“Bill is afraid; he don’t like ghosts, and don’t dare to talk of them.”
“I am not easily skeered,” he answered at last; “but if you had seen what I have on this shore, you would not talk so easy about it. ‘Lige, do you remember the time we saw that ship? There had been a heavy storm, and when we got up next day early, there lay a vessel on the beach; she must have been most everlastingly a harpin’ it.”
“What is that?” was asked wonderingly, on the utterance of this peculiar expression.
“Why, she had come clear in over the bar, and must have been going some to do that; for there she lay, bow on, with her bowsprit sticking way up ashore, just below the station yonder. Her masts were standing, and we clapped on our clothes and started for the beach. The wind was blowin’ hard, and the sand and drizzle driving in our faces as we walked over, and we kept our heads down most of the time. When we got to the sand-hills we looked up, and the ship was gone. I thought that likely enough, for she must have broken up and gone to pieces soon in that surf, so we hurried along as fast as we could; and sure enough, when we rounded the point, the little cove in which she lay was full of truck. ‘Lige was there, and he saw it as plain as I did. The water was full of drift-boxes, barrels, planks, and all sorts of things, pitching and rolling about; and some of them had been carried up onto the sand and were strewed about in all directions.
“It was early, and the day was misty, but, we could see plain enough, and we saw all that stuff knocking about as plain as I see you now. There was a big timber in my way—a stick—well, thirty feet long and two feet or two and a half square, so that I had to raise my foot high to clear it; I stepped one leg over, and drew the other along to feel it, but it didn’t touch anything; then I stopped and looked down—there was no timber there; I looked back towards the sea—the drift had disappeared, the barrels and boxes and truck of one sort or another was gone. There was nothing on shore nor in the water. Now you may laugh, but ‘Lige knows whether what I’ve told you is true.”
“Bill, that is a pretty good story, but it is not the one I meant,” persisted the individual who had commenced the attack.
“Well, another time, Zeph and I were at work getting the copper bolts out of an old wreck, when we happened to look up and saw two carriages coming along, up the beach. I spoke to Zeph about it, but as they came along slowly, we went on with our work, and when we looked up again there was only one. That came on closer and closer till I could tell the horses; they were two bays of squire Jones’ down at the inlet; they drove right on towards us till they were so near that I did not like to stare the people in the face, and looked down again to my work. There were two men, and I saw them so plain that I should know ’em anywhere. Well, I raised my head a second after, and they were gone; and there never had been any wagon, for Zeph and I hunted all over the beach to find the tracks in the sand.”
“I guess that was another misty day, and you hadn’t had your eye-opener,” was the appreciative response.
“No, it was three o’clock in the day, and bright sunshine; but at that time, as near as can be, Tommy Smith was drowned down at the inlet, and the very next day at the very same hour, the ‘Squire’s wagon did come up the beach, with the same two men driving, and the body in a box in the back part.”
“Now, Bill,” continued the persistent individual, “this is all very well, but it is not the story. Come, out with it; you know what I mean.”