Strange things occurred on board just at this time, which, taken in connection with the captain’s mood, produced an uncomfortable feeling that there was some evil influence at work by which both the ship and the captain were possessed.  Groans had been distinctly heard down in the hold among the coals; and the sailmaker affirmed that on several nights in succession he had seen a man go from amidships aft along the bulwark railings, stand still and point with his hand to the compass, and then disappear in the wake of the ship.  Another declared that he had seen the ship’s genius proceed in the same direction and jump overboard—­cap and all he was no higher than a half sea-boot; and when the genius deserts a ship, it betokens in the sailors’ superstitious creed that she is about to founder.

The unaccountable sounds in the hold continued, and changed one day when the hatch was battened down to a kind of wail, which ceased, however, when, for fear of an explosion of coal-gas, it was taken off again.  On the following day the cook, who had gone down for water, came hurrying back with a scared face, and declared that he had seen a man sitting there in a red jacket.

“It is the ship’s genius lamenting the ship,” was hesitatingly suggested by some.  But when the cook objected that the creature was at least as large as Big Anders the boatswain, and proceeded besides to endow him with sable colouring and claws, the terror reached its height.

The captain had hitherto replied to these, as he conceived them, fresh attempts to provoke him, by still further grinding; but when this last observation of the cook was communicated to him, he broke out scornfully, pointing at the same time with the bitten mouthpiece of his old meerschaum pipe at the speaker—­

“I think there is a sufficiently stupid devil in the hold sticking in every one of you rascals.  Isn’t there one of you with courage enough to go down into the coal-hold? or must I go myself?”

The first mate proposed to accompany him; but Salve now came forward and declared that he, for his part, would as soon go down into the hold as up aloft.  “A man won’t sweat half as much at that work,” he added, with sarcastic significance.

He went down accordingly with a light, and after a few moments’ search came upon a miserable, half-famished wretch, who had squeezed himself in behind the water-butt.  He was as black as a negro from the coal-dust, and declared tremblingly when he came up on deck, that he had deserted from his regiment in Monte Video, which was an offence punishable by death, and that he had thought he might remain concealed until the vessel arrived at Rio; that he had come on board in the dark on the last evening they lay in the harbour, and had hidden himself under the coals; and that when they had battened down the hatch he had been nearly suffocated with coal-gas, and had lain and groaned.  Occasionally he had found an opportunity at night