The Ghost Ship | Page 4

on the anvil as an
apology. He wears it on his watch-chain now. But I must get on with
my story; if I start telling you about the queer happenings at Fairfield
I'll never stop.
It all came of the great storm in the spring of '97, the year that we had
two great storms. This was the first one, and I remember it very well,
because I found in the morning that it had lifted the thatch of my pigsty
into the widow's garden as clean as a boy's kite. When I looked over the
hedge, widow--Tom Lamport's widow that was--was prodding for her
nasturtiums with a daisy-grubber. After I had watched her for a little I
went down to the "Fox and Grapes" to tell landlord what she had said
to me. Landlord he laughed, being a married man and at ease with the
sex. "Come to that," he said, "the tempest has blowed something into
my field. A kind of a ship I think it would be."
I was surprised at that until he explained that it was only a ghost-ship
and would do no hurt to the turnips. We argued that it had been blown
up from the sea at Portsmouth, and then we talked of something else.
There were two slates down at the parsonage and a big tree in Lumley's
meadow. It was a rare storm.
I reckon the wind had blown our ghosts all over England. They were
coming back for days afterwards with foundered horses and as footsore
as possible, and they were so glad to get back to Fairfield that some of
them walked up the street crying like little children. Squire said that his
great-grandfather's great-grandfather hadn't looked so dead-beat since
the battle of Naseby, and he's an educated man.
What with one thing and another, I should think it was a week before
we got straight again, and then one afternoon I met the landlord on the
green and he had a worried face. "I wish you'd come and have a look at
that ship in my field," he said to me; "it seems to me it's leaning real
hard on the turnips. I can't bear thinking what the missus will say when
she sees it."
I walked down the lane with him, and sure enough there was a ship in
the middle of his field, but such a ship as no man had seen on the water
for three hundred years, let alone in the middle of a turnip-field. It was
all painted black and covered with carvings, and there was a great bay

window in the stern for all the world like the Squire's drawing-room.
There was a crowd of little black cannon on deck and looking out of
her port-holes, and she was anchored at each end to the hard ground. I
have seen the wonders of the world on picture-postcards, but I have
never seen anything to equal that.
"She seems very solid for a ghost-ship," I said, seeing the landlord was
bothered.
"I should say it's a betwixt and between," he answered, puzzling it over,
"but it's going to spoil a matter of fifty turnips, and missus she'll want it
moved." We went up to her and touched the side, and it was as hard as
a real ship. "Now there's folks in England would call that very curious,"
he said.
Now I don't know much about ships, but I should think that that
ghost-ship weighed a solid two hundred tons, and it seemed to me that
she had come to stay, so that I felt sorry for landlord, who was a
married man. "All the horses in Fairfield won't move her out of my
turnips," he said, frowning at her.
Just then we heard a noise on her deck, and we looked up and saw that
a man had come out of her front cabin and was looking down at us very
peaceably. He was dressed in a black uniform set out with rusty gold
lace, and he had a great cutlass by his side in a brass sheath. "I'm
Captain Bartholomew Roberts," he said, in a gentleman's voice, "put in
for recruits. I seem to have brought her rather far up the harbour."
"Harbour!" cried landlord; "why, you're fifty miles from the sea."
Captain Roberts didn't turn a hair. "So much as that, is it?" he said
coolly. "Well, it's of no consequence."
Landlord was a bit upset at this. "I don't want to be unneighbourly," he
said, "but I wish you hadn't brought your ship into my field. You see,
my wife sets great store on these turnips."
The captain took a pinch of snuff out of a fine gold box that he pulled
out of his pocket, and dusted his fingers