SUPERSTITION OF SAILORS.
The following is from Messrs. Bennet and Tyerman's Voyages and Travels: "Our chief mate said, that on board a ship where he had served, the mute on duty ordered some of the youths to reef the main-top-sail. When the first got up, he heard a strange voice saying, 'It blows hard.' The lud waited for no more; he was down in a trice, and telling his adventure; a second immediately ascended, laughing at the folly of his companion, but returned even more quickly declaring that he was quite sure that a voice, not of this world, had cried in his ear, 'It blows hard.' Another went, and another, but each came back with the same tale. At length the mate, having sent up the whole watch, run up the shrouds himself; and when he reached the haunted spot, heard the dreadful words distinctly uttered in his ears, 'It blows hard.' 'Ay, ay, old one; but blow it ever so hard, we must ease the earings for all that,' replied the mate undauntedly; and looking round, he spied a fine parrot perched on one of the clues—the thoughtless author of all the false alarms, which had probably escaped from some other vessel, but had not been discovered to have taken refuge on this. Another of our officers mentioned that, on one of his voyages, he remembered a boy having been sent up to clear a rope which had got foul above the mizen-top. Presently, however, he came back, trembling, and almost tumbling to the bottom, declaring that he had seen 'Old Davy,' aft the cross-trees; moreover, that the Evil One had a huge head and face, with pricked ears, and eyes as bright as fire. Two or three others were sent up in succession; to all of whom the apparition glared forth, and was identified by each to be 'Old Davy, sure enough.' The mate, in a rage, at length mounted himself; when resolutely, as in the former case, searching for the bugbear, he soon ascertained the innocent cause of so much terror to be a large horned owl, so lodged as to be out of sight to those who ascended on the other side of the vessel, but which when any one approached the cross-trees, popped up his portentous visage to see what was coming. The mate brought him down in triumph, and 'Old Davy,' the owl, became a very peaceable shipmate among the crew, who were no longer scared by his horns and eyes; for sailors turn their backs on nothing when they know what it is. Had the birds, in these two instances, departed as they came, of course they would have been deemed supernatural visitants to the respective ships, by all who had heard the one or seen the other." W.G.C.