Page:Short Stories (1912).djvu/28



"Yes, I have seen a ghost—once," I said in answer to an inquiry while my company was standing round the stove of a wayside station waiting to connect with a train bound east from St. Paul.

"After I left sea, I went out gold mining to Australia—made money, failed—and at last found myself installed second mate of a large English clipper full of passengers and bound for London. We cleared away from Sandridge pier about mid-day, and our last passenger to come on board, was a young fellow in a long brown ulster—ulsters were new then and remarkable. The only other one I knew was worn by Fanny, a beautiful young girl who had lately arrived from England and to whom I had become greatly attached.

"The passenger was shipped home by his friends with special instructions to our captain to keep him away from liquor. He was an absolute wreck from drink. Our booby hatch had been filled at the last with a quantity of colonial wine, one of the first shipments home from the colonier; but there was plenty of room in the cut of the hatchway for a man to stand.

"Well, we had been to sea some weeks, and were battering away 'round the Horn with a head wind and cold as the deuce. The snow and ice were thick everywhere, and it was blowing hard. I swore if I once got out of it I would never voluntarily go to sea again. One night I had the middle watch, that is from twelve to four in the morning, and I was sitting on a hen-coop under the weather cloth in the mizzen rigging, when I heard the captain come up. He had with him the young man in the brown ulster. The captain gave