William Hope Hodgson

“ I said. "Indeed, from things I've heard Williams say, I'm pretty certain, he for one, guessed or knew a jolly sight more than we've any idea of."
"And now he's dead!" said Tammy, solemnly. "We'll never be able to find out from him now."
For a few moments, he was silent. Then he went off on another track.
"Doesn't anything ever happen in the Mate's watch?"
"Yes," I answered. "There's several things happened lately, that seem pretty queer. Some of his side have been talking about them. But he's too jolly pig-headed to see anything. He just curses his chaps, and puts it all down to them." ”

“ The earth may be just as real to them, as to us. I mean that it may have qualities as material to them, as it has to us; but neither of us could appreciate the other's realness, or the quality of realness in the earth, which was real to the other. ”

“ I replied. "Even if he believed it all; which we're not certain he would."
"Perhaps not," Tammy answered. "But if you could get him to believe it, he might explain the whole business to the Skipper, and then something might be done. It's not safe as it is."
"He'd only get jeered at again," I said, rather hopelessly.
"No," said Tammy. "Not after what's happened tonight."
"Perhaps not," I replied, doubtfully. And just then the Second Mate came back on to the poop, and Tammy cleared away from the wheel-box, leaving me with a worrying feeling that I ought to do something. ”

“ And the same with them; but the more we're like this, the more real and actual they could grow to us. See? That is, the more we should become able to appreciate their form of materialness. That's all. I can't make it any clearer."
"Then, after all, you really think they're ghosts, or something of that sort?" Tammy said. ”

“ That's how I keep going, in a sort of blessed circle. I don't know a bit whether they're flesh and blood, or whether they're what we should call ghosts or spirits."
"They can't be flesh and blood," Tammy interrupted. "Where would they live? ”

“ Wait until I've finished what I was going to say."
"All right!" he said.
"About that thing you saw tonight," I went on. "You say it came over the lee rail, up on to the poop?"
"Yes," he answered.
"Well, the thing I saw, _came up out of the sea, and went back into the sea."
"Jove!" he said; and then: "Yes, go on!"
"My idea is, that this ship is open to be boarded by those things," I explained. "What they are, of course I don't know. They look like men-- in lots of ways. But--well, the Lord knows what's in the sea. Though we don't want to go imagining silly things, of course. ”