"Let's go back," whispered Corrie. "I know another pass over the hills. It's a longer one, to be sure; but we can run, you know, to make for—"
He was struck dumb and motionless at this point by the recurrence of the dreadful howling, louder than ever, as poor Poopy's despair deepened.
"Don't speak to me, boy," said Bumpus, still more sternly, while a cold sweat stood in large beads on his pale forehead. "Here's wot I calls somethin' new; an' it becomes a man, specially a British seaman, d'ye see, to inquire into new things in a reasonable sort of way."
Jo caught his breath, and clutched the rock beside him powerfully, as he continued:
"It ain't a ghost, in course; it can't be that. Cause why? there's no sich a thing as a ghost."
"Ain't there?" whispered Corrie, hopefully.
The hideous yell that Poopy here set up seemed to give the lie direct to the skeptical seaman; but he went on deliberately, though with a glazed eye and a deathlike pallor on his face—
"No; there ain't no ghosts,—never wos, an' never will be. All ghosts is sciencrific dolusions, nothing more; and it's only the hignorant an' supercilious as b'lieves in 'em. I don't; an', wots more," added Jo, with tremendous decision, "I won't!"
At this point, the "sciencrific dolusion" recurred to her former idea of alarming the settlement; and with this view began to retrace her steps, howling as she went.
Of course, as Jo and his small companion had been guided by her footsteps, it followed that Poopy, in retracing them, gradually drew near to the terrified pair. The short twilight of those regions had already deepened into the shades of night; so that the poor girl's form was not at first visible, as she advanced from among the dark shadows of the overhanging cliffs and the large masses of scattered rock that lay strewn about that wild mountain pass.