“I seem to remember it was the same with me the first time I ever had one of those mad fits,” said the captain. “It come on quick. It wasn’t like ordinary getting mad. It was a red torrent, delirious and awful—something that caught me up and carried me along on its wave—something I couldn’t fight against. When I saw Hal with his teeth grinning, eyes glassy, fists red with McLaughlin’s blood, oh, it struck clean through my heart!
“It wasn’t any fear of either of them getting killed that harpooned me, no, nor complications and damages to pay. No, no, though such will be bad enough. What struck me all of a heap was to see myself, my very own self that used to be. If I, Captain Alpheus Briggs, had been swept back to 1868 and set down on the deck of the _Silver Fleece_, Hal would have been my exact double. I’ve seen myself just as I was then, doctor, and it’s shaken me in every timber. There I stood, I, myself, in Hal’s person, after five decades of weary time. I could see the outlines of the same black beard on the same kind of jaw—same thick neck and bloody fists; and, oh, doctor, the eyes of Hal. His eyes!”
“Yes. In them I saw my old, wicked, hell-elected self—saw it glaring out, to break and ravish and murder!”
“It’s true, I’m telling you. I’ve seen a ghost this evening. A ghost—”
He peered around fearfully in the dusk. His voice lowered to a whisper:
Filhiol could not speak. Something cold, prehensile, terrible seemed fingering at his heart! Ruddy, the Airedale, raised his head, seemed to be listening, to be seeing something they could not detect. In the dog’s throat a low growl muttered.
“What’s _that_?” said the captain, every muscle taut.
“Nothing, nothing,” the doctor answered. “The dog probably hears some one down there by the hedge. This is all nonsense, captain. You’re working yourself into a highly nervous state and imagining all kinds of things. Now—”
“I tell you, I saw the ghost of my other self,” insisted Briggs. “There’s worse kinds of ghosts than those that hang around graveyards. I’ve always wanted to see that kind and never have. Night after night I’ve been up there to the little cemetery on Croft Hill, and sat on the bench in our lot, just as friendly and receptive as could be, ready to see whatever ghost might come to me, but none ever came. I’m not afraid of the ghosts of the dead! It’s ghosts of the living that strike a dread to me—ghosts of the past that ought to die and can’t—ghosts of my own sins that God won’t let lie in the grave of forgiveness—”