reef
the tops'ls. We're going to hev a blow!"

And we did have a blow.

The men were just ready to haul in the weather earring of the
mizzen-topsail, the last they were handing, the fore and main having
been already made snug, when a storm of wind and hail and snow struck us
which in a few minutes coated the deck and rigging and every portion of
the upper works of the ship with thick ice. At the same time, the sea,
rolling in enormous waves, broke over our counter, throwing sheets of
water aboard, which seemed to freeze in the air before it fell.

I was standing on the poop, lending a hand at the mizzen halliards with
the rest of the `idlers'--as those who are not regular sailors are
called, although I was fast trying to become a real salt under the apt
tuition of Hiram Bangs and the carpenter--when this fierce blast came.

Goodness gracious! It pinned us all down to the deck, as if we were
skittle-pegs, making our faces smart again with the bitter downpour.

Next, followed a short lull, during which the reef tackle was hauled out
and the halliards manned, the yard being swayed up again; and then,
those aloft were able to come down and find a more comfortable shelter
below than the rigging afforded.

But, now, occurred a curious circumstance.

As the hands who had been up on the mizzen-yard reefing the topsail
stepped from the ratlines on to the deck of the poop before getting down
to the waist below, one of the men, Jim Chowder, the same who had said
that he had heard Sam Jedfoot's voice in the ship since he had been lost
overboard, whispered to me as he passed:--

"Listen!" he said.

That was all--

"Listen!"

The wind had suddenly died away for a moment, although the sea was like
an ocean of mountains lumbering over each other; and as I `listened', as
Jim the sailor had told me, I heard a musical sound that I instantly
recognised. It was that of the negro cook's banjo, and Sam's voice,
too, most unmistakably, singing the same old air I knew so well:

"Oh, down in Alabama, 'fore I wer sot free."

The instrument seemed to give out a double twang at this point, as if
all the strings were twitched at once, and I noticed that Captain
Snaggs, who stood near me, turned as white as a sheet.

"Thunder!" he exclaimed, his eyes almost starting out of his head. "The
Lord hev mercy on us! What air thet?"

As if in answer to his question, the same wild, ghostly melody was
repeated, the sound seeming to h