“It’s like being bewitched, upon my word,” I said once to Mr. Burns, from my usual position in the doorway.

He was sitting up in his bed-place. He was progressing toward the world of living men; if he could hardly have been said to have rejoined it yet. He nodded to me his frail and bony head in a wisely mysterious assent.

“Oh, yes, I know what you mean,” I said. “But you cannot expect me to believe that a dead man has the power to put out of joint the meteorology of this part of the world. Though indeed it seems to have gone utterly wrong. The land and sea breezes have got broken up into small pieces. We cannot depend upon them for five minutes together.”

“It won’t be very long now before I can come up on deck,” muttered Mr. Burns, “and then we shall see.”

Whether he meant this for a promise to grapple with supernatural evil I couldn’t tell. At any rate, it wasn’t the kind of assistance I needed. On the other hand, I had been living on deck practically night and day so as to take advantage of every chance to get my ship a little more to the southward. The mate, I could see, was extremely weak yet, and not quite rid of his delusion, which to me appeared but a symptom of his disease. At all events, the hopefulness of an invalid was not to be discouraged. I said:

“You will be most welcome there, I am sure, Mr. Burns. If you go on improving at this rate you’ll be presently one of the healthiest men in the ship.”

This pleased him, but his extreme emaciation converted his self-satisfied smile into a ghastly exhibition of long teeth under the red moustache.

“Aren’t the fellows improving, sir?” he asked soberly, with an extremely sensible expression of anxiety on his face.

I answered him only with a vague gesture and went away from the door. The fact was that disease played with us capriciously very much as the winds did. It would go from one man to another with a lighter or heavier touch, which always left its mark behind, staggering some, knocking others over for a time, leaving this one, returning to another, so that all of them had now an invalidish aspect and a hunted, apprehensive look in their eyes; while Ransome and I, the only two completely untouched, went amongst them assiduously distributing quinine. It was a double fight. The adverse weather held us in front and the disease pressed on our rear. I must say that the men were very good. The constant toil of trimming yards they faced willingly. But all spring was out of their limbs, and as I looked at them from the poop I could not keep from my mind the dreadful impression that they were moving in poisoned air.

Down below, in his cabin, Mr. Burns had advanced so far as not only to be able to sit up, but even to draw up his legs. Clasping them with bony arms, like an animated skeleton, he emitted deep, impatient sighs.

“The great thing to do, sir,” he would tell me on every occasion, when I gave him the chance, “the great thing is to get the ship past 8° 20´ of latitude. Once she’s past that we’re all right.”

At first I used only to smile at him, though, God knows, I had not much heart left for smiles. But at last I lost my patience.

“Oh, yes. The latitude 8° 20´. That’s where you buried your late captain, isn’t it?” Then with severity: “Don’t you think, Mr. Burns, it’s about time you dropped all that nonsense?”

He rolled at me his deep-sunken eyes in a glance of invincible obstinacy. But for the rest he only muttered, just loud enough for me to hear, something about “Not surprised… find… play us some beastly trick yet.…”