"About ten years ago," began my friend, Captain Green, "I went as
second mate of a ship named the 'Ocean King.' She'd been an old
Indiaman in her time, and had a poop and topgallant forecastle,
though alterations had knocked some of the dignity out of her. Her
channels had been changed into plates with dead-eyes above the rail,
and the eye missed the spread of the lower rigging that it naturally
sought in looking at a craft with a square stern and windows in it,
and checkered sides rounding out into curves, that made a complete
tub of the old hooker. Yet, spite of changes, the old-fashioned
grace would break through. She looked like a lady who has seen
better days, who has got to do work which servants did for her in the
times when she was well off, but who, let her set her hand to what
she will, makes you see that the breeding and the instincts are still
there, and that she's as little to be vulgarized by poverty and its
coarse struggles as she could be made a truer lady than she is by
money. Ships, like human beings, have their careers, and the close
of some of them is strange, and sometimes hard, I think.
"The 'Ocean King' had been turned into a collier, and I went second
mate of her when she was full up with coal for a South African port.
Yet, this ship, that was now carrying one of the dirtiest cargoes you
could name, barring phosphate manure, had been reckoned in her day a
fine passenger vessel, a noble Indiaman indeed--her tonnage was
something over eleven hundred--with a cuddy fitted up royally. Many
a freight of soldiers had she carried round the Cape, many an old
nabob had she conveyed--ay, and Indian potentates, who smoked out of
jeweled hookahs, and who were waited upon by crowds of black servants
in turbans and slippers. I used to moralize over her just as I would
over a tomb, when I had the watch and was alone and could let my
thoughts run loose.
"The sumptuous cabin trappings were all gone, and I seemed to smell
coal in the wind, even when my head was over the weather side, and
when the breeze that blew along came fresh across a thousand miles of
sea; but there was a good deal of the fittings left--fittings which,
I don't doubt, made the newspapers give a long account of this 'fine,
great ship' when she was launched--quite enough of them to enable a
man to reconstruct a picture of the cuddy of the 'Ocean King' as it
was in the days of her glory, when the soft oil-lamps shone bright on
the draped tables and sparkled on silver and glass; when the old
skipper, sitting with the mizzenmast behind him, would look, with his
red face and white hair, down the rows of ladies and gentlemen eating
and drinking, stewards running about, trays hanging from the deck
above, and globes full of gold-fish swinging to the roll of the
vessel as she swung stately, with her stunsails hanging out, over the
long blue swell, wrinkled by the wind. The ship is still afloat.
Where are the people she carried? The crews who have worked her?
The captains who have commanded her? There is nothing that should be
fuller of ghosts than an old ship; and I very well remember that when
I first visited the 'Victory,' at Portsmouth, and descended into her
cockpit, what I saw was not a well-preserved and cleanly length of
massive deck, but groups of wounded and bleeding and dying men
littering the dark floor, and the hatchway shadowed by groaning
figures handed below, while the smell of English, French, and Spanish
gunpowder, even down there, was so strong--phew! I could have spat
the flavor out!
"Well, the old 'Ocean King' had once upon a time been said to be
haunted. She had certainly been long enough afloat to own a hundred
stories, and she was so stanch and true that if ever a superstition
got into her there was no chance of its getting out again. I only
remember one of these yarns; it was told to me by the dockmaster, who
had been at sea for many years, was an old man, and knew the history
of all such craft as the 'Ocean King.' He said that, in '51, I think
it was, there had been a row among the crew: an Italian sailor
stabbed an Englishman, who bled to death. To avenge the Englishman's
death the rest of the crew, who were chiefly English, thrust the
Italian into the forepeak and let him lie there in darkness. When he
was asked for they reported that he had fallen overboard, and this
seems to have been believed. Whether the crew meant to starve him or
not is not certain; but, after he had been in the forepeak three or
four days, a fellow going behind the galley out of the way of the
wind to light his pipe--it being then four bells in the first
watch--came running into the forecastle, with his hair on end, and
the sweat pouring off his face, swearing he had seen the Italian's
ghost. This frightened the men prettily; some of them went down into
the forepeak, and found the Italian lying there dead, with a score of
rats upon him, which scampered off when the men dropped below.
During all the rest of the voyage his ghost was constantly seen,
sometimes at the lee wheel, sometimes astride of the flying-jibboom.
What was the end of it--I mean, whether the men confessed the murder,
and, if so, what became of them--the dockmaster said he didn't know.
But, be this as it may, I discovered shortly after we had begun our
voyage that the crew had got to hear of this story, and the chief
mate said it had been brought aboard by the carpenter, who had picked
it up from some of the dockyard laborers.
