"We can believe it will be here any moment, and then the nights won't seem so lonely, nor the days so long."
"That's right, lad; don't trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. Keep a stiff upper lip whatever happens, an' you'll stand a better show of pullin' through!" Bob cried in a cheery tone. "I was shipmate once with a chap what was allers worryin' 'bout findin' hisself on a haunted vessel. He never'd put his mark to the articles till after he'd asked all about the craft, an' whether there was any ghosts aboard. Now, you let a man go nosin' 'round expectin' to see things, an' it happens that what he's huntin' for most allers comes, or else he conjures 'em up. Well, so it was with Tom—Tom Byard, he called hisself. He got drunk one night, an' the next mornin' awoke on a ship bound 'round the Horn with a cargo of railroad iron.
"It wasn't long before he commenced to hunt after ghosts, 'an this time he didn't have to look very far. I reckon the liquor—he'd been on a four days' spree—had considerable to do with his eyes; an' that very night, while they was within sight of Sandy Hook, he saw, or thought he did, the biggest kind of a ghost makin' right for him with a bloody knife. Tom was on the maint'gallant-yard with another chap when the thing come. He give a big yell, singing out that he knowed it would be there some time, an' over he went. Nobody ever saw hide or hair of him afterward, an' the captain put in the log-book as how it was delirium tre—tre—tremenjus, or somethin' like that, what killed him."
The point that Bob sought to make was forgotten owing to the length of the story, and even he himself appeared to have lost sight of any moral; therefore, what had been intended as a strong argument why people should not seek out trouble passed for nothing better than a very improbable yarn.
The boys were eager to see the cargo which had given them so much alarm, and had also possibly been the cause of the brig's abandonment by her original crew; therefore they went below on a tour of investigation, which was not very satisfactory because there was nothing but a quantity of casks to be seen.
Ten minutes in the hot hold was sufficient to gratify their curiosity, and then the amateur cook sat about preparing the noonday meal.
CHAPTER VIII.
ANOTHER SIGNAL OF DISTRESS.
Now that the boys had lost all fear of the Bonita, half their troubles seemed suddenly to have vanished. As a matter of course, Harry and Walter grieved because of the sorrow their unexplainable absence must have caused at home; but their distress of mind was lessened very materially by the belief that they would soon be in a condition to return.