“Well, Jack!” bluntly observed the latter in a gruff whisper that resembled the suppressed growling of a mastiff, “what the hell are ye thinking of now?—­Not got over your flumbustification yet, that ye stand here, looking as sanctified as an old parson!”

“I’ll tell ye what it is, Mr. Mullins,” returned the sailor, in the same key; “you may make as much game on me as you like; but these here strange sort of doings are somehow quizzical; and, though I fears nothing in the shape of flesh and blood, still, when it comes to having to do with those as is gone to Davy Jones’s locker like, it gives a fellow an all-overishness as isn’t quite the thing.  You understand me?”

“I’m damned if I do!” was the brief but energetic rejoinder.

“Well, then,” continued Fuller, “if I must out with it, I must.  I think that ’ere Ingian must have been the devil, or how could he come so sudden and unbeknownst upon me, with the head of a ’possum:  and then, agin, how could he get away from the craft without our seeing him? and how came the ghost on board of the canoe?”

“Avast there, old fellow; you means not the head of a ’possum, but a beaver:  but that ’ere’s all nat’r’l enough, and easily ’counted for; but you hav’n’t told us whose ghost it was, after all.”

“No; the captain made such a spring to the gunwale, as frighted it all out of my head:  but come closer, Mr. Mullins, and I’ll whisper it in your ear.—­Hark! what was that?”

“I hears nothing,” said the boatswain, after a pause.

“It’s very odd,” continued Fuller; “but I thought as how I heard it several times afore you came.”

“There’s something wrong, I take it, in your upper story, Jack Fuller,” coolly observed his companion; “that ’ere ghost has quite capsized you.”

“Hark, again!” repeated the sailor.  “Didn’t you hear it then?  A sort of a groan like.”

“Where, in what part?” calmly demanded the boatswain, though in the same suppressed tone in which the dialogue had been, carried on.

“Why, from the canoe that lies alongside there.  I heard it several times afore.”

“Well, damn my eyes, if you a’rn’t turned a real coward at last,” politely remarked Mr. Mullins.  “Can’t the poor fat devil of a Canadian snooze a bit in his hammock, without putting you so completely out of your reckoning?”

“The Canadian—­the Canadian!” hurriedly returned Fuller:  “why, don’t you see him there, leaning with his back to the main-mast, and as fast asleep as if the devil himself couldn’t wake him?”

“Then it was the devil, you heard, if you like,” quaintly retorted Mullins:  “but bear a hand, and tell us all about this here ghost.”

“Hark, again! what was that?” once more enquired the excited sailor.

“Only a gust of wind passing through the dried boughs of the canoe,” said the boatswain:  “but since we can get nothing out of that crazed noddle of yours, see if you can’t do something with your hands.  That ’ere canoe running alongside, takes half a knot off the ship’s way.  Bear a hand then, and cast off the painter, and let her drop astarn, that she may follow in our wake.  Hilloa! what the hell’s the matter with the man now?”