“Laugh at ghost!  Is that a subject to laugh at?  Have a care, you black rascal, or he will visit you in your galley here, when you will least want to see him.”

“No care much for him, sir,” returned Simon, laughing away as hard as ever. “Sich a ghost ought n’t to skear little baby.”

“Such a ghost?  And what do you know of this ghost more than any other?”

“Well, I seed him, Cap’in Spike; and what a body sees, he is acquainted wid.”

“You saw an image that looked as much like Mr. Mulford, my late mate, as one timber-head in this brig is like another.”

“Yes, sir, he like enough—­must say dat—­so wery like, could n’t see any difference.”

As Simon concluded this remark, he burst out into another fit of laughter, in which Josh joined him, heart and soul, as it might be.  The uninitiated reader is not to imagine the laughter of those blacks to be very noisy, or to be raised on a sharp, high key.  They could make the welkin ring, in sudden bursts of merriment, on occasion; but, at a time like this, they rather caused their diversion to be developed by sounds that came from the depths of their chests.  A gleam of suspicion that these blacks were acquainted with some fact that it might be well for him to know, shot across the mind of Spike; but he was turned from further inquiry by a remark of Don Juan, who intimated that the mirth of such persons never had much meaning to it, expressing at the same time a desire to pursue the more important subject in which they were engaged.  Admonishing the blacks to be more guarded in their manifestations of merriment, the captain closed the door on them, and resumed his walk up and down the quarter-deck.  As soon as left to themselves, the blacks broke out afresh, though in a way so guarded, as to confine their mirth to the galley.

“Cap’in Spike t’ink dat a ghost!” exclaimed Simon, with contempt.

“Guess if he see raal ghost, he find ’e difference,” answered Josh.  “One look at raal sperit wort’ two at dis object.”

Simon’s eyes now opened like two saucers, and they gleamed, by the light of the lamp they had, like dark balls of condensed curiosity, blended with awe, on his companion.

“You ebber see him, Josh?” he asked, glancing over each shoulder hurriedly, as it might be, to make sure that he could not see “him,” too.

“How you t’ink I get so far down the wale of life, Simon, and nebber see sich a t’ing?  I seed t’ree of the crew of the `Maria Sheffington,’ that was drowned by deir boat’s cap-sizin’, when we lay at Gibraltar, jest as plain as I see you now.  Then—­”