Bill fell silent, again looking off into the distance as though he saw something that others could not see; he pulled away nervously on his pipe, which had gone out, but answered not.
“Bill’s afraid;” was the tantalizing suggestion.
“There’s Sam,” said Bill suddenly; “he’s not afeard of man or devil; ask him what he saw.”
The person referred to was a large, broad-shouldered, pleasant-faced man, with a clear blue eye that looked as though it would not quail easily, and he responded at once:
“I never saw anything; but one night when I was coming by the cove where the Johanna was cast away, and where three hundred bodies were picked up and buried, I heard a loud scream. It sounded like a woman’s voice, and was repeated three or four times; but I couldn’t find anything, although I spent an hour hunting among the sand-hills, and it was bright moonlight. It may have been some sort of animal, but I don’t know exactly what.”
“Bill’s adventure happened in the same neighborhood, so let’s have it,” continued the persistent man.
“As Sam says,” commenced Bill, at last, “the Johanna went ashore one awful north-easter in winter about six miles above here, near Old Jackey’s tavern; she broke up before we could do anything for her, and three hundred men, women, and children—for she was an emigrant ship—were washed ashore during the following week; most of them had been drifted by the set of the tide into the cove, and they were buried there; so you see it ain’t a nice place of a dark night.
“I was driving down the beach about a year after she was lost, with my old jagger wagon, and a heavy load on of groceries and stores of one kind or other. It was about one o’clock at night, mighty cold, but bright moonlight; and I was coming along by the corner of the fence, you know, just above Jackey’s, when the mare stopped short. Now, she was just the best beast to drive you ever saw. I could drive her into the bay or right over into the ocean, and she was never skeered at anything. But this time, she come right back in the shafts and began to tremble all over; I gave her a touch of the whip, and she was just as full of spirit as a horse need be, but she only reared up and snorted and trembled worse than ever. So I knew something must be wrong, and looked ahead pretty sharp; and there, sure enough, right across the road, lay a man. Jackey was a little too fond of rum at that time, and I made up my mind he had got drunk and tumbled down on his way home; it was cold, and I didn’t want to get out of the wagon where I was nicely tucked in, and thought I would drive round out of the road and wake him up with my whip as I passed. I tried to pull the mare off to one side to go by, but she only reared and snorted and trembled, so that I was afraid she would fall. She had a tender mouth, but although I pulled my best I could not budge her; at last, getting mad, I laid the gad over her just as hard as I could draw it. Instead of obeying the rein, however, she plunged straight on, made a tremendous leap over the body, and dragged the wagon after her. I pulled her in all I knew how, and no mistake; but it was no use, and I felt the front wheels strike, lift, and go over him, and then the hind wheels, but I couldn’t stop her. That was a heavy load, and enough to crush any one, and as soon as I could fetch the mare down—for she had started to run—I jumped out quick enough then, you may bet your life. I tied her up to the fence, although she was still so uneasy I daresen’t hardly leave her, and hurried back to see if I could do anything for Jackey. Would you believe it, there was nothing there! I tell you I felt the wagon go over him, and what’s more, I looked down as I passed and saw his clothes and his hair straggling out over the snow, for he had no hat on; though I noticed at the time that I didn’t see any flesh, but supposed his face was turned from me. There was no rise in the ground and not a cloud in the sky; the moon was nearly full, and there wasn’t any man, and never had been any man there; but whatever there was, the mare saw it as plain as I did.”
“Now let’s turn in,” said a sleepy individual, who had first been nodding over Bill’s statement of public wrongs, and had taken several short naps in the course of his ghost story; “and as there was something said yesterday about a smoke driving away mosquitoes, for heaven’s sake let’s make a big one; the infernal pests kept me awake all last night.”
This was excellent advice, and not only was an entire newspaper consumed in our common sleeping apartment, but a quantity of powder was squibbed off, till the place smelt like the antechamber of Tartarus. The mosquitoes were expelled or silenced at the cost of a slight suffocation to ourselves, but we gained several hours sleep till the smoke escaped and allowed the villains to return to their prey.