"I well recollect two uncomfortable circumstances; we sailed on a
Friday, and the able and ordinary seamen were thirteen in number, the
idlers and ourselves aft bringing up the ship's company to nineteen
souls! when, I suppose, in her prime the 'Ocean King' never left port
short of seventy or eighty seamen, not to mention stewards, cooks,
cooks' mates, butcher, butcher's mate, baker, and the rest of them.
But double topsail yards were now in; besides, I understood that the
vessel's masts had been reduced and her yards shortened, and we
carried stump fore and mizzen-topgallant masts.
"All being ready, a tug got hold of our tow-rope, and away we went
down the river and out to sea.
"I don't believe myself that any stories which had been told the men
about the ship impressed them much. Sailors are very superstitious,
but they are not to be scared till something has happened to frighten
them. Your merely telling them that there's a ghost aboard the ship
they're in won't alarm them till they've caught sight of the ghost.
But once let a man say to the others: 'There's a bloomin' sperrit in
this ship. Lay your head agin the forehatch, and you'll hear him
gnashing his teeth and rattlin' his chains,' and then let another man
go and listen, and swear, and perhaps very honestly, that he 'heerd
the noises plain,' and you'll have all hands in a funk, talking in
whispers, and going aloft in the dark nervously.
"In our ship nothing happened for some days. We were deep and slow,
and rolled along solemnly, the sea falling away from the vessel's
powerful round bows as from a rock. Pile what we could upon her,
with tacks aboard, staysails drawing, and the wind hitting her best
sailing point, we could seldom manage to get more than seven knots
out of her. One night I had the first watch. It was about two
bells. There was a nice wind, sea smooth, and a red moon crawling up
over our starboard beam. We were under all plain sail, leaning away
from the wind a trifle, and the water washed along under the bends in
lines through which the starlight ran glimmering.
"I was thinking over the five or six months' voyages which old wagons
after the pattern of this ship took in getting to India, when, seeing
a squall coming along, I sung out for hands to stand by the
main-royal and mizzen-topgallant halliards. It drove down dark, and
not knowing what was behind I ordered the main-royal to be clewed up
and furled. Two youngsters went aloft. By the time they were on the
yard the squall thinned, but I fancied there was another bearing
down, and thought it best to let the ordinary seamen roll the sail
up. On a sudden down they both trotted, hand over hand, leaving the
sail flapping in the clutch of the clew-lines.
"I roared out: 'What d'ye mean by coming down before you've furled
that sail?'
"They stood together in the main rigging, and one of them answered:
'Please, sir, there's a ghost somewhere up aloft on the
foretopsail-yard.'
"'A ghost, you fool!' I cried.
"'Yes, sir,' he answered. 'He says: "Jim, your mother wants yer." I
says: "What?" and he says: "Your mother wants yer," in the hollowest
o' voices. Dick here heard it. There's no one aloft forrard, sir.'
"I sung out to them to jump aloft again, and finding that they didn't
move I made a spring, on which they dropped like lightning on deck,
and began to beg and pray of me in the eagerest manner not to send
them aloft, as they were too frightened to hold on. Indeed, the
fellow named Jim actually began to shiver and cry when I threatened
him; so as the royal had to be furled I sent an able seaman aloft,
who, after rolling up the sail, came down and said that no voice had
called to him, and that he rather reckoned it was a bit of skylarking
on the part of the boys to get out of stowing the sail. However, I
noticed that the man was wonderfully quick over the job, and that
afterward the watch on deck stood talking in low voices in the waist.
"Jim was a fool of a youth, but Dick was a smart lad, aged about
nineteen, and good-looking, with a lively tongue, and I heard
afterward that he could spin a yarn to perfection all out of his
imagination. I called him to me, and asked him if he had really
heard a voice, and he swore he had.
"'Did it say,' said I, 'Jim, your mother wants you?'
"'Ay, sir,' he answered, with a bit of a shudder, 'as plain as you
yourself say it. It seemed to come off the foretop-gallant yard,
where I fancied I see something dark a-moving, but I was too
frightened to take particular notice.'
"Well, it was not long after this, about eleven o'clock in the
morning, that, the captain being on deck, the cook steps out of the
galley, comes walking along the poop, and going up to the skipper
touches his cap, and stands looking at him.
"'What d'ye want?' said the captain, eying him as if he took him to
be mad.
"'Didn't you call, sir?' says the cook.
"'Call!' cries the skipper. 'Certainly not.'
"The man looked stupid with surprise, and, muttering something to
himself, went forward. Ten minutes after he came up again to the
skipper, and says: 'Yes, sir!' as a man might who answers to a call.
The skipper began to swear at him, and called him a lunatic, and so
on; but the man, finding he was wrong again, grew white, and swore
that if he was on his death-bed he'd maintain that the captain had
called him twice.
"The skipper, who was a rather nervous man, turned to me, and said:
'What do you make of this, Mr. Green? I can't doubt the cook's word.
Who's calling him in my voice?'
