"However, after a while other people began to see the steerage passenger. Not merely ladies only, but hard-headed, practical, elderly men; and very disagreeable whispers began to get afloat that 'the ship was haunted!' The apparition in long butcher boots, could never be caught or traced, but he was visible repeatedly; and did not merely confine himself to hanging about and beckoning at the saloon door—he was now to be met in passages, at the dark turns on the stairs behind the wheel-house, and even on the bridge,—but always after dusk. Things now began to be extremely unpleasant, discipline was scorned, at the very idea of taking away the lights at eleven o'clock, there was uproar, and an open mutiny among the ladies. Passengers were completely unmanageable, the women going about in gangs, and the very crew in couples. The captain endeavoured to make a bold stand against the ghost, but he was silenced by a clamour of voices, and by a cloud of witnesses who had all seen it, and, to make matters better, we came in for the most awful weather I ever experienced, our hatches were stove in, our decks swept, and I never was more thankful in all my life than when we took up our pilot in the Downs. What between the ghost and the gales, even our most seasoned salts were shaky, and grumbled among themselves, that one would almost imagine that we had a dead body on board! However, we managed to dock without any misadventure, beyond being five days over our time, having lost three boats, and gained the agreeable reputation of being a haunted ship! When we were getting out the cargo, and having the usual overhaul below, I happened to be on duty one day when I was accosted by the boatswain, who came aft to where I was standing, with an uncommonly grave face. 'Please, sir,' said he, 'we've found something we did not bargain for; it was in the place where the anchor-chain is, and now, the chain being all paid out, it's empty, you see—' he paused a moment,—'all but for a dead man.'
"Of course I hurried forward at once, and looked down into a dark hole, when, by the light of a bit of candle held by one of the crew, I saw, sure enough, crushed up against one side the skeleton of a man—a skeleton, for the rats had picked his bones clean; his coat still hung on him, he wore long digger's boots, and a digger's hat covered his bare skull.
"I started back, and fell foul of the candle, though I'm not a particularly nervous person, for I now remembered the groans I had heard in the purser's cabin.
"'You see, sir, how it was," said the boatswain, 'he was a stowaway, in course. When we were in dock, this place was empty. Cause why? The anchor-chain is out, and it seemed to this poor ignorant wretch, who was no seaman anyway, to be just the very spot—as it were, made for him! I've a kind of recollection of him, too, hanging about when we were taking in cargo. He was young, and looked like a half-starved, broken-down gentleman, such as you see every day in the colony, who come out—bless their innocence!—a-thinking the nuggets is growing on the trees, and sink down to beggary, or to working their way home before the mast. Ay, he thought to get a cast back,' said the bo'sun, 'and he just walked straight into the jaws of death. The moment we began to weigh anchor, and the chain came reeling, and reeling, into his hiding-place, it had no outlet but the hole at the top, and the rattle of it and the noise of the donkey-engine drowned his cries: he was just walled in, poor chap, and buried up alive!'
"Of course, we all knew, that this was the mysterious apparition in long boots, who had created such an unparalleled disturbance on the passage home. Presently the remains were decently carried away, and there was an inquest, but nothing could be discovered about the body. We subscribed for the funeral among us, and he was buried in the nearest church-yard. We sailors are a superstitious lot, and though we got out of it (I mean, bringing home a corpse) better than could be expected, so we gave him a respectable funeral; but there is no name on the stone cross above his head, for the only one, we knew him by, was that of the 'Steerage Passenger!'"
The chief officer brought his story to an end in the midst of a dead, nay, an awe-struck silence. People shuddered and looked nervously behind them. They were on board ship, too! Why should not the Palestine have a ghost of her own, as well as the Black Swan?
The utter stillness, was suddenly broken by a loud howl from Billy Home, who had been listening with all the power of his unusually capacious ears, and seemed to have but just wakened up from a sort of trance of horror. He shrieked and clung to Helen, who had whispered a hint with regard to bed-time.
"No, no, no," he would not come. "No, not alone," he added with a yell, hanging to her with the tenacity of a limpet; "not unless you stay with me.—I'm afraid of the man downstairs,—I know he is downstairs."
"I declare," said the bearded story-teller, "I quite forgot that little beggar was there. I never noticed him till now, or I would not have told you that yarn."