re-up just now. The light
only lasted an instant."

"There is something in that, certainly, Haldane," answered the skipper,
wavering a little, I thought, in his ideas. "Still, when one is
inclined to believe in a thing, the imagination is often a great aid in
turning a wish into a certainty."

"Besides, sir," I continued, wishing to clench my argument, "if we were
driven out of our course by the gale, she might have been similarly
affected, and the winds and currents might have brought us together
again."

"That's possible, but not probable," he rejoined. "I've known two
bottles of the same weight dropped overboard from the same ship at the
same hour, and--"

"Well, sir?"

"One was found landed on the Lofoden Isles, off the coast of Norway: the
other came ashore at Sandy Point, in the Straits of Magellan!"

He laughed when he said this, apparently thinking he had utterly settled
the matter, but I checkmated him with his own theory.

"The very uncertainty of the action of the currents of the Atlantic
which you instance, sir," I said, "shows that what you think impossible
might be very possible, and the strange, weird vessel that I saw three
nights ago might have come within sight of us again."

"That's one for you, Haldane," acknowledged the skipper very good-
naturedly, for he was a fair man when anything was laid clearly before
him. "But, recollect, no one saw this ship distinctly but yourself. I
couldn't say of my own knowledge what rig she was, and I certainly
didn't see any flag or sign of distress. I only saw something that
looked like a ship burning a flare-up in the distance--that's all."

"Beg pardon, sir," whispered old Masters, stepping up and touching his
cap ere he addressed the skipper, "but I seed the ghost-ship, too, sir,
the same as Master Haldane, sir."

The skipper wheeled round and stared at him.

"Ghost-ship, man! What do you mean?"

"I means that there ghost-ship that hove in sight jist now and which
have passed us afore, sir. She be sent as a warning to us, I knows, and
as a Christian man, Cap'en Applegarth, I takes it as sich!"

The old seaman spoke so earnestly that the skipper, although he had hard
work to keep himself in, answered him without ridiculing his
extraordinary delusion, as he held it to be.

"I am a Christian man, too, I hope, bo'sun," he said. "I believe in a
divine power above, and put my trust in a merciful providence; but I
can't believe in any of your