The spectre band, his messmates brave,
Sunk in the yawning ocean,
While to the mast he lash'd him fast,
And brav'd the storm's commotion:
The winter moon upon the sand
A silv'ry carpet made,
And mark'd the sailor reach the land,
And mark'd his murd'rer wash his hand,
Where the green billows play'd.

And, since that hour, the Fisherman
Has toil'd and toil'd in vain;
For all the night the moony light
Gleams on the spectred main!
And when the skies are veil'd in gloom,
The murd'rer's liquid way
Bounds o'er the deeply yawning tomb,
And flashing fires the sands illume,
Where the green billows play!

Full thirty years his task has been,
Day after day, more weary;
For Heav'n design'd his guilty mind
Should dwell on prospects dreary.
Bound by a strong and mystic chain,
He has not pow'r to stray;
But, destin'd mis'ry to sustain,
He wastes, in solitude and pain,
A loathsome life away.

THE
SUBTERRANEAN TRAVELLER;
OR
GHOST AND NO GHOST.

The following record is copied verbatim from an old newspaper—The Weekly Journal, or British Gazetteer.

"Bedlam, January 18, 1719.

"It is not long since one of the female inhabitants of these frantic territories gave the following occasion for a very pleasing entertainment. Some bricklayers happened to be at work here, to repair and clean the passage leading to the common sewer; who going to dinner, and leaving the ladder which descended to it, standing, the said unfortunate inhabitant had a sort of an odd notion, that the workmen had been prying into the secrets of the lower world, and therefore (nobody seeing her) she went down the ladder which led into the common sewer; and, in that subterraneous cavern, finding none to control or stop her passage, she travelled, with great pleasure and curiosity, till she came to Tokenhouse Yard, which is near half a mile. There it happened that a couple of young females, coming to the vault, heard a noise below, crying, 'Who the plague are ye? What d'ye make that noise for? What, is the devil in ye?' Upon which, away flew the women, not staying to look behind them; and coming half-frightened into the house, said, the devil was in the vault. Accordingly, more company going, they still heard the same noise. Upon which they called out, and asked, 'Who's there? What are ye?' 'The Devil,' replied the traveller below. 'How came you there?' said they. 'Nay, how the devil know I?' answered the mad-woman. 'Why don't you bring me a candle, that I may find my way?' Finding it certain to be a human voice, they feared somebody might accidentally have fallen in, and therefore they immediately went to work, to deliver the poor wretch from her suffocating thraldom, and found her a lamentable spectacle; so that they began to question her how she came there, and where she lived. She answered that she was going to Hell, but had lost her way; that there were several in her company, who had got thither, and the gate was shut upon them; that she had lost her way, but should overtake them by and by. These wild expressions made some of them fancy she was a mad-woman; and, after some consideration, they resolved to bring her hither; when she was presently owned, and the people that brought her let us into the story: but her head still runs on her journey, and she talks of little else."

THE MILKMAN
AND
CHURCH-YARD GHOST.

A man much addicted to the heinous sin of drunkenness, in coming home late one winter's night, had to cross Stepney church-yard; where, close to the foot path, a deep grave had been opened the day before. He, being very drunk, staggered into the grave; it was a great mercy he did not break his neck, or any of his limbs; but, as it rained hard all night, and the grave was so deep that he could not got out, he had but an uncomfortable bed. For some hours nobody passed by; till, shortly after the clock had struck four, a milkman, who had been to the cow-house for his milk, came by, and said to himself, "I wonder what o'clock it is." The man in the grave hallooed out, "Just gone four." The milkman seeing nobody, immediately conceived a ghost from one of the graves had answered him, and took to his heels with such rapidity, that when he reached an ale-house he was ready to faint; and, what added to his trouble, in running, he so jumbled his pails as to spill great part of his milk. The people who heard his relation, believed it must have been a ghost that had answered him. The tale went round, and would have been credited, perhaps, till now, had not the drunkard, sitting one day in the very alehouse the milkman had stopped at, on hearing the story repeated, with a hearty laugh acknowledged himself to be the ghost, and that he had much enjoyed the jumbling of the man's pails, as he ran away, and the loss which it occasioned him.