“I reckon, then, sunthin’ bad ’ll come of it,” said Hiram, shaking his head gravely, “Thet nigger’s sperrit don’t haunt this ship fur nothin’, an’ we ain’t see the wuss yet, ye bet! Soon arter Cholly hyar seed Sam’s ghost, ye remembers, we hed thet fire aboard in the forepeak?”
“Aye,” agreed Morris Jones; “an’ the next time—”
“Wer the banjo we heered a-playin’, afore we were caught in thet buster of a gale, an’ the ship wer a’most capsized on her beam-ends,” continued the American, full of his theme. “An’ now, I guess—”
“What?” cried I eagerly, anxiously drinking in every word, deeply impressed with the conversation. “What do you think will happen?”
“’Ructions, thet’s all, b’y,” replied Hiram, hitching up the waistband of his overalls coolly, in the most matter-of-fact way, as if he were only mentioning an ordinary circumstances. “Thet is, if the skipper don’t touch at Callao or Valparaiso. Fur my part, sonny, I guess this hyar ship air doomed, ez I sed afore, an’ I don’t spec, for one, as ever she’ll reach ’Frisco this v’yage; an’ so thinks old Chips, Tom Bullover, thet is, too.”
“Hullo!” exclaimed the carpenter at that moment, poking his head within the galley door, and making me and the Welshman jump with fright, thinking he was Sam’s ghost again. “Who’s hailing me? What’s the row?—anything up?”
“No, bo,” said Hiram. “I wer only tellin’ the stooard hyar an’ Cholly ez how yo agreed with me ez this wer a durned onlocky craft, an’ bound to meet with misfortun’ arter all thet’s come an’ gone aboord.”
“That’s so,” acquiesced Tom; though he did not look much alarmed at the prospect. “The ‘old man,’ though, seems turnin’ round into a better sort—treating us all to grog and sich like.”
“He’d kinder ought to,” growled the other, as he stirred the tea in the coppers, which were just boiling by now; and he then proceeded to tell Tom about the mysterious disappearance of the banjo, and the fact of Morris Jones having seen the apparition again in the cabin aft, winding up with the query—“An’ what d’ye think o’ thet now, Chips?”
“Think?” echoed Tom Bullover, laughing; “why, that you’re kicking up a dust about nothing, my hearty! Missed the banjo out of y’r chest, eh—where are y’r eyes, bo? There it are, hanging right over y’r heads in the galley, on the same cleat where poor Sam Jedfoot left it afore he met his fate! Why, where are y’r peepers—old stick in the mud, hey?”