and we found
ourselves in the roaring sea, struggling among the wreck of the mast.
The smack was gone, and the strange ship gone, and the gale blowing
steady and strong. One by one, mates, we got astride of the mast, and
lashed ourselves with odds and ends of broken rope; and then we began,
as we rose and fell on the sea, to look about and muster how many we
were. The crew, including the captain, was seven hands, but we were
sure there were eight men sitting on the mast. It was too dark to see
faces; but you could see the dark figures clinging to the spar.

'Answer to your names, mates,' says Bartholomew, who somehow took the
lead. And so he called over the list till he came to the captain.

'Captain Goss?'

'Here,' says the captain's voice.

We now knew there was somebody behind him who was not one of the crew.
It was too dark, however, to see distinctly, and Goss interrupted our
view such as it was.

'Who is the man on the end of the mast, Captain Goss?' says
Bartholomew.

'You might be old enough to guess that!' replied the captain, and his
voice was husky-like, but quite clear; and it never trembled. 'Some
men call him one thing, some another; and we of the sea call him Davy
Jones.'

Mates, at that we clustered up together as well as we could, and
fixing our eyes on what was passing at the other end of the mast, we
hardly attended to the seas that broke over and over us. At last, we
saw Captain Goss, by the light of the beds of bursting foam, fumbling
for something in his breast.

'Is it a Bible you have there?' cried Bartholomew. The captain didn't
answer, but pulled out the thing he was trying for; and we guessed
somehow, for we could hardly see, that it was the greasy pack of
cards.

'Double or quits!' he shouted, 'on all I've staked;' and in another
instant there was one horrid, unearthly screech, like what we heard in
the cabin before, and the mast, as it were, tipped the heel of it, the
cross-trees rising many feet above the water. Whether or no it was the
motion of the waves that had tossed it, no man can say; but when the
mast rolled again with the next sea, the heel came up empty: Captain
Goss and his companion were gone!

'Thank God,' says Old Bartholomew, 'for Jonah is in the sea.' In less
than half an hour, mates, we were tossed ashore, without a bruise or
scratch. We walked the beach till daylight, and then we saw that the
mast had disappeared. None ever saw more a timber or a rope's-end