n I hopes to goodness we
ain't gwine to see it no mo'. Dey's BEEN a lake, en suthin's happened, en
de lake's dead, en we's seen its ghos'; we's seen it twiste, en dat's
proof. De desert's ha'nted, it's ha'nted, sho; oh, Mars Tom, le''s git
outen it; I'd ruther die den have de night ketch us in it ag'in en de
ghos' er dat lake come a-mournin' aroun' us en we asleep en doan' know de
danger we's in."

"Ghost, you gander! It ain't anything but air and heat and thirstiness
pasted together by a person's imagination. If I--gimme the glass!"

He grabbed it and begun to gaze off to the right.

"It's a flock of birds," he says. "It's getting toward sundown, and
they're making a bee-line across our track for somewheres. They mean
business--maybe they're going for food or water, or both. Let her go to
starboard!--Port your hellum! Hard down! There--ease up--steady, as you
go."

We shut down some of the power, so as not to outspeed them, and took out
after them. We went skimming along a quarter of a mile behind them, and
when we had followed them an hour and a half and was getting pretty
discouraged, and was thirsty clean to unendurableness, Tom says:

"Take the glass, one of you, and see what that is, away ahead of the
birds."

Jim got the first glimpse, and slumped down on the locker sick. He was
most crying, and says:

"She's dah ag'in, Mars Tom, she's dah ag'in, en I knows I's gwine to die,
'case when a body sees a ghos' de third time, dat's what it means. I
wisht I'd never come in dis balloon, dat I does."

He wouldn't look no more, and what he said made me afraid, too, because I
knowed it was true, for that has always been the way with ghosts; so then
I wouldn't look any more, either. Both of us begged Tom to turn off and
go some other way, but he wouldn't, and said we was ignorant
superstitious blatherskites. Yes, and he'll git come up with, one of
these days, I says to myself, insulting ghosts that way. They'll stand it
for a while, maybe, but they won't stand it always, for anybody that
knows about ghosts knows how easy they are hurt, and how revengeful they
are.

So we was all quiet and still, Jim and me being scared, and Tom busy. By
and by Tom fetched the balloon to a standstill, and says:

"NOW get up and look, you sapheads."

We done it, and there was the sure-enough water right under us!--clear,
and blue, and cool, and deep, and wavy with the breeze, the loveliest
sight that ever was. And all about it wa