“Captain Spike, sir,” called out Barlow, who was coiling up rigging on the forecastle, and was consequently obliged to call out so loud as to be heard by all on board, “yonder is a man at the foot of the light-house.”

By this time, the moon coming out bright through an opening in the clouds, Mulford had become conscious of the risk he ran, and was drawn up, as immovable as the pile itself, against the stones of the light-house.  Such an announcement brought everybody to leeward, and every head over the bulwarks.  Spike himself sprang into the lee main-chains, where his view was unobstructed, and where Mulford saw and recognised him, even better than he was seen and recognised in his own person.  All this time the brig was moving ahead.

“A man, Barlow!” exclaimed Spike, in the way one a little bewildered by an announcement expresses his surprise.  “A man! that can never be.  There is no one at the light-house, you know.”

“There he stands, sir, with his back to the tower, and his face this way.  His dark figure against the white-washed stones is plain enough to be seen.  Living, or dead, sir, that is the mate!”

“Living it cannot be,” answered Spike, though he gulped at the words the next moment.

A general exclamation now showed that everybody recognised the mate, whose figure, stature, dress, and even features, were by this time all tolerably distinct.  The fixed attitude, however, the immovable statue-like rigidity of the form, and all the other known circumstances of Harry’s case, united to produce a common and simultaneous impression among the superstitious mariners, that what they saw was but the ghostly shadow of one lately departed to the world of spirits.  Even Spike was not free from this illusion, and his knees shook beneath him, there where he stood, in the channels of a vessel that he had handled like a top in so many gales and tempests.  With him, however, the illusion was neither absolute nor lasting.  A second thought told him it could scarcely be so, and then he found his voice.  By this time the brig was nearly abreast of where Harry stood.

“You Josh!” called out Spike, in a voice of thunder, loud enough to startle even Mrs. Budd and Biddy in their berths.

“Lor’ help us all!” answered the negro, “what will come next t’ing aboard dis wessel!  Here I be, sir.”

“Pass the fowling-piece out of my state-room.  Both barrels are loaded with ball; I’ll try him, though the bullets are only lead.”

A common exclamation of dissatisfaction escaped the men, while Josh was obeying the order.  “It’s no use.”

“You never can hurt one of them things,” “Something will befall the brig on account of this,” and “It’s the mate’s sperit, and sperits can’t be harmed by lead or iron,” were the sort of remarks made by the seamen, during the short interval between the issuing the order for the fowling-piece and its execution.