At daybreak next morning, Simon and I, having taken turns at sleeping during the night, went on deck. Before us, not more than two miles away, lay the captured ship.
The sea was yet boisterous, but not to such an extent as would prevent our taking possession of the stranger, and already were the boats afloat.
We came soon to learn that our prize was the Ralph Nickerson, of and for London from Quebec, laden with lumber, and carrying eight guns with a strong crew.
Her burthen was full twenty tons more than ours, and a finer craft could not be found outside the United States.
“If it so be that we succeed in carryin’ her to port, there’s fifty or sixty thousand dollars’ worth of prize-money, my boys!” one of the men said to his companions, as a group of old shellbacks stood amidships watching our boats pulling toward the Britisher. “Sixty thousand dollars added to what we’ve already taken won’t be small pickin’s for any of us.”
“We’ll hope to have more of the same kind of omens,” Mr. Fernald, who chanced to pass in time to hear the remark, cried, cheerily. “You who have been persuading yourselves that we were bound straight for Davy Jones’s locker must feel rather small this morning. The cruise isn’t ended yet, and we’ll put that ship into Salem, or I’m a Dutchman!”
“That’s all very well, sir,” one of the older men replied; “but what about the ghost that can talk?”
“It strikes me that he’s a liar,” Mr. Fernald said, laughingly. “Or else he’s out of his latitude when he attempts to predict for sailormen. Suppose we had heeded whatever it was that tried to frighten us, and put about for home? It would have been the same as throwin’ away fifty thousand good dollars.”
The majority of the sailors on deck began to look foolish, realising how groundless had been their fears, and it was left for Joshua Seabury to revive the superstitions which had been temporarily driven away by the smell of burning powder.