ed for;
but you hav'n't told us whose ghost it was, after all."

"No; the captain made such a spring to the gunwale, as frighted it all
out of my head: but come closer, Mr. Mullins, and I'll whisper it in
your ear.--Hark! what was that?"

"I hears nothing," said the boatswain, after a pause.

"It's very odd," continued Fuller; "but I thought as how I heard it
several times afore you came."

"There's something wrong, I take it, in your upper story, Jack Fuller,"
coolly observed his companion; "that 'ere ghost has quite capsized you."

"Hark, again!" repeated the sailor. "Didn't you hear it then? A sort of
a groan like."

"Where, in what part?" calmly demanded the boatswain, though in the
same suppressed tone in which the dialogue had been, carried on.

"Why, from the canoe that lies alongside there. I heard it several
times afore."

"Well, damn my eyes, if you a'rn't turned a real coward at last,"
politely remarked Mr. Mullins. "Can't the poor fat devil of a Canadian
snooze a bit in his hammock, without putting you so completely out of
your reckoning?"

"The Canadian--the Canadian!" hurriedly returned Fuller: "why, don't
you see him there, leaning with his back to the main-mast, and as fast
asleep as if the devil himself couldn't wake him?"

"Then it was the devil, you heard, if you like," quaintly retorted
Mullins: "but bear a hand, and tell us all about this here ghost."

"Hark, again! what was that?" once more enquired the excited sailor.

"Only a gust of wind passing through the dried boughs of the canoe,"
said the boatswain: "but since we can get nothing out of that crazed
noddle of yours, see if you can't do something with your hands. That
'ere canoe running alongside, takes half a knot off the ship's way.
Bear a hand then, and cast off the painter, and let her drop astarn,
that she may follow in our wake. Hilloa! what the hell's the matter
with the man now?"

And well might he ask. With his eyeballs staring, his teeth chattering,
his body half bent, and his arms thrown forward, yet pendent as if
suddenly arrested in that position while in the act of reaching the
rope, the terrified sailor stood gazing on the stern of the canoe; in
which, by the faint light of the dawning day, was to be seen an object
well calculated to fill the least superstitious heart with terror and
dismay. Through an opening in the foliage peered the pale and spectral
face of a human being, with its dull eyes bent fixedly and m