The second mate shoved Oscar forward so that he stood in the light that streamed up from the cabin.
"So one little ghost scared you, eh?" says he to poor trembling Oscar. "Why, my man, if all the ghosts in this ship were to begin walking about, we living men would be crowded into the sea." With that he went below, laughing, as though he had just made a fine joke, and leaving us more frightened than ever.
The mate went below again also, but he wasn't laughing. We sensed that the news worried Fitzgibbon, and that strengthened our conviction. Blackjack Fitzgibbon had cause for worry. So we thought. Wasn't it he, as well as Swope, who mishandled the boy to his death?
That ended the scene aft. Oscar relieved the wheel; he had to. Lynch put the rest of us to work again, and during the balance of the watch we saw ghosts in every corner.
When we went below at eight bells, we held a grand talk in the foc'sle, a parliament that practically all hands attended. Aye, we were quite convinced that the ghost was abroad. Oscar stuck to his yarn, and embellished it, and left no room in our minds for doubt. Newman laughed at us, and denied the presence of a spook on the poop; that done he turned in and slept. But his evidence didn't shake our belief. Oscar gave too many particulars.
The compass had not been shuttered when he went aft to relieve the wheel, and he had seen Nils standing in the light. He couldn't be mistaken. "Yust as plain like a picture." He knew him by his boyish stature, by his beardless features, by his clothes. He was wearing his Scotch-plaid coat and red tam-o'-shanter; Oscar couldn't be mistaken in them, because he had helped Nils pick them out in a Glasgow slops shop "last ship." Didn't his mates remember those togs?
His mates remembered them. So did the rest of us. That coat and cap had hung on the wall opposite Nils' bunk all during his illness. He was very proud of these colorful garments. Of course, we told each other, he would appear in them after death. And, of course, he was bound to come back. Didn't murdered men always come back? So we assured each other; and the older men began spinning yarns about other ghosts in other ships. Aye, we talked so much we were afraid to turn in. Captain Swope's words about the ghost crew in the Golden Bough impressed us mightily. We told each other that many men must have died cruel deaths in this notorious hooker; very likely Nils' spirit was but one of many. Some of the lads recalled mysteries of the night that they had encountered in this ship, shadowy things melting into darkness, strange noises, and the like; and always they had seen or heard these things aft, around the break of the poop or beneath the boat skids—in just about the spot where Nils had been beaten up, first by the skipper and then by the mate. Aye, Nils gave us the creeps. Another herald of storm, I felt.
Next night Nils did not walk, though the lads in both watches insisted they saw and heard things that were not right or natural. The night following in the midwatch—our midwatch—half the watch swore they saw him flit across the main deck and disappear behind the roundhouse.
The next night marked Nils' last and most startling appearance. In the heart of the middle watch, while my mates were sound asleep, the ghost walked into the empty port foc'sle.
That is, the port foc'sle should have been empty, since the mate had the watch out. But it happened that Nigger, coming from the wheel, seized an opportunity to slip into the deserted room for a quiet smoke-O. It was a liberty he was safe in taking, now that the bucko mate had reformed.