He laughed when he said this, apparently thinking he had utterly settled the matter, but I checkmated him with his own theory.
“The very uncertainty of the action of the currents of the Atlantic which you instance, sir,” I said, “shows that what you think impossible might be very possible, and the strange, weird vessel that I saw three nights ago might have come within sight of us again.”
“That’s one for you, Haldane,” acknowledged the skipper very good-naturedly, for he was a fair man when anything was laid clearly before him. “But, recollect, no one saw this ship distinctly but yourself. I couldn’t say of my own knowledge what rig she was, and I certainly didn’t see any flag or sign of distress. I only saw something that looked like a ship burning a flare-up in the distance—that’s all.”
“Beg pardon, sir,” whispered old Masters, stepping up and touching his cap ere he addressed the skipper, “but I seed the ghost-ship, too, sir, the same as Master Haldane, sir.”
The skipper wheeled round and stared at him.
“Ghost-ship, man! What do you mean?”
“I means that there ghost-ship that hove in sight jist now and which have passed us afore, sir. She be sent as a warning to us, I knows, and as a Christian man, Cap’en Applegarth, I takes it as sich!”
The old seaman spoke so earnestly that the skipper, although he had hard work to keep himself in, answered him without ridiculing his extraordinary delusion, as he held it to be.
“I am a Christian man, too, I hope, bo’sun,” he said. “I believe in a divine power above, and put my trust in a merciful providence; but I can’t believe in any of your queer supernatural visitations, whether as warnings or what not!”
“Not if you seed the same blessed thing three times?”