Our mariner had in his youth gone mate of a slave vessel from Liverpool, of which town he seemed to be a native.  The captain of the vessel was a man of a variable temper, sometimes kind and courteous to his men, but subject to fits of humour, dislike, and passion, during which he was very violent, tyrannical, and cruel.  He took a particular dislike at one sailor aboard, an elderly man, called Bill Jones, or some such name.  He seldom spoke to this person without threats and abuse, which the old man, with the license which sailors take on merchant vessels, was very apt to return.  On one occasion Bill Jones appeared slow in getting out on the yard to hand a sail.  The captain, according to custom, abused the seaman as a lubberly rascal, who got fat by leaving his duty to other people.  The man made a saucy answer, almost amounting to mutiny, on which, in a towering passion, the captain ran down to his cabin, and returned with a blunderbuss loaded with slugs, with which he took deliberate aim at the supposed mutineer, fired, and mortally wounded him.  The man was handed down from the yard, and stretched on the deck, evidently dying.  He fixed his eyes on the captain, and said, “Sir, you have done for me, but I will never leave you” The captain, in return, swore at him for a fat lubber, and said he would have him thrown into the slave-kettle, where they made food for the negroes, and see how much fat he had got.  The man died.  His body was actually thrown into the slave-kettle, and the narrator observed, with a naivete which confirmed the extent of his own belief in the truth of what he told, “There was not much fat about him after all.”

The captain told the crew they must keep absolute silence on the subject of what had passed; and as the mate was not willing to give an explicit and absolute promise, he ordered him to be confined below.  After a day or two he came to the mate, and demanded if he had an intention to deliver him up for trial when the vessel got home.  The mate, who was tired of close confinement in that sultry climate, spoke his commander fair, and obtained his liberty.  When he mingled among the crew once more he found them impressed with the idea, not unnatural in their situation, that the ghost of the dead man appeared among them when they had a spell of duty, especially if a sail was to be handed, on which occasion the spectre was sure to be out upon the yard before any of the crew.  The narrator had seen this apparition himself repeatedly—­he believed the captain saw it also, but he took no notice of it for some time, and the crew, terrified at the violent temper of the man, dared not call his attention to it.  Thus they held on their course homeward with great fear and anxiety.

At length, the captain invited the mate, who was now in a sort of favour, to go down to the cabin and take a glass of grog with him.  In this interview he assumed a very grave and anxious aspect.  “I need not tell you, Jack,” he said, “what sort of hand we have got on board with us.  He told me he would never leave me, and he has kept his word.  You only see him now and then, but he is always by my side, and never out of my sight.  At this very moment I see him—­I am determined to bear it no longer, and I have resolved to leave you.”