"'Oh, it's some illusion, sir,' said I, feeling puzzled for all that.
"But the cook, with the tears actually standing in his eyes, declared
it was no illusion; he'd know the captain's voice if it was nine
miles off. And he then walked in a dazed way toward the forecastle,
singing out that whether the voice he had heard belonged to a ghost
or a Christian man, it might go on calling 'Cook!' for the next
twenty years without his taking further notice of it. This thing,
coming so soon after the call to Jim that had so greatly alarmed the
two ordinary seamen, made a great impression on the crew; and I never
regret anything more than that my position should have prevented me
from getting into their confidence, and learning their thoughts, for
there is no doubt I should have stowed away memories enough to serve
me for many a hearty laugh in after years.
"A few days rolled by without anything particular happening. One
night it came to my turn to have the first watch. It was a quiet
night, with wind enough to keep the sails still while the old ship
went drowsily rolling along her course to the African port. Suddenly
I heard a commotion forward, and fearing that some accident had
happened, I called out to know what the matter was. A voice
answered: 'Ghost or no ghost, there's somebody a-talking in the
forehold; come and listen, sir.' The silence that followed suggested
a good deal of alarm. I sang out as I approached the men, 'Perhaps
there's a stowaway below.'
"'It's no living voice,' was the reply; 'it sounds as if it comes
from a skelington.'
"I found a crowd of men standing in awed postures near the hatch, and
the most frightened of all looked to me to be the ordinary seaman
Dick, who had backed away on the other side of the hatch, and stood
looking on, leaning with his hands on his knees, and staring as if he
were fascinated. I waited a couple or three minutes, which, in a
business of this kind, seems a long time, and, hearing nothing, I was
going to ridicule the men for their nervousness, when a hollow voice
under the hatch said distinctly, 'It's a terrible thing to be a ghost
and not be able to get out.'
"I was greatly startled, and ran aft to tell the captain, who agreed
with me that there must be a stowaway in the hold, and that he had
gone mad. We both went forward, and the hatch was lifted, and we
looked on top of the coal; and I was then about to ask some of the
men to join me in a search in the forepeak, for upon my word I had no
taste single-handed for a job of that kind at such a moment, when the
voice said, 'There's no use looking, you'll never find me. I'm not
to be seen.'
"'Confound me!' cried the skipper, polishing his forehead with a
pocket-handkerchief, 'if ever I heard of such a thing. I'll tell you
what it is,' he shouted, looking into the hatch, 'dead men can't
talk, and so, as you're bound to be alive, you'd better come up out
of that, and smartly too--d'ye hear?--or you'll find this the worst
attempt at skylarking that was ever made.'
"There was a short silence, and you'd see all hands straining their
ears, for there was light enough for that, given out by a lantern one
of the men held.
"'You couldn't catch me because you couldn't see me,' said the voice
in a die-away tone, and this time it came from the direction of the
main hatch, as though it had flitted aft.
"'Well,' says the captain, 'may I be jiggered!' and without another
word he walked away on to the poop.
"I told the men to clap the hatches on again, and they did this in
double-quick time, evidently afraid that the ghost might pop up out
of the hold if they didn't mind their eye.
"All this made us very superstitious, from the captain down to the
boys. We talked it over in the cabin, and the mate was incredulous,
and disposed to ridicule me.
"'Any way,' said he, 'it's strange that this voice is only heard in
your watch. It's never favored me with any remarks. The creaking
and groaning of an old wooden ship is often like spoken words, and
what you've been hearing may be nothing but a deception of the ear.'
"'A deception in your eye,' cried the skipper. 'The timbers of an
old wooden ship may strain and creak in the Dutch language, but hang
me if they ever talked good, sensible English. However, I'm not
going to worry. For my part,' said he, with a nervous glance around
him, 'I don't believe in ghosts; whatever it is that's talking in the
hold may go on jawing, so long as he sticks to that, and don't
frighten the men with an ugly mug, nor come upon us for a man's
allowance.'
"'If it's anybody's ghost,' said I, 'it must be the Italian's, the
chap that was starved in the forepeak.'
"'I doubt that,' said the skipper. 'I didn't detect anything foreign
in what he said. To my ear it sounded more like Whitechapel than
Italiano.'
"Well, for another week we heard little more of the ghost. It's true
that one middle watch a chap I had sent aloft to loose the main-royal
had hardly stepped out of the lower rigging, after lingering in the
crosstrees to overhaul his clew-lines, when he comes rushing up to me
and cries out, 'I've been hailed from aloft, sir! a voice has just
sung out, "Tommy, jump aloft again that I may have a good look at
you!"'
"'Who's up there?' I asked him, staring into the gloom where the mast
and yards went towering.
"'There's no one up there, sir; I'll swear it. I was bound to see
him had any one been there,' he answered, evidently very much
frightened.
