Washed Ashore; Or, The Tower of Stormount Bay

by William Henry Giles Kingston

On examining the room, not a trace of a bullet could be discovered, though a piece of paper in which it had been wrapped was picked up unburnt. This confirmed the magistrate in the opinion that his surmise was correct, and it proved also the daring character of the people who had played the trick. How they had managed to get into the Tower was the question. The magistrate was puzzled, so was everybody else. Neither the captain nor Tom, who knew the building better than anybody else, could solve the mystery. Charley, hearing their voices, came out of his room, and Stephen crawled out of his, still pale and trembling, and both had accounts to give of their ghostly visitant. Stephen gave the most dreadful account of the ghost he had seen, of the spiritual character of which he seemed to have no doubt. “Tut! boy, ghosts, if there were such things, would not spend their time in trying to shake a stout gentleman like myself out of his cot, in drawing bullets out of pistols, in using dark lanterns, and groaning and growling with the rough voices of boatswain’s mates,” exclaimed Lieutenant Dugong, with a look of contempt at poor Stephen. “The people who have been in here deal in spirits, I have no doubt, for they are smugglers, and pretty stupid ones too, if they fancy that by such mummeries they can frighten officers and gentlemen as we are.”

“You don’t mean to say, Mr Dugong, that those are not ghosts which we have been seeing to-night,” exclaimed Stephen.

“I wish as how I thought they weren’t,” cried Becky, “for it’s awful to think that the old Tower where we’ve lived so long in peace should be haunted.”

“Fiddlestick, woman, with your haunted Tower!” said the magistrate, who was apt soon to lose his patience; “I suspect that you and your one-armed companion there, who looks as scared as if he had a real goblin at his heels, have been leaving some door or window open by which these ghosts, as you call them, have found an entrance, and if they have not got out by the same way they came in they must still be somewhere about the building, and you must be held responsible for any mischief they may commit—you hear me, sirrah!”

“Beg pardon, sir, and no offence, I do hear you,” said Tom, stepping forward and giving a pull to his red nightcap, and a hitch to his wide trousers: “but I’ve served his Majesty—that’s three on ’em and her Majesty, that’s Queen Victoria—man and boy for better than forty years, afloat in all seas, and all climes, and never once have I been told that I wasn’t attending to my duty, and doing the work I was set to do as well as I could. Now I know it’s my duty to see that all the doors and windows are fast at night, not to keep out robbers, because we’ve no reason to fear such gentry down here, but to prevent Mister Wind from making an entrance, and I say it, and again I begs pardon, I did close the doors and windows as securely as I ever did in my life.”

“Oh! very well, very well, my good man, I do not doubt your honest intentions, but assertions are not proofs; if you were to set about it, and find the ghost, I should be better pleased,” said the magistrate.

“I really think, Mr Ludlow, that you are somewhat hard upon Tom,” interposed Captain Askew; “I can answer for his doing his best to find the ghost if he is to be found, and if not I will leave him in charge of the deck while we turn in again; and you may depend on it no ghost will dare to show his nose while he is on duty.”

This proposal was agreed to, and, as after a further search no trace of the nocturnal visitors was discovered, the family once more retired to rest, and Tom, with Mr Ludlow’s pistols in his belt, and a thick stick in his hand, kept watch—walking up and down the passages, and into all the empty rooms, and should he see anything he was immediately to call the captain and the rest of the gentlemen. Once, as he was walking slowly along a passage on the basement story, he saw on the ceiling a faint gleam of light, as if it had been cast from somewhere below, but as he proceeded it vanished, and though he looked about carefully he could not discover the spot whence it had come. He however noted it, that he might prosecute his examination in the morning. He was walking on, when a deep groan came from almost beneath his feet, as it seemed. Tom was not altogether free from superstition, but though he did not disbelieve in ghosts and other foolish notions, he was too brave to be frightened by anything, and consequently cool and capable of reflection.

“Ho! ho!” he thought, “if that was a ghost which groaned, he has got a light to light himself about with anyhow; and he must be stowed away in some hollow hereabouts, under the floor or in the wall, and there he shall remain till morning light if he doesn’t want a broken head or an ounce of lead sent through his body.” So he posted himself in the passage to watch the place whence the sound had come. After waiting for some time he took a short turn, when directly his footsteps sounded along the passage there was another groan. “Ho! ho! old mate,” he muttered, not aware that Hamlet had used the expression before him; “groan away as much as you like, you’ll find it a tough job to work your way through the hard rock, I suspect, and I’m not going to let you frighten me away from my post, let me tell you; the pistol has got a bullet in it this time, understand.”

The ghost evidently considered discretion the best part of valour, for after this not a groan or any other sound was heard. Tom watched all the night, hoping that somebody or something might appear, that he might get a shot at it; but not even a mouse crept out of its hole, nor were the inmates of the Tower again disturbed. Everybody was on foot at an early hour, and the old Tower was thoroughly examined inside and out, but no possible way by which the visitors could have entered could be discovered.