ll_, some years before the time I am speaking of? If you
haven't, I'll tell you about it. Did you ever have a ghost aboard any
ship you sailed in, cap'en? Maybe not. They don't seem to show
themselves now-a-days, as they used to do.

"Dick Carcass was the boatswain of the old _Cornwall_ when I served
aboard her. He was a tall spare man with high shoulders and a peculiar
walk, so that it was impossible to mistake him meet him where you might.
He was also a prime seaman, and had a mouth that could whistle the
winds out of conceit. If he did use a rope's-end on the backs of the
boys sometimes, it was all for their own good. We were bound out one
winter time to Halifax, Nova Scotia. It isn't the pleasantest time of
the year to be sailing across the North Atlantic. We had had a pretty
long passage, with westerly gales, which kept all hands employed. The
boatswain was seldom off deck, and a rough life he had of it.

"At last, what with the hard work he had to do, and having been in
hospital too before we sailed, he fell sick, and one night the doctor
came out of his cabin and told us he was dead. Now our captain was a
kind-hearted man; and as he expected to be in port in two or three days,
instead of sewing the boatswain up in a hammock and lowering him
overboard, he gave notice that he should keep him to give him decent
Christian burial on shore, and let the parson pray over him, for, d'ye
see, we had none aboard. To pay him every respect, a sentry was placed
at the door of his cabin in the cockpit. He had been dead three or four
days, and we had expected to get into port in two or three at the
furthest; so as the wind continued foul, and might hold in the same
quarter a week longer, the captain, thinking the bo'sun wouldn't keep
much longer, at last determined to have him buried the next morning.
That night I had just gone below, and was passing close to the sentry,
when he asked me if I couldn't make his lantern burn brighter. He was a
chum of mine, d'ye see. I took it down from the hook where it was
hanging, and was trying to snuff it, when all of a sudden the door of
Mr Carcass's cabin opened with a bang like a clap of thunder, and, as
I'm a living man, I heard the bo'sun's voice, for you may be sure I knew
it well, shout out:--

"`Sentry, give us a light, will ye!'

"Somehow or other--maybe I nipped the wick too hard--the candle went
out, and down fell the lantern. I did not stop to pick it up, nor di