall into a light doze; then went and woke up the surgeon to tell him the strange happening.
"Oh, pooh! it was no ghost—only a vision evoked by his morphine pill. He can be told to-morrow, if he persists in his fancy, that Nita's imprudence to-night has given her a relapse, and that will afford us a new excuse," replied the clever surgeon.