GHOST STORIES

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 12, Issue 1006, 19 December 1868, Page 3

GHOST STORIES

By old Boomerang. (From, the "Sydney Mail.") CHAPTER I. " Clew up the fore-royal !" shouted Mr. Bunt, the chief officer, who was keeping his watch one night on board of the clipper ship Jamie Johnson, then on her voyage from this colon}' to London. The ship had won a reputation for making good passages, and Mr. Bunt was not the sort of man to let her lose it, through want of vigilant seamanship on his part. No one ever caught him napping on the hen-coops, instead of keeping one oye to windward ou the lookout for squalls, and the other- eye on the binnacle, to see that the man at the wheel did not yaw the ship off her course, as* steersman are apt to do unless they are looked sharply after, by the officer of tho watch. Although not much given to " cracking on" (which often means carrying on sail until it carries away altogether, with yards, and masts, and sailors too, sometimes), Mr. Bunt liked to make his ship " walk along," and in steady breezes " he'd give her beans." But for all that he was a careful man, without any old fashioned nautical nonsense about him ; and the equivocal fun of startling a timid passenger, never induced him to wilfully carry away even a top-gallant-studding-sail boom ; nor did he ever play any other risky pranks with his ship, as many mates in less enlightened days have clone, for the mere honor and glory of being called "regular sea-dogs," or " real tigers to carry on." At the time of the occurrence of tho incident which I am about to relate, the Jamie Johnson was in " the variables," having lost the south-east trade wind a few degrees south of the equator. The weather was uncertain, as it usually is in those latitudes, still it was a moonlight night, and the ship was under all plain sail, close-hauled on the port tack. A slight rain squall was coming wp, and as Mr. Bunt was doubtful if there was not a puff of wind with it, he gave the orders to take in the fore-royal, and to haul down the flying-jib. Tho main-royal-yard was on deck, having been sprung the day before. The hands in the chief mate's watch were not very smart men ; in fact, the crew on the whole were below the average class of able seamen ; but in those golden days it was not an easy matter to get a first rate crew, for the homeward passage, and, ships often left the ports of Sydney and Melbourne, very inefficiently manned. My allusions to these facts will explain like reason, why Mr. Bunt was obliged to repeat his orders before there was any sign of the hands liaving roused up from their lounging places under the lee of the longboat. At length the fore-royal halliards were let go, and the bunt and clews of the sail were lazily hauled up. " Up you go, one of yo\i, and furl it ! and be smart about it,"' said the mate. Just then the moon shone out from behind a cloud, and to the surprise and terror of all the hands on deck, it was observed that a person was on the yard, furling tho sails in a masterly manner. " Who is that up aloft ?" asked the mate of the trembling men in the waist. No one answered him, whereupon the question was repeated, in a tone which showed that Mr. Bunt had a little bit of bad temper in him, though he was such a good sailor. " Why. don't you open your mouths, some of you? who is that fellow on the yard, Jack ?" " Tho devil, I think, Sir," replied the sailmaker, who had been silently counting the hands on deck. " Its nobody belonging to our watch any way, for we are all here, every man of us." " Who the mischief can it be ? Hoy ! aloft there !" shouted Mr. Bunt. In an instant the figure disappeared from the yard, but no one could tell which way it descended ; the sailmaker, however, persisted in asserting that he saw him go off in a blue flash, and the boatswain Wore that ho smelt brimstone. The squall came up at that minute, but it was merely rain, and no wind with it, so there was no occasion to take in more sail. "Pump ship out," said the mate, who was anxious to give his men something to do, to keep them from getting thoroughly panic-stricken. While they were at work at the pum]DS, he went quietly into the forecastle and counted the watch below. There they were all right, nine of them fast asleep in their bunks, and the tenth, an ordinary seaman, lying coiled up on his sea chest, snoring loudly. The evidence was conclusive to Mr. Bunt that tho sail had boon handled by some supernatural agency, and he felt it to be his duty to acquaint the captain, forthwith. * " Captain Chink !" said the mate, tapping at the state-room door rather more loudly than usual. " t£allo ! hallo ! what's up, Mr Bunt ?" said the captain, rubbing his eyes as the mate entered. " How does the weather look P" " l\ T ot much wind, sir, hauling about, what there is of it ; but lam sorry to say there is a ghost on boai'd." " Grhost be blowcd ! what do you moan, Bunt?" said Captain Chink, who professed a disbelief in anything and everything of the sort, that he could not see with his own eyes. " I mean to say, sir, that I gave the order just now to clew up the fore-royal, and before I could send a hand up aloft there was somebody on the yard furling the sail. I'll swear it wasn't one of my watch, for I mustered them all in the waist, before I hailed the stranger tip aloft." " Perhaps it was one of tho watch below," said the captain, turning out of his cot and beginning to dress. jSTo, sir, I'm sure it wasn't one of them neither ; for I went below directly, and counted ten hands, all snoring full speed." " Well, then, it must be one of those Sydney long-shore rowdies, who has smuggled himself on board. But I'll rouse him out in a brace of shakes. Call the second mate." " It'a not likely that a stowaway would wait till wo were moro than two months out before he showed himself," said tho mate. " And tho fore-royal yard is not a likely place for a chap of that sort to pick for making his first appearance. It's nry firm belief it is a ghost, or something worse." "We'll soon see, said the captain, buckling on his belt, with his cutlass and revolver affixed to it. " Steward, light a couple of lanterns." A scrutinising search was then made, beginning at tho lazaretto, and ending at the coal hole in the fore-peak. Every probable hiding place on deck was also examined, even to tho hen-coops on the poop, and tho pig-pens beneath the longboat; but nothing new was discovered. " Well, there is no ghost in sight down below, or on deck either, Mr Bunt," said tho captain, walking ou to tho poop, after he had completed tho search. "If ho is anywhere on board he must be up in tho fore-top. Go up and havo a look, Mr Grummet, and if you catch him tip there, send him down by the ran." But Mr Grummet (the second mate) did not move a step toward the rigging, which plainly showed that ho had no wish to catch a ghost, or even to try to do it. If the captain had ordered him aloft in a typhoon, to cut a flapping sail from a

