The Ghost Ship | Page 6

him, the smoke trail suddenly lifted a bit
to leeward and leaving the horizon clear, I caught sight again of the
ship I had seen over the rail. This, of course, at once changed the
current of my thoughts; and so, without troubling my head any further
about "Conky," I sang out as eagerly as before to the first mate, all the
more anxious now to prove that I had been right in the first instance,
"There she is, Mr Fosset, there she is!"
"Where on earth are you squinting now, boy?" said he, a bit huffy at
not making her out and apparently inclined to Spokeshave's opinion
that I had not really seen her at all. "Where away?"
"There, sir, away to leeward," cried I, almost jumping over the bridge
rail in my excitement. "She's nearly abreast of our mizzen chains and
not a mile off. She seems coming up on the port tack, sir!"
For, strangely enough, although we were going ten knots good by the
aid of the wind that had worked round more abeam, so that all our fore
and aft sail drew, while the ship, which, when I saw her before, seemed
to be running with the nor'-easter and sailing at a tangent to our course
so that she ought really to have increased her distance from us, now, on
the contrary, appeared ever so much nearer, as if she had either altered
her helm or drifted closer by the aid of some ocean current in the
interim; albeit, barely five minutes at the best, if that, had only elapsed
since I first sighted her.
But, stranger still, Mr Fosset could not see her, when there she was as
plain as the sun setting in the west awhile ago--at least to my eyes; and,

as she approached nearer yet in some unaccountable way, for her bows
were pointed from us and the wind, of course, was blowing in the
opposite direction, she being on our lee, I declare I could distinctly see
a female figure, like that of a young girl with long hair, on the deck aft;
and beside her I also noticed a large black dog, jumping up and down!
"I'm sure I can't see any ship, youngster," said Mr Fosset at the moment.
Even while he was actually speaking, I observed the sailing vessel to
yaw in her course, her ragged canvas flattening against the masts as if
she were coming about, although from the way her head veered about,
she did not seem to be under any control. "There's nothing in sight,
Haldane, I tell you. What you perhaps thought was a ship is that big
black cloud rising to the southward. It looks like one of those nasty sea
fogs working up, and we'll have to keep a precious sharp look- out
to-night, I know."
"There's no ship there," echoed my friend "Conky," tapping his
forehead in a very offensive way to intimate that I had "a screw loose in
the upper storey," as the saying goes, grinning the while as I could see
very well in the dim light and poking his long nose up in the air in
supreme contempt. "The boy is either mad, or drunk, or dreaming, as
you say, sir. It is all a cock and a bull yarn about his sighting a vessel,
and he only wants to brave it out. There's no ship there!"
"Can you see anything, Atkins?" asked Mr Fosset of the man steering.
"There away to leeward, I mean."
"No, sir," answered the sailor; "not a speck, sir."
"Do you see anything, lamp-trimmer?"
"No; can't say I does, sir," replied old Greazer, after a long squint over
our lee in the direction pointed out, "Not a sight of a sail, nor a light,
nor nothink!"
It was curious.
For, at that very moment, when the first mate and Spokeshave and the

helmsman and lamp-trimmer, standing on the bridge beside me, one
and all said they could see nothing, I declare to you I saw not only the
ship and the figures on her deck, but I noticed that the girl on the poop
waved a scarf or handkerchief, as if imploring our assistance; and, at
the same time, the dog near her bounded up against the bulwarks, and I
can solemnly assert from the evidence of my ears that I heard the
animal distinctly bark, giving out that joyous sort of bark with which a
well- dispositioned dog invariably greets a friend of his master or
mistress.
I could not make it out at all.
It was most mysterious.
"Look, look, Mr Fosset!" I cried excitedly. "There she is now! There
she is, coming up on our lee quarter! Why, you must be all blind! I can
not only see the ship