“Good gracious, Hiram!” I exclaimed, dropping the wood and rising to my feet, greatly alarmed at his mysterious manner of speaking, as well as by the change in his voice and demeanour. “What d’you mean by talking like that?”
Instead of answering my question directly, however, he asked another.
“D’yer rec’leck, Cholly, thet air banjo belongin’ to Sam Jedfoot ez I bought when the poor darkey’s traps wer’ sold at auction in the fo’c’s’le the day arter he wer lost overboard?”
“Ye–es,” I stammered breathlessly, as the remembrance came back to me all at once of the strange chaunt we had heard in the air around, just before the storm had burst over us in all its fury; our subsequent bustling about having banished its recollection for the moment, “Wha—wha—what about Sam’s banjo, Hiram?”
“It’s clean gone, skedaddled right away, b’y, that’s all!” he replied, in the same impressive way in which he had first spoken. “When I bought the durned thin’, I stowed it atop o’ my chest thaar, in the fo’c’s’le; an’ thaar it wer ez right ez a five-cent piece up to this very mornin’, ez I wer overhaulin’ my duds, to see if I could rig up another pair o’ pants, an’ seed it. But, b’y, it ain’t thaar now, I reckon!”
“Perhaps some one took it out, and forgot to put it back when the gale burst over us,” I suggested, more to reassure myself than because I believed it, for I felt horribly frightened at the thoughts that rapidly surged up in me. “You—you remember, Hiram, we heard the sound of some one playing it just before?”
“D’yer think, b’y, airy of the hands w’u’d hev ben foolin’ round with thet blessid banjo, an’ the ship a’most took aback an’ on her beam-ends?” he retorted indignantly. “No, Cholly, thet wer no mortal fingers ez we heerd a-playin’ thet thaar banjo!”
“And you—you—think—?”
“It wer Sam Jedfoot’s ghost; nary a doubt on it,” he said solemnly, finishing my uncompleted sentence; “thet air, if sperrits walk agen on the airth an’ sea, arter the folk’s ownin’ them is dead an’ drownded!”
I shivered at his words; while, as if to further endorse Hiram’s opinion, the steward, Morris Jones, just then came forward from the cabin to look after the captain’s dinner, although he did not seem in a hurry about it, as usual—a fortunate circumstance, as the fire in the galley under Hiram’s expert manipulation was only now at last beginning to burn up.