yard, or to do any other hazardous job which came strictly within, the, course of his duty, he would have done it without a sign of demurring ; but he had not signed articles for any such extra work as catching a ghost, and he was deterred from even attempting the task, by the dread of the ghost catching him. "IVhatJ are you afraid to go aloft, Grummet ?" asked the captain, angrily. "I thought you were more of a sailor. Where's the boatswain ?" The boatswain was not far off, but he positively refused to put his foot on a rattlin till daylight ; urging, in a rather insubordinate tone, that " he wasn't going | to be horned by old JSTick, if he kuow'd it." The [captain thereupon grew wroth, and peremptorily ordered all. the watch to go aloft together, but not a man stiiTed a leg, arid one of them grumblingly suggested that the captain had better go up himself, and see how he'd like to be grabbed. . - " Who said that ? What man has the impudence to speak to mo in thai; style ? Just let him show himself, and I'll give him a couple of dozen, hot and strong," vociferated the captain. But no one was induced to come forward by that stimulating jjromise, and they all remained as mute as fishes. In a few minutes the captain roth-ed to his cabin, uttering as he went, very disrespectful things against ghosts in general, in tones loud enough to be heard by everyone on the fore-top-gal-lant-yard. The watch below had been attracted on deck by the unusual hubbub, and a conference of all hands took place near to the windlass, after the captain had shut his cabin door. " What was the cove on the rdyai-yard like, Sails ? asked half-a-dozen voices at once. " Why he was a great big horse-marine of a fellow, painted black, with a billygoat's on. him, and a tail as long as a tiller chain coiled three times round his waist, and the harpoon end of it snugged up under his coat collar behind," replied the sailmaker, with solemn gravity, while his eyes peeped furtively over his shoulders, lest the mysterious stranger should be within hearing. "That's 'old Scratch' himself," said Tom Pepper, the forecastle wag and storyteller. "And it's likely enough he came on board for the skipper, for ho is the most audacious fellow to swear that I ever heard, barring Sam I3lobb, the chap who sold himself to the devil for a dollar." " I don't believe you ever hoard anybody beat the skipper at that fun, Tom," said-the- boatswain. "I didn't say that I heard the chap myself, but that's no matter ; I can tell you the yarn. And now let me tell you boys " — "All hands shorten sail !" shouted the chief mate, which stopped Tom Pepper's application, and the crew hurried to their stations, for a heavy squall was about to shako the ship. [My next chapter will give all particulars respecting the mysterious stranger on the fore -royal -yard.]