Washed Ashore; Or, The Tower of Stormount Bay

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Everything went off as satisfactorily as could have been desired. Mr Ludlow did his best to be agreeable, and Stephen was pleasanter than usual, and listened with interest to the accounts Charley Blount gave of his voyages, and the countries he had visited. The inspecting commander, however, did not arrive. Late in the evening a revenue cutter came off the coast, and put on shore a very stout lieutenant, who came puffing up to the Tower, and announced himself as Lieutenant Dugong, of the Coast Guard. The captain received him cordially, but Becky surveyed him in despair.

“He’d break down the strongest bed in the house if there was one to spare for him,” she exclaimed, when she and Tom were next alone. “What can you do with people like him, Mr Tom, at sea? What sort of bedsteads have they got to sleep on?”

“Why, Mistress Becky, that depends whether they are berthed forward or aft,” answered Tom. “If forward, they swing in a hammock; and if aft, in a cot. We’ll soon sling one or t’other for this here Lieutenant Dugong, and depend on’t he’ll have no cause to complain.”

As may be supposed, every room in the Tower was occupied. Tom took charge of Blind Peter, and Charley Blount was put into the room he had occupied on the ground-floor, and the stout lieutenant had another small room on the same floor, while Stephen was placed in a small one near the first landing, and his father had a room not far off.

The whole family and their inmates retired to rest and to sleep. No one in the old Tower was awake. The hour of midnight had been struck by a clock constructed by the captain. The evening had been calm, but now the wind began to moan and sigh and whistle round the walls, and through any crevice into which it could find an entrance, while the dash of the sea on the beach grew every instant louder and louder, and ever and anon the shriek of some wild fowl startled from its roost was heard, as it flew by to find another resting-place; giving the notion to the ignorant and superstitious that spirits of evil were flying about intent on mischief.

The clock struck one when Stephen Ludlow awoke with a start, and saw standing close to his bed a figure clothed in white, and from it proceeded a curious light, which, while thrown brightly on him, darkened everything else around. His first impulse was to hide his head under the bed-clothes, but then he was afraid that the creature might jump on him, and so he remained staring at it, till his hair stood on end, and yet not daring to scream out. At length it stretched out an arm, with a long thin hand at the end of it, shook a chain, which rattled and clanked on the floor, and growled forth, “Out of this! out of this! out of this!”

Stephen’s teeth chattered. He could not speak—he could not move. He thought for a moment, and hoped that the apparition might be merely the phantom of a dream; but he pinched himself, and became too truly convinced that it was a dreadful reality. There it stood glaring at him; he was too frightened to mark very minutely its appearance. “Out of this! out of this! out of this!” again repeated the phantom, slowly retiring towards the door—a movement which would have been greatly to Stephen’s relief had he not felt sure that it would come back again. His eyes followed it till it glided out of the door as noiselessly as it had entered. Poor Stephen kept gazing towards the open door, which he dared not get out of bed to shut, lest he should encounter the phantom coming back again.

About the same time that Stephen saw the phantom, Charley Blount was awakened by a strange noise in his bed-room of clanking of chains and horrible groans; then all was silent, and a voice exclaimed—

“Out of this! out of this! out of this!”

“What do you mean by ‘Out of this! out of this! out of this’?” cried Charley, quietly leaning out of his bed, and seizing one of his heavy walking shoes. “Explain yourself, old fellow, whoever you are.”