It was the end of harvest-time; the weather was very sultry, and the
night cloudy and overcast.
I thought, as I hurried home, we should soon have a heavy thunder-storm,
and fancied the summer lightning was more vivid than usual.
Just as I reached my father's door, I was startled by the sudden
flashing of a fierce flame in the direction of the mansion of the new
heir to the splendid estate he inherited from his uncle.
I doubted for a moment, but then was perfectly sartain the Hall was on
fire.
I dashed off at the top of my speed, taking the nearest cut across the
fields to the scene of the conflagrashun.
As I was pelting along, I heard the fire-bell sounding from the police
barracks, but I got to the place before the sogers or peelers had a
chance of reaching it.
A glance convinced me the ould place was doomed; the flames had burst
through the lower windows, and were carried by the lattice-work, that
reached high above the portico, to the upper story.
While I was looking at the blazing pile, a horseman galloped at full
speed up the avenue. Just as he had almost reached the Hall door, and
was reining in his horse to dismount, four or five dark figures appeared
to spring suddenly out of the ground, and I heard the report of
fire-arms--two distinct shots I could swear to. At the first, one of
the party, who sought to intercept the mounted man, fell; at the second,
the rider rolled from his saddle heavily to the ground, and then the
other figures disappeared as suddenly as they had at first sprung up.
I was so thunderstruck, that for some few minutes I could not stir from
the spot.
Seeing no sign of the approach of the military or police, curiosity, or
some strong feeling, got the better of my prudence, and I hurried
forward to the scene of slaughter, for such in my heart I felt it was--
in the case of at least of one of the fallen men. And there, with the
lurid light of the burning building flashing across his deathlike face,
and the purple blood welling up from a wound in his chest through his
cambric shirt-frill, lay, stretched in death, the newly appointed agent,
and, close beside him, O'Rourke, still living, but drawing every breath
with such difficulty that I felt certain his last hour had come.
I raised his head, and spoke to him. He knew my voice, and, by a
superhuman effort, managed to support himself on his elbow, as he took a
small purse from his breast-pocket; he placed it in my hand, and said,
"Phil, darlin', I know you've the brave and thrue heart, though it's
only a boy you are. Listen to my last words. Kape my secret, for my
sake; never let on to man or mortial you saw me here. Give that purse
to Mary--take her to her frinds in Amerikay--she'll never hear of _this_
there, and may larn in time to forget me. Tell her we shall meet in a
better place; and hark! my eyes are growing dark, but I can hear well
enough, there are futsteps--they are coming this way; run, for your
life; if you are found here, you will die on the gallows, and that would
break your poor old father and mother's hearts! Bless you, Phil,
alanna! Remember my last words, and, as you hope for mercy, do my
bidding!"
He drew a deep sigh, fell heavily from my arms, rolled over on his side,
and there--with the dead agent's fixed and glassy eyes staring the
frightful stare of death straight at him--lay cowld and still!
The sound of the futsteps came nearer and nearer. I started at my best
speed for home. When I stepped into the house, the children had been
put to bed, but the ould people were still talking by the dim light of
the nearly burnt-out turf fire. I wished them good-night, plading
fataigue, and reached my small room without their having an opportunity
of noticing the state of alarm and agitation I was in.
The next day was an awful one for me. The violent death of the
middleman was in every one's mouth; but it was some relief to find no
mention was made of the finding the corpse of poor O'Rourke.
I concluded the footsteps we had both heard were those of some of his
associates, and that they had carried off and concealed his body.
I fulfilled O'Rourke's wishes to the best of my power; saw Mary Sheean
safe on boord ship, put her in the care of a dacent, middle-aged
countrywoman of her own--and as I was assuring her, in O'Rourke's words,
that he would soon join her, all I had to say was cut short by the
arrival of a parcel of peelers on boord, and the rason of their coming
was the assassination of the agent had been discovered. O'Rourke was
missing, and so suspicion fell on him--and there was a reward of two
hundred pounds offered for him. It was thought possible he might be on
boord the _George Washington_, and they had come, with a full
description of his person, to sarch the ship.
The passengers--and it was a tadeous job--were all paraded--over three
hundred in the steerage, let alone the cabin and the crew--every part of
the ship was overhauled, but, as may naturally be supposed, no Miles
O'Rourke was found.
I need scarcely tell yez, boys, what a relief that was to pretty Mary
Sheean and myself.
When the police-officers had left the _George Washington_, she beckoned
me to her, and whispered, "Thanks be to the Lord he was not on boord!
though I know he would never take any man's life; still, as he was out
that night, it would have gone hard wid him. But, never fear, he'll
come by the next ship; and so I'll wait and watch for him at New York.
There's his box--take care of it for him till we get there; and see,
here's the kay--mind that, too; maybe I'd lose it."
I hadn't the heart to undecaive her, so I answered her as cheerfully as
I could, put the kay in my pocket and the box in my locker, and went
about my business, wid a mighty heavy heart entirely.
All went on smoothly enough--but about the tenth day after we sailed, a
report got afloat that the ship was haunted.
At first, the captain only laughed at such an absurd rumour; but finding
the men believed it, and went unwillingly about their duty after dark,
unless in couples, he set to work to find out who had been the first
person to circulate the story.
After a deal of dodging and prevarication, it was traced to black Sam,
the nigger cook.
The skipper called the ould darky up to the quarter-deck, and then, in
the hearing of the cabin-passengers and most of the crew, the cook
stated, afther we had been at say for a few days, that one night, as he
was dozing in the caboose, he was startled by the appearance of a tall
figure, with a face as pallid as death, noiselessly entering through the
half-open door. The ghost--for such Sam was willing to swear it was, to
use his own words, "on a stack of bibles as high as the main topmast"--
had on a blood-stained shroud. It slowly approached the terror-stricken
cook, who, fearing it intended to do him some bodily harrum, sprang from
his bunk, and yell'd loudly for assistance. At the first sound of Sam's
voice, the lamp wint out of itself, and the ghost vanished.
Several sailors bore testimony to hearing the cook screaming for help--
to the fearful state of fright he was in; and, as they could see no
trace of the apparition Sam so minutely described, confirmed his report
as to the sudden disappearance of the supernatural intruder.
This was the origin of the report; but, some days after, at least half a
dozen seamen declared they had seen the self-same spectre gliding about
the deck soon after midnight; and among them the boatswain, as brave a
fellow as ever brandished a rