"An enemy of real flesh and blood, when he does kill you, stabs you or shoots you down at once, and there's an end of it; but, these ghosts have a way of killing you by inches, without giving a fellow a chance to pay them back anything in return."
"It's pretty clear, anway, that they're a 'tarnal set of cowards," remarked the Parson.
"The biggest coward's the bravest men, when there's no danger," retorted Old Ropes.
To this, the Parson made no reply, thinking, probably, that he had carried the joke far enough, and not wishing to provoke a quarrel with his companion.
"As to the affair of the cave," said Jones Bradley; "I think very much as Old Ropes does about it. I'm opposed to troubling the dead, and I believe there's them buried there that don't want to be disturbed by us, and if we don't mind the warning they give us, still the worse for us."
"The captain don't seem to be very much alarmed about it," said the Parson; "for he stays in the cave. And, then, there's the Indian woman and the darkey; the ghost don't seem to trouble them much."
"I'll say this for Captain Flint," remarked Old Ropes, "if ever I knowed a man that feared neither man nor devil, that man is Captain Flint; but his time'll come yet."
"You don't mean to say you see breakers ahead, do you?" asked the Parson.
"Not in the way of our business, I don't mean," said Ropes; "but, I've had a pretty long experience in this profession, and have seen the finishing up of a good many of my shipmates; and I never know'd one that had long experience, that would not tell you that he had been put more in fear by the dead than ever he had by the living."
"We all seem to be put in low spirits by this afternoon," said the Parson; "s'pose we go below, and take a little something to cheer us up."