"It occurred to me that some one of the crew might be lying hid in
the top, and that if I could catch him I might find out who the ghost
was. So I jumped into the rigging and trotted aloft, keeping my eye
on the lee rigging, to make sure that no one descended by it. I
gained the top, but nobody was there. I mounted to the crosstrees,
but the deuce a sign of any one could I see. I came down, feeling
both foolish and scared; for you see I had heard the voice myself in
the hold; there was no question that there was a voice, belonging to
nobody knew what, knocking about the ship, and consequently it was
now impossible to help believing a man when he said he heard it.
"However, it was necessary to keep the men in heart, and this was not
to be done by captain and mates appearing scared; so I reasoned a bit
with the man, told him that there were no such things as ghosts, that
a voice was bound to come from a live person, because a spectre
couldn't possibly have lungs, those organs being of a perishable
nature, and then sent him forward, but no easier in his mind, I
suspect, than I was. Anyhow, I was glad when eight bells struck and
it was my turn to go below. But, as I have said, nothing much came
of this--at least, nothing that reached my ears. But not many nights
following the ship lay becalmed--there wasn't a breath of air, and
the sea lay smooth as polished jet. This time I had the middle watch
again. I was walking quietly up and down the poop, on the lookout
for a deeper shadow upon the sea to indicate the approach of wind,
when a man came up the ladder and said, 'There's some one a-talking
to the ship under the bows.'
"'Are you awake?' said I.
"'Heaven help me, as I stand here, sir,' exclaimed the fellow,
solemnly, 'if that there woice which talked in the hold t'other day
ain't now over the side.'
"I ran forward, and found most of the watch huddled together near the
starboard cathead. I peered over, and there was a dead silence.
"'What are you looking over that side for? I'm here!' said a thin,
faint voice, that seemed more in the air than in the sea.
"There!' exclaimed one of the seamen, in a hoarse whisper, 'that's
the third time. Whichever side we look, he's on the other.'
"'But there must be some one in the water,' said another man.
'Anybody see his houtline? cuss me if I couldn't swear I see a chap
swimmin' just now.'
"'No, no,' answered some one, gruffly, 'nothing but phosphorus, Joe,
and the right sort o' stuff, too, for if this ain't old Nick--'
"'You're a liar, Sam!' came the voice clear, and, as one could swear,
plain from over the side.
"There was a general recoil, and a sort of groan ran among the men.
"At the same moment I collared a figure standing near me, and slued
him round to bring his face fair to the starlight, clear of the
staysail. 'Come you along with me, Master Dick,' said I; and I
marched him off the forecastle, along the main deck, and up on to the
poop. 'So _you're_ the ghost, eh?' said I. 'Why, to have kept your
secret you should have given my elbow a wider berth. No wonder the
voice only makes observations in my watch. You're too lazy, I
suppose, to leave your hammock to try your wonderful power on the
mate, eh? Now see here,' said I, finding him silent, and noticing
how white his face glimmered to the stars, 'I know you're the man, so
you'd better confess. Own the truth and I'll keep your secret,
providing you belay all further tricks of the same kind; deny that
you're the ghost and I'll speak to the captain and set the men upon
you.'
"This fairly frightened him. 'Well, sir, it's true; I'm the voice,
sir; but for God's sake keep the secret, sir. The men 'ud have my
life if they found out that it was me as scared them.'
"This confession was what I needed, for though when standing pretty
close to him on the forecastle I could have sworn that it was he who
uttered the words which perplexed and awed the sailors, yet so
perfect was the deception, so fine, in short, was his skill as a
ventriloquist that, had he stoutly denied and gone on denying that he
was the 'voice,' I should have believed him and continued sharing in
the wonder and superstition of the crew. I kept his secret as I
promised; but, somehow or other, it leaked out in time that he could
deceive the ear by apparently pitching his voice among the rigging,
or under the deck, or over the side, though the discovery was not
made until the 'ghost' had for a long time ceased to trouble the
ship's company, and until the men's superstitious awe had faded
somewhat, and they had recovered their old cheerfulness. We then
sent for Dick to the cabin, where he gave us a real entertainment as
a ventriloquist, imitating all sorts of animals, and producing sounds
as of women in distress and men singing out for help, in the berths;
indeed, such was the skill that I'd often see the skipper and mate
turning startled to look in the direction whence the voices proceeded.
"He made his peace with the men by amusing them in the same way; so
that, instead of getting the rope's ending aft and the pummeling
forward which he deserved, he ended as a real and general favorite,
and one of the most amusing fellows that a man ever was shipmate
with. I used to tell him that if he chose to perform ashore, he was
sure to make plenty of money, since such ventriloquial powers as his
was the rarest thing in the world; and I'd sometimes fancy he meant
to take my advice. But whether he died or kept on going to sea I
don't know, for after he left the ship I never saw nor heard of him
again."