"The durned idiot slept," said the captain to me, "and dreamt, and dropped on his nut."
"Had I dropped on my nut, should not have woke up then?" cried the
Dane, in a passion of candour.
"Go forward and turn in," said the captain. "The doctor shall see you and report to me."
When the man was gone the captain asked me if I had seen anything likely to produce the impression of a ghost on an ignorant, credulous man's mind? I answered no, wondering that he should ask such a question.
"How long was the man in a fit, d'ye think?" said he, "that is, before you found out that the wheel was deserted?"
"Three or four minutes."
He looked into the binnacle, took a turn about the decks, and, without saying anything more about the ghost, went below.
The doctor next day reported that the Dane was perfectly well, and of sound mind, and that he stuck with many imprecations to his story. He described the ghost as a figure in white that looked at him with sparkling eyes, and yet blindly. He was unable to describe the features. Fright, no doubt, stood in the way of perception. He could not imagine where the thing had come from. He was, as he had said, gazing at what looked like a spark or star to leeward, when turning his head he found the Shape close beside him.
The captain and the doctor talked the thing over in my presence, and we decided to consider it a delusion on the part of the Dane, a phantom of his imagination, mainly because the man swooned after he saw the thing, letting go the wheel so that the ship came up into the wind, and it was impossible to conceive that a substantial object could have vanished in the time that elapsed between the man falling down and the flap of sails which had called my attention to the abandoned helm.
However, nothing was said about the matter aft: the sailors adopted the doctor's opinion, some viewing the thing as a "Dutchman's" dodge to get a "night in."