“I surely do, though.”
“You have never seen one.”
“Avast there!” exclaimed Flint.
“Have you, really? What did it look like?”
“They take different shapes. I’ve seen them that looked like rats, and I’ve seen ’em that looked like black cats. Sometimes you can’t see ’em at all, and them kind is the worst, for they’re the ones that talks. Once, when I was a youngster, a little older than you, I sailed in a ship out of Boston. One night it blew such a gale that it took twenty-six of us to furl the mainsail, and we were almost an hour in doing it, too. We lost one man overboard while we were about it, and every night after that when the order was given to lay aloft to loose or furl the sails, we were certain to find Dave Curry there before us working like a trooper. Oh, it’s gospel,” said Flint earnestly, seeing that an expression of incredulity settled on the face of his young companion; “’cause I saw him often with my own eyes, and what I tell you I have seen, you may put down as the truth. Shortly after that I sailed in a brig whose bell every night when the mid-watch was called struck four times, and no one ever went near it.”
“Who struck it then, if no one went near it?” demanded Guy, not yet convinced.
“The ghost of a quartermaster, and a man-o’-wars man who was lost overboard when the brig made her first cruise. The last voyage I made was in a ship bound around the Cape. When the time came we begun to prepare for bad weather by sending down the royal yards and mast and getting in the flying jib-boom. One of the hands was out on the boom and had just sung out, ‘haul in!’ when a sea broke over the bows and he was never seen afterward. But every night we used to hear him, as plain as I can hear myself speaking now, calling out as if he were tired of waiting, ‘haul in!’ We kept a good lookout, but although we could never see any one, we always heard the voice. What are you looking at them glasses so steady for? You don’t want to drink that stuff, do you?”
“No; I drink nothing stronger than beer.”
“And if you know when you are well off you will let that alone,” said Flint earnestly. “It never does nobody no good. It takes your money as fast as you can earn it, and gets you into scrapes. I know by experience.”
“Why don’t you empty one of the glasses?” asked Guy.