I had expected that the unaccountable appearance which had excited my
attention so strongly would have vanished with the closing of my eyes;
but it did not, for when I looked at it again, the working and shifting
of the folds of the cloth still continued, and even more distinctly than
before.
"Very extraordinary all this," I murmured to myself.
"Pray, Mr Cringle, be sociable, man," said the Captain; "what the deuce
do you see, that you stare over my shoulder in that way? Were a woman
now, I should tremble to look behind me, while you were glaring aft in
that wild, moonstruck sort of fashion."
"By all that is astonishing," I exclaimed in great agitation, "if the
folds of the cape have not arranged themselves into the very likeness of
his dying face! Why it is his face, and no fanciful grouping of my
heated brain. Look there, sir--look there--I know it can't bebut there
he lies,--the very features and upper part of the body, lith and limb, as
when he disappeared beneath the water when he was shot dead."
I felt the boiling blood, that had been rushing through my system like
streams of molten lead, suddenly freeze and coagulate about my heart,
impeding my respiration to a degree that I thought I should have been
suffocated. I had the feeling as if my soul was going to take wing. It
was not fear, nor could I say I was in pain, but it was so utterly unlike
any thing I had ever experienced before, and so indescribable, that I
thought to myself--"this may be death.
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