The lost hunter: A tale of early times

by John Turvill Adams

"Don't, don't, Prime," cried the startled constable, drawing back and nearly falling in his fright into the water. "What's the use of talking about sperits now? Come let us talk about something else."

"Well," grinned Primus, "if you don't see de sperit, I feel him."

"Don't talk so; you're spoiling all the pleasure of the sail by such kind o' nonsense," urged Basset.

"Don't you believe in sperits?" inquired the persevering General.

"I tell ye I don't like to talk about such things now," responded
Basset.

"Why I can give you chapter and varse for 'em," said Tom. "You remember, Basset, all about Samuel and the witch o' Endor, and that's authority, I guess."

"Well, if I do I don't care to be chattering all the time about 'em, though there's some says, they don't appear now as they used to in old times."

This was an unfortunate remark for the badgered Basset. His two friends, as if it were of the extremest consequence to convert him from an opinion so heretical, opened for his benefit a whole budget of ghost stories In spite of most unwilling ears he was obliged to listen with a fascinated reluctance to tales of supernatural wonders, in most of which the narrators had themselves been actors, or derived their information from persons, whose veracity it would be a sin to doubt. Among them was a legend told by Gladding, of a murdered fisherman, whose ghost he had seen himself, and which was said still to haunt the banks of the Severn, and never was seen without bringing ill-luck. It is the only one with which we will trouble our renders, and we relate it as a sort of specimen of the others:

"You see," said Tom, "it was the spring o' the year, and the shad begun to swim up stream, when I joined Sam Olmstead's company, and took a share in his fishing. Well, things went on pretty well for a while, it was fisherman's luck, fish one day, and none the next, and we was, on the whole, tolerable satisfied, seeing there was no use to be anything else, though towards the end, it's a fact, there wasn't many schools come along. We had built a sort o' hut of boards by the side of the river where we kept the nets, and where some on us slept to look after the property. Well, my turn came to stay at the shanty, and I recollect the night just as well! It was coolish, not so cool as this, though something like it, for there was some clouds floating around, but it was a good deal lighter, 'cause the moon was in her third quarter. I felt sort o' lonesome there, all alone with the nets and the fish, and I don't know what I should have done but for some of the 'O be joyful' I had in a jug. I tried my best to fortify my stomach, and keep up my sperits agin the damp, but I didn't seem to succeed. Finally, thinks I to myself, I'll go and take a snuff of the night air, perhaps it will set me up So I sort o' strolled down towards the shore, and then I walked up a piece, and then I walked back agin, and once in a while I'd step into the shanty and take a pull at old Rye. Well, seeing as how it agreed with me, and I begun to feel better, I kept making my walks longer and longer till I strolled to a considerable distance. It was in one of them turns I see the ghost. I supposed afore that ghosts always appeared in white, but this one didn't. He was dressed just like any other fisherman, in a dark grey jacket and trowsers and a tarpaulin. It seemed to me at first he wanted to git out of the way, but I made tracks for him, for I didn't then a bit mistrust about its being a sperit, and halloed out, 'Who's that?' The sperit, as soon as he heard me, came straight up, and then I noticed he had two fish dangling down by a string, and says he, in a sort o' hoarse voice, as if he'd caught cold lying in the ground, 'It's me; it's the ghost of Jimmy Lanfear.' Well, when I heard him speak so, my flesh began to kind o' crawl, though I didn't know but it might be some fellow who had stole the shad out of the shanty, for I never heard of ghosts carrying fish afore. So says I, 'What are you doing with them fish?' Then, says he, 'Them ain't any real fish; see if you can touch 'em.' And then he swung 'em round and round in the moonlight, and I did my best to catch 'em, but I might just as well have snatched at the moonshine, for my hands went right through 'em agin and agin, till I stubbed my toe, and fell somehow, and when I got up, the sperit was gone. Then I knew it was Jim Lanfear's sperit, who was murdered years ago right opposite the spot where I asked you, Prime, if you knew where you was; and I was sartin the luck was all up for that season, and sure enough it was, for we didn't make more'n two or three hauls more of any consequence."

"I am sure dere was one sperit dere," said Primus, in a musing way, and shaking his head.