lue coat and brass buttons and
white veskit. It hung just opposite the fut o' my bunk, an' I could
hardly make it out, but I saw that the admiral kep his eye on me
wheriver I turned or moved about the room, an' twice or thrice, if not
more, I saw him wink with his weather eye. Yes, he winked as plain as I
do myself. Says I to myself, says I, `Tim Rokens, you're a British tar,
an' a whaler, an' a harpooner; so, Tim, my boy, don't you go for to be a
babby.'

"With that I smoked a pipe, and took off my clo's, and tumbled in, and
feeling a little bolder by this time, I blew out the candle. In gittin'
into bed I knocked over the snuffers, w'ich fell with an awful clatter,
and my heart lep' into my mouth as I lep' under the blankets, and
kivered up my head. Howsever, I was uncommon tired, so before my head
was well on the pillow, I went off to sleep.

"How long I slep' I can't go for to say, but w'en I wakened it wos
pitch-dark. I could only just make out the winder by the pale starlight
that shone through it, but the moment I set my two eyes on it, wot does
I see? I seed a sight that made the hair on my head stand on end, and
my flesh creep up like a muffin. It was a--"

"A ghost!" whispered Gurney, while his eyes almost started out of his
head.

Before Tim Rokens could reply, something fell with a heavy flop from the
yard over their heads right in among the men, and vanished with a
shriek. It was Jacko, who, in his nocturnal rambles in the rigging, had
been shaken off the yard on which he was perched, by a sudden lurch of
the vessel as the tide began to move her about. At any time such an
event would have been startling, but at such a time as this it was
horrifying. The men recoiled with sharp cries of terror, and then burst
into laughter as they observed what it was that had fallen amongst them.
But the laughter was subdued, and by no means hearty.

"I'll be the death o' that brute yet," said Gurney, wiping the
perspiration from his forehead; "but go on, Rokens; what was it you
saw?"

"It _was_ the ghost," replied Rokens, as the men gathered round him
again--"a long, thin ghost, standin' at my bedside. The light was so
dim that I couldn't well make it out, but I saw that it was white, or
pale-like, and that it had on a pointed cap, like the cap o' an old
witch. I thought I should ha' died outright, and I lay for full five
minits tremblin' like a leaf and starin' full in its face. At last I
started up