ve the port
watch; but, later on, when the decks had been washed down, and the sun
was getting well up in the eastern horizon, flooding the ocean with the
rosy light of morning, I had an opportunity of telling my friend the
carpenter of what I had seen in the cabin.

Much to my disgust, however, he laughed at my account of Sam Jedfoot's
ghost having appeared, declaring that I had been dreaming and imagined
it all.

"No, Charley, I wouldn't believe it if you went down on your bended
knees an' swore it, not save I seed Sam with my own eyes, an' even then
I'd have a doubt," said Tom, grinning in the most exasperating way.
"Why, look there, now, at the skipper on the poop, as right as
ninepence! If he'd been in the state you say, an' were so orfully
frightened, an' had seed Sam's sperrit, as you wants to make me swallow,
do you think he'd look so perky this mornin'?"

I could hardly believe my eyes.

Yes, there was Captain Snaggs, braced up against the poop rail in his
usual place, with one eye scanning the horizon to windward and the other
inspecting the sails aloft, and his billy-goat beard sticking out as it
always did. He looked as hearty as if nothing had happened, the only
sign that I could see of his drunken fit of the night before being a cut
across the bridge of his long hooked nose, and a slight discolouration
of his eye on the port side, the result, no doubt, of his fall on the
cabin floor.

Tom Bullover could read my doubts in my face.

"You must have dreamed it, Charley, I s'pose, on account of all that
talkin' we had in the fo'c's'le about ghostesses afore you went aft an'
turned in, an' that's what's the matter," he repeated, giving me a nudge
in the ribs, while he added more earnestly: "And, if I was you, my boy,
I wouldn't mention a word of it to another soul, or the hands 'll chaff
the life out of you, an' you'll wish you were a ghost yerself!"

Tom moved off as he uttered these last words with a chuckle, and
accompanied by an expressive wink, that spoke volumes; so, seeing his
advice was sound, I determined to act upon it, although the fear struck
me that Jones, the steward, would mention it even if I didn't, just to
make me the laughing-stock of the crew.

However, I had no time then for reflection; Captain Snaggs, as if to
show that he had all his wits about him still, calling out for the hands
forward to overhaul the studding-sail gear and rig out the booms; and,
by breakfast time, when the