No, sir,” said the night-watchman, as he took a seat on a post at the
end of the jetty, and stowed a huge piece of tobacco in his cheek. “No,
man an’ boy, I was at sea forty years afore I took on this job, but I
can’t say as ever I saw a real, downright ghost.”
This was disappointing, and I said so. Previous experience of the power
of Bill’s vision had led me to expect something very different.
“Not but what I’ve known some queer things happen,” said Bill, fixing
his eyes on the Surrey side, and going off into a kind of trance.
“Queer things.”
I waited patiently; Bill’s eyes, after resting for some time on Surrey,
began to slowly cross the river, paused midway in reasonable hopes of a
collision between a tug with its flotilla of barges and a penny
steamer, and then came back to me.
“You heard that yarn old Cap’n Harris was telling the other day about
the skipper he knew having a warning one night to alter his course, an’
doing so, picked up five live men and three dead skeletons in a open
boat?” he inquired.