brass button!"

Having given utterance to this last expression, which she had acquired
from her friend Corrie, the poor girl began to howl in order to relieve
her insupportable feelings.

It was at this point in our story that Master Corrie, and his companion
the Grampus, having traced the before-mentioned footprints for a
considerable distance, became cognizant of sundry unearthly sounds, on
hearing which, never having heard anything like them before, these
wanderers stood still in attitudes of breathless attention, and gazed at
each other with looks of indescribable amazement, not altogether unmixed
with a dash of consternation.

CHAPTER XI.

A GHOST--A TERRIBLE COMBAT ENDING IN A DREADFUL PLUNGE.

"Corrie," said Jo Bumpus, solemnly, with a troubled expression on his
grave face, "I've heer'd a many a cry in this life, both ashore and
afloat; but, since I was half as long as a marlinespike, I've never
heerd the likes o' that there screech nowhere."

At any other time the boy would have expressed a doubt as to the
possibility of the Grampus having, at any period of his existence, been
so short as "half the length of a marlinespike;" but, being very
imaginative by nature, and having been encouraged to believe in ghosts
by education, he was too frightened to be funny. With a face that might
very well have passed for that of a ghost, and a very pale ghost too, he
said, in a tremulous voice:

"Oh dear! Bumpus; what _shall_ we do?"

"Dun know," replied Jo, very sternly; for the stout mariner also
believed in ghosts, as a matter of course, although he would not admit
it; and, being a man of iron mold and powerful will, there was at that
moment going on within his capacious breast a terrific struggle between
natural courage and supernatural cowardice.

"Let's go back," whispered Corrie. "I know another pass over the hills.
It's a longer one, to be sure; but we can run, you know, to make for--"

He was struck dumb and motionless at this point by the recurrence of the
dreadful howling, louder than ever, as poor Poopy's despair deepened.

"Don't speak to me, boy," said Bumpus, still more sternly, while a cold
sweat stood in large beads on his pale forehead. "Here's wot I calls
somethin' new; an' it becomes a man, specially a British seaman, d'ye
see, to inquire into new things in a reasonable sort of way."

Jo caught his breath, and clutched the rock beside him powerfully, as he
continued:

"It ain't a gh