Master Haldane that it were precious misty and thick to win'ard and I
feared thunder over there."

"Thunder! thunder your grandmother!" cried the skipper testily. "I've
pretty sharp ears, bo'sun, and I have heard none to-night. Have you,
Haldane?"

"N-n-o, sir, not thunder," I answered, listening attentively for a
moment. "Stay, sir, though. I do hear something now, but the sound
seems more like firing in the distance."

"What, guns?"

"No sir, more like rifle shots, or the discharge of a revolver firing
quickly at intervals."

Captain Applegarth thereupon listened attentively, too, in his turn,
while Masters went out to the end of the bridge and peered out over the
side to windward with rapt gaze.

"By George, yes, you're right, boy!" cried the skipper the next moment.
"I can hear the shots quite plainly, I do believe. Hullo, there! What
the deuce is going on over there, I wonder?"

There was reason for exclamation.

At that instant the dark mass of cloud on the horizon, towards which we
were all looking, was rent by a flash, and we could see, standing
against the black background in vivid relief, the masts and spars of a
large full-rigged ship.

She was evidently burning a "flare-up" to attract attention, and, ere
the light waned, I noticed that her yards were all a cock-bill and her
sails and rigging torn and disordered; while, stranger still, she had
her flag astern hoisted half-mast high--the French tricolour, too!

Both the boatswain and I, simultaneously, involuntarily, uttered a cry
of dismay.

The vessel in sight was the very identical ship I had seen three nights
before, flying the same signal of distress; and here she was now,
sailing, as then, four points off our weather bows and eight before the
wind, which was, as I've already said, blowing a light breeze from the
southward and westward.

What new calamity did this second appearance of the "ghost-ship," as the
old boatswain called her, portend to all of us?

Aye, what, indeed!

Time alone could tell.

CHAPTER TEN.

MYSTIFICATION.

Old Masters turned his face towards me as the fleeting vision became
swallowed up in the darkness that now obscured the sky to the westwards,
and I saw that he looked horror-struck, staring into space spell-bound.

As for me, I cannot express what I felt, because I am unable to describe
it fully.

"There, there!" I exclaimed, clutching Captain Applegarth's arm in
nervous horror. "There she