Oscar was still too frightened to muster his scant English, but Lindquist talked for him. "He say like dis, sir, Nils ban at da wheel when he koom aft, oond den he yump vrom der wheel oond run for'ard yust like da time da captain thoomp him."
"Rot!" says Lynch. "My man, have you permitted a ghost stand your trick at the wheel?" This last to Newman.
"Hardly a ghost, sir," answered Newman. We could not see his face, but from his tone I knew he was smiling. "Do I look like one? Not yet, I hope. I was just about to turn over the wheel to the lad, sir, when he shied—at the shadow of the mizzen stays'l I think—and rushed away forward."
"What is wrong, Mister?" inquired the captain's soft voice. Aye, we all jumped as if it were the ghost talking. Captain Swope, with Mister Fitzgibbon behind him, had popped up from below as quietly as If he were a ghost.
"Nothing wrong, Captain," replied Mister Lynch. "One of my jaspers declared he saw the little squarehead's ghost dancing about the poop, and now the lot of them have nerves. I brought them aft to teach them better in a peaceful way."
This was a straight dig at the Old Man's "be gentle" orders, but it didn't pierce his skin. Swope laughed, genuinely amused, his soft, rippling laugh that always frightened us so much. "Peaceful, eh? By the Lord, Mister, it sounded like an army overhead. And it was no more than a ghost!" He peered aft, and discerned Newman at the wheel, recognizing him by bulk, I guess, for the binnacle lights were half shuttered and Newman's face invisible. But I'm sure he recognized him, for he pursed his lips in a way I had seen him do before when he looked at Newman. He strolled away forward, to the break of the poop, glancing this way and that, and back again to the hatch. "If it were moonlight, I'd say your man was touched," says he to Lynch. "But I suppose he was half asleep and dreaming."
"I'll wake him up and work the dreams out of him," promised Mister
Lynch.
"But no hazing, Mister. The men are in bad enough temper as it is."
Aye, thus to Lynch, as though the rest of us were beyond ear-shot. But all the time his eyes were upon us, measuring the effect of his words. Oh, he was a sly beast, a "slick one," as Beasley said.
"Which is the lad who beheld this—ghost?" he added.