“A reflection from something on the deck?”
Deeping smiled, uneasily.
“Possibly,” he replied; “but it was very sharply defined. Like the blade of a scimitar,” he added.
I stared at him, my curiosity keenly aroused. “Does any explanation suggest itself to you?” I said.
“Well,” he confessed, “I have a theory, I will admit; but it is rather going back to the Middle Ages. You see, I have lived in the East a lot; perhaps I have assimilated some of their superstitions.”
He was oddly reticent, as ever. I felt convinced that he was keeping something back. I could not stifle the impression that the clue to these mysteries lay somewhere around the invisible Mohammedan party.
“Do you know,” said Bell to me, one morning, “this trip’s giving me the creeps. I believe the damned ship’s haunted! Three bells in the middle watch last night, I’ll swear I saw some black animal crawling along the deck, in the direction of the forward companion-way.”
“Cat?” I suggested.
“Nothing like it,” said Mr. Bell. “Mr. Cavanagh, it was some uncanny thing! I’m afraid I can’t explain quite what I mean, but it was something I wanted to shoot!”
“Where did it go?”