queer supernatural visitations, whether as
warnings or what not!"

"Not if you seed the same blessed thing three times?"

"No; not if I saw it a hundred times!" he roared out impatiently.

"Ah, seein' is believin', I says," whined old Masters, not a whit shaken
on the point, in spite of the skipper's scepticism. "Master Haldane
seed it, and I seed it, and poor Jackson seed it."

"Indeed?" cried the skipper. "I did not know he had been on deck before
the accident."

"It wore arter that, sir, that he seed the ghost-ship," said the old
boatswain in reply to the implied question. "It were jist afore he
died."

"Just before he died!" repeated Captain Applegarth indignantly, as if he
thought he was being made a fool of. "Why, man, the poor fellow was out
of his mind then, and besides, never stirred out of his cabin!"

"Ah, but he had the warnin' jist the same, for Weston, it was, told me
as how Jackson seed the ship and cried out when he lay there a-dyin'.
Bulkheads can't keep sperrits out, sir."

"Nor in, either, as I know to my cost," returned the skipper drily.
"Your friend Weston is pretty familiar with them, if they come in his
way, I fancy! Stuff and nonsense, bo'sun; how can you believe such
rubbish? The other night you imagined the reflection of our own vessel,
when that meteor came by, to be a ghost-ship, as you call it in your
absurd folly; and to-night, when that craft to win'rd passed and lit a
flare-up, hanged if you aren't at it again with your ghost-ship! By
George, it makes me sick, Masters, to think that a grown man and a good
seaman like yourself should be such a confounded ass!"

"Hass or no hass, there she wer'," said the old fellow doggedly. "But
here comes Mr Fosset, sir. He were on the poop aft when that vessel
passed as I speaks on. Ax him what he thinks of her and if she weren't
the same full-rigged ship as Master Haldane and all of us seed?"

"I will," replied Captain Applegarth promptly; and on the first mate
approaching nearer, he hailed him. "I say, Fosset, what did you think
of that ship just now?"

The other's answer, however, bewildered the skipper more than Masters
and I had done previously.

"Ship!" said the first mate. "What ship?"

"That vessel that lit the flare-up awhile ago."

"I didn't see any flare-up!" replied Mr Fosset, "and certainly no ship
has passed us to my knowledge since I've been on deck."

"By George, I don't know who or what to believe," exclai