Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/165

 and had burned innumerable holes in it before going out.

"Do you see any connection, Doctor Syn?" asked the captain, leaning right over the table and bringing his face close to the cleric.

Doctor Syn did not answer.

The captain repeated the sentence once more—with all the emphasis and force that he could put into his compelling voice:

"Any connection between the Cuban priest who was able to commit deliberate murder after death by controlling the enormous will power of his revenge upon that one definite object? Do you see any connection, I say, between that man and a man who was marooned upon a coral reef in the Southern Pacific being able to follow his murderer across the world in the beastly hulk of his dead self? I don't understand it, nor do you, perhaps, but I fancy that I see the semblance of a connection, and what I want to know is, can you?"

Then Doctor Syn did a surprising thing: He slowly raised his face to the level of the captain's, then brought his eyes to meet the captain's gaze, and then, drawing his lips apart, laying his white teeth bare, he slowly drew over his face, from the very depths of his soul, it seemed, a smile—a fixed smile that steadily beamed all over him for at least a quarter of a minute before he said:

"You most remarkable man! A King's captain, eh? I vow you have mistaken your calling." And he