if otherwise,
I could assign no earthly reason for the crew's hiding away from a
couple of sailors, whom, were they so minded, they might easily have
mastered. And furthermore, this alleged disturbance of the atmosphere
aloft by a sneeze, Jarl averred to have taken place in the main-top;
directly underneath which I was all this time standing, and had heard
nothing. So complimenting my good Viking upon the exceeding delicacy
of his auriculars, I bade him trouble himself no more with his
piratical ghosts and goblins, which existed nowhere but in his own
imagination.

Not finding the line-and-sinker, with the spare end of a bowline we
rigged a substitute; and sounding the well, found nothing to excite
our alarm. Under certain circumstances, however, this sounding a
ship's well is a nervous sort of business enough. 'Tis like feeling
your own pulse in the last stage of a fever.

At the Skyeman's suggestion, we now proceeded to throw round the
brigantine's head on the other tack. For until daylight we desired to
alter the vessel's position as little as possible, fearful of coming
unawares upon reefs.

And here be it said, that for all his superstitious misgivings about
the brigantine; his imputing to her something equivalent to a purely
phantom-like nature, honest Jarl was nevertheless exceedingly
downright and practical in all hints and proceedings concerning her.
Wherein, he resembled my Right Reverend friend, Bishop Berkeley--
truly, one of your lords spiritual--who, metaphysically speaking,
holding all objects to be mere optical delusions, was, notwith-
standing, extremely matter-of-fact in all matters touching
matter itself. Besides being pervious to the points of pins, and
possessing a palate capable of appreciating plum-puddings:--which
sentence reads off like a pattering of hailstones.

Now, while we were employed bracing round the yards, whispering Jarl
must needs pester me again with his confounded suspicions of goblins
on board. He swore by the main-mast, that when the fore-yard swung
round, he had heard a half-stifled groan from that quarter; as if one
of his bugbears had been getting its aerial legs jammed. I laughed:--
hinting that goblins were incorporeal. Whereupon he besought me to
ascend the fore-rigging and test the matter for myself But here my
mature judgment got the better of my first crude opinion. I civilly
declined. For assuredly, there was still a possibility, that the
fore-top might be tenant