main-top-sail yard-arm--
a bright, glowing, flaming ball. It will be setting the ship on fire!
I thought that I would go and rouse up some one to tell what I had seen,
in case there was any danger to be apprehended. Still I could not tear
myself away from my post. I shouted out to Jerry, but he did not hear
me. I was just returning below when I found Cousin Silas at my
shoulder.

"So, Harry, you want to find out when the gale will have done blowing,"
said he.

"Yes, I do indeed; but look there!" I exclaimed, pointing to the ball
of fire.

"Ah, there's old Jack o' lantern!" he answered composedly. "Not a bad
sign either. A gale seldom lasts long after he has come. Look at him,
he is rather playful to-night." He was indeed. Sometimes the light
would ascend and then descend the masts, then run along the yards, and
waiting a little at each yard-arm, would be back again and slip down one
of the stays to the fore-mast, and mount up in a second to the
fore-topmast head. Sometimes, when the ship rolled very much, the
mast-head would leave it floating in the air, but as she rolled back
again it would quickly re-attach itself. More than once it got divided
into several parts, as it flew about the rigging, but was very speedily
re-united again. Cousin Silas laughed when I told him that I thought it
might do us some injury.

"Oh no; Jack is a very harmless fellow," he answered. "More than once,
when it has not been blowing as hard as it does now, before I was out of
my apprenticeship, I and others have chased Jack about the rigging, and
caught him too. When near, he seems to have a very dull, pale light. I
and another fellow determined to have him. At last I clutched him. I
felt that I had got something clammy, as it were, which stung my skin
like a handful of thin jelly-fish. I brought him down on deck, and
clapped him into a box. In the morning I could feel that there was
something in the box, but all the light was gone, and the box hadn't
been opened long before the thing, whatever it was, was gone too."

Had anybody but Cousin Silas given me this account, I should scarcely
have believed him; and even in this case I had some little difficulty in
not supposing that he must, in some way or other, have been deceived.

Jack, however, did not bring us the fine weather we wished for.
Daylight returned, and we were little better off than before. We
nibbled some biscuit, as Jerry said, to keep our spirits up,