“Steady! Let her go easy, your honour; I’m a-coming to that soon enough. It was in the old Amphitrite I was at the time—she’s broken-up and burnt for firewood long ago, poor old thing!—and we was a-lying in the Bight of Benin, alongside of a slaver which we had captured the day before off Whydah. She was a Brazilian schooner with nearly five hundred wretched creatures on board, so closely packed that you could not find space enough to put your foot fairly on her deck in any place. The slaves had only been a night on board her; but the stench was so awful, from so many unfortunate niggers being squeezed so tightly together like herrings in a barrel, and under a hot sun too, that we were longing to send the schooner away to Sierra Leone, and get rid of the horrid smell, which was worse than the swamps ashore! Well, I was in the morning watch after we had towed in the slaver to the Bights, having carried away her foremast with a round shot in making her bring to, and was just going forward to turn in as the next watch came on deck, when who should hail me but my mate, Gil Saul, coming in from the bowsprit, where he had been on the look-out—it was him as was my pardner here when I first started as a shore hand in letting out boats, but he lost the number of his mess long ago like our old ship the Amphitrite.
“As he came up to me his face was as white as your shirt, and he was trembling all over as if he was going to have a fit of the fever and ague.
“‘Lor’, Gil Saul,’ sez I, ‘what’s come over you, mate? are you going on the sick list, or what?’
“‘Hush, Jim,’ sez he, quite terror-stricken. ‘Don’t speak like that; I’ve seen a ghost, and I knows I shall be a dead man afore the day’s out!’
“With that I burst into a larf.
“‘Bless your eyes, Gil,’ sez I, ‘tell that to the marines, my bo’! you can’t get over me on that tack. You won’t find any respectable ghosts leaving dear old England for the sake of this dirty, sweltering west coast, which no Christian would come to from choice, let alone a ghost!’
“‘But, Jim,’ he sez, leaning his hand on my arm to detain me as I was going down below, ‘this wasn’t a h’English ghost as I sees just now. It was the most outlandish foreign reptile you ever see. A long, big, black snake like a crocodile, only twice the length of the old corvette; with a head like a bird, and eyes as big and fiery as our side-lights. It was a terrible creature, Jim, and its eyes flamed out like lightning, and it snorted like a horse as it swam by the ship. I’ve had a warning, old shipmate, and I’ll be a dead man before to-morrow morning, I know!’
“The poor chap shook with fright as he spoke, though he was as brave a man as we had aboard; so I knew that he had been drinking and was in a state of delirium tremendibus, or else he was sickening for the African fever, which those who once have never forget. I therefore tried to pacify him and explain away his fancy.
“‘That’s a good un, Gil Saul,’ I sez. ‘Don’t you let none of the other hands hear what you’ve told me, that you’ve seen the great sea sarpint, or you’ll never get the end of it.’
“Gil got angry at this, forgetting his fright in his passion at my doubting his word like.