fe. So up they goes, and down
they comes like the rest, by the back-stays, by the run.

"He beckoned of me back!" says Welch. "He hollered not to come up! not
to come up!"

After that there wasn't a man of us would stir aloft, not for love nor
money.

Well, Whitmarsh he stamped, and he swore, and he knocked us about
furious; but we sat and looked at one another's eyes, and never stirred.
Something cold, like a frost-bite, seemed to crawl along from man to
man, looking into one another's eyes.

"I'll shame ye all, then, for a set of cowardly lubbers!" cries the
mate; and what with the anger and the drink he was as good as his word,
and up the ratlines in a twinkle.

In a flash we were after him,--he was our officer, you see, and we felt
ashamed,--me at the head, and the lads following after.

I got to the futtock shrouds, and there I stopped, for I saw him
myself,--a palish boy, with a jerk of thin hair on his forehead; I'd
have known him anywhere in this world or t'other. I saw him just as
distinct as I see you, Tom Brown, sitting on that yard quite steady with
the royal flapping like to flap him off.

I reckon I've had as much experience fore and aft, in the course of
fifteen years aboard, as any man that ever tied a reef-point in a
nor'easter; but I never saw a sight like that, not before nor since.

I won't say that I didn't wish myself well on deck; but I will say that
I stuck to the shrouds, and looked on steady.

Whitmarsh, swearing that that royal should be furled, went on and went
up.

It was after that I heard the voice. It came straight from the figure of
the boy upon the upper yard.

But this time it says, "_Come up! Come up!_" And then, a little louder,
"_Come up! Come up! Come up!_" So he goes up, and next I knew there was
a cry,--and next a splash,--and then I saw the royal flapping from the
empty yard, and the mate was gone, and the boy.

Job Whitmarsh was never seen again, alow or aloft, that night or ever
after.

I was telling the tale to our parson this summer,--he's a fair-minded
chap, the parson, in spite of a little natural leaning to strawberries,
which I always take in very good part,--and he turned it about in his
mind some time.

"If it was the boy," says he,--"and I can't say as I see any reason
especial why it shouldn't have been,--I've been wondering what his
spiritooal condition was. A soul in hell,"--the parson believes in hell,
I take it, because he can't help himself; b