agging him to the sentry's lantern, by
its sickly light discovered features which belonged to no other than
Bobby Smudge.

"Why, where have you been, you young scoundrel, all the time?" asked
Jabez.

"In the coal-hole," blubbered out poor Bobby. "I never thought of doing
harm to no one; but I can't live without eating. Oh! let me go back,--
oh! do, now."

"My order is to take you to the captain," replied Jabez, unmoved; and
forthwith to the captain's cabin the unhappy Smudge was led captive.

He was soon, however, sent out again under charge of the sentry, and
kept in durance vile till the next morning.

After breakfast the men were called aft; and the captain appeared on the
quarter-deck with Bobby, in the same garb and condition in which he had
been captured. He was truly a wretched object, as he stood trembling,
and blubbering, and covered with coal dust and dirt, before all the
crew.

"I have called you aft, my men, to show you how foolish you have been to
allow yourselves to be frightened by the equally foolish trick of this
miserable lad," said Captain Poynder. "I am not angry with you; but I
wish you to learn, from this event, that all the ghosts you are ever
likely to see will turn out to be no more ghosts than is this poor
fellow at the present moment. He confesses that to avoid punishment,
and in the hopes of ultimately escaping from the ship, he devised the
scheme for making it appear that he had destroyed himself. He managed,
it seems, to get a lump of coal in the forechains, and after heaving it
into the water, and crying out that a man was overboard, to get in at a
port, and to stow himself away in the coal-hole. Trusting to the
superstition and folly which the people have exhibited, he thought he
might venture out at night to supply himself with food. His plan
succeeded; and had the story not come to my ears, I conclude he would
have kept up the farce till the ship got into port. I ask, my men, do
you think it possible that God, who made this mighty universe, and
governs it by just and wise laws, would allow a mischievous imp, who
could do no harm while alive, to return to earth, merely for the sake of
wreaking his own petty malice, or for troubling and frightening a number
of grown men such as you are. To believe such a thing is both wicked
and absurd, for it is mistrusting God's wisdom and providence; and I
hope, when you come calmly to consider the matter over, you will think
as I do.