“At that moment we saw a dim shadowy whitish object at the other end of the dark passage. ‘Wha’—wha’—what’s that?’ said I.
“Stumps gasped. I heard his teeth chattering, and I think his knees were knocking together. Jeff made no sound, and it was too dark to see his face. Suddenly the object rushed at us. There was no noise of footsteps—only a muffled sound and a faint hissing. I stood still, unable to move. So did Jeff. I felt the hair of my head rising. Stumps gasped again—then turned and fled. The creature, whatever it was, brushed past us with a hideous laugh. I guessed at once that it was Jim Slagg, but evidently Stumps didn’t, for he uttered an awful yell that would have roused the whole ship if she had been of an ordinary size; at the same moment he tripped and fell on the thing that had upset me, and the ghost, leaping over him, vanished from our sight.
“To my surprise, on returning to our cabin, we found Slagg as we had left him, with both hands on his forehead poring over his book. I was almost as much surprised to see Jeff sit down and laugh heartily.—Now, what do you think it could have been?”
“It was Slagg, of course,” answered the sporting electrician.
“Yes, but what causes the tapping?”
“Oh, that is no doubt some little trifle—a chip of wood, or bit of wire left hanging loose, which shakes about when the ship heaves.”
A sudden tramping of feet overhead brought this ghostly discussion to an abrupt close, and caused every man in the saloon to rush on deck with a terrible feeling in his heart that something had gone wrong.
“Not broken?” asked an electrician with a pale face on reaching the deck.
“Oh no, sir,” replied an engineer, with an anxious look, “not quite so bad as that, but a whale has taken a fancy to inspect us, and he is almost too attentive.”
So it was. A large Greenland whale was playing about the big ship, apparently under the impression that she was a giant of his own species, and it had passed perilously close to the cable.