y, there it is
still, if you don't believe me!"

"Well, I'm blowed!" he exclaimed, going over to the place and catching
hold of the object that had again alarmed me. "You are a frightened
feller to be skeared by an old coat! Why, it's that Dutch second-mate
of ourn's oilskin a-hangin' up outside his bunk that you thought were
Sam's sperrit when the light shone on it, I s'pose. You ain't got the
pluck of a flea, Cholly Hills, to lose your head over sich a trifle.
There's no ghostesses now-a-days; and if there was, I don't think as how
the cook's sperrit would come in here, specially arter the way the
skipper settled him. Man or ghost, he'd be too much afeard to come nigh
the `old man' agen, with him carryin' on like that, and in sich a
tantrum. I wonder Sam hadn't more sense than to cross his hawse as he
did. I were too wary, and kep' close in my pantry all the time the row
were on, I did. I wern't born yesterday!"

"But the cap'en saw it, too, I tell you," I persisted. "He yelled out
that Sam was there before he tumbled down; and that was how I came to
look and notice the awful thing. You can believe it or not, but I tell
you I saw Sam Jedfoot there as plain as life--either him or his ghost!"

"Rubbish!" cried Jones, who meanwhile had put the lantern he carried on
the cabin table, and was proceeding to lift up the captain's head and
drag him into a sitting posture against the side of one of the settles
that ran down the cuddy fore and aft. "Just you light up one of them
swinging lamps, and then come and help me carry the skipper to his bunk.
He's dead drunk, that's what he is; and I wonder he ain't drownded,
too, lying with his nose in all thafe water sluicing round. As for the
ghost he saw, that were rum, his favour-rite sperrit. He ought to 'ave
seed two Sams from the lot he's drunk to-night--two bottles as I'm a
living sinner, barrin' a glass or two the first-mate had, and a drop I
squeezed out for myself, when I took him up some grog on deck at the end
of the second dog-watch!"

"Two bottles of rum!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "Really?"

"Aye; do you think me lying?" snapped out Jones in answer; "that is,
pretty nigh on, nearly. I wonder he ain't dead with it all. I 'ave
knowed him manage a bottle afore of a night all to hisself, but never
two, lor the matter o' that. It ought to kill him. Guess he's got a
lit of 'plexy now, an' will wake up with the jim-jams!"

"What's that?" I asked, as