ame down on us like a shot.

"I shouted to the mate, but he had heard it too. He yelled for all
hands on deck. We both knowed the _Marlin B._ was due to be run
under unless a miracle intervened. It was a moment I ain't likely to
forget, for we stood there, the whole ship's company, hanging on by
backstay and rail, peering out into the smother of the snow, while
the amazing rush of that unknown craft deafened us.

"Then out of her upper works--I swear I could see the tangle of
ropes and slatting canvas--came a voice that rang in my ears for
many a day, no matter how the others heard it. It shouted:

"We're the spirits of them ye run under! We're the spirits of them
ye run under!"

"My soul and body, Miss Bostwick, but I was scairt!" confessed the
old salt. "That rushing sound and the voices crashed on through our
rigging and went down wind in a most amazing style. It was a ghost
warning like nothing I'd ever heard before or since. And it struck
the whole crew the same way. We begun to question what the _Marlin
B._ was. She was a new schooner and had made but one trip to the
Banks previous to this one we was on. We began to ask why her
original crew had not stayed with her.

"You can't fool sailormen, Miss Bostwick," continued the old man,
shaking his head with great solemnity. "They sees too much and they
knows too much. Sutro Brothers had got rid of the _Marlin B.'s_
first crew and picked up strangers, but murder will out. The story
come to us through the night and in the snow squall. We couldn't
stand for no murder ship. We made the skipper put back."

"Why, wasn't that mutiny?" gasped the girl.

"He was glad enough to turn back hisself. Even if he lost his ticket
he would have turned back. Then we learned what it meant. On her
first trip for fish, returning to Salem, the _Marlin B._ run under a
smaller fishing craft and every soul aboard of her was lost. And it
stands to reason that every time that murder schooner went out of
the harbor and came to the spot where she'd run the other craft
down, those uneasy souls would rise up and denounce the _Marlin B._"

"Oh!" gasped the girl, startled, for Tunis Latham and Orion stood
behind her.

"Your tongue's hung in the middle and wags both ends, Horry,"
growled the young skipper. "You trying to scare Miss Bostwick out of
her wits? What you poor, weak-minded, misguided fellows heard that
time in the snow squall was a flock of black gulls coming down
with the wind.