es; a degree of hope, however feeble, that he
is the victim of chicanery, and that the apparition is not actually a
visitant from the old world of shadows. It is not too much to say that
such remnants of doubt have been at the bottom of almost every such
visitation, and that the appalling horror which has sometimes been
brought about, is to be attributed, even in the cases most in point,
and where most suffering has been experienced, more to a kind of
anticipative horror, lest the apparition might possibly be real, than
to an unwavering belief in its reality. But, in the present instance, it
will be seen immediately, that in the minds of the mutineers there
was not even the shadow of a basis upon which to rest a doubt that
the apparition of Rogers was indeed a revivification of his disgusting
corpse, or at least its spiritual image. The isolated situation of the
brig, with its entire inaccessibility on account of the gale, confined
the apparently possible means of deception within such narrow and
definite limits, that they must have thought themselves enabled to
survey them all at a glance. They had now been at sea twenty-four days,
without holding more than a speaking communication with any vessel
whatever. The whole of the crew, too--at least all whom they had the
most remote reason for suspecting to be on board--were assembled in the
cabin, with the exception of Allen, the watch; and his gigantic stature
(he was six feet six inches high) was too familiar in their eyes to
permit the notion that he was the apparition before them to enter their
minds even for an instant. Add to these considerations the awe-inspiring
nature of the tempest, and that of the conversation brought about by
Peters; the deep impression which the loathsomeness of the actual corpse
had made in the morning upon the imaginations of the men; the excellence
of the imitation in my person, and the uncertain and wavering light
in which they beheld me, as the glare of the cabin lantern, swinging
violently to and fro, fell dubiously and fitfully upon my figure, and
there will be no reason to wonder that the deception had even more than
the entire effect which we had anticipated. The mate sprang up from the
mattress on which he was lying, and, without uttering a syllable, fell
back, stone dead, upon the cabin floor, and was hurled to the leeward
like a log by a heavy roll of the brig. Of the remaining seven, there
were but three who had at first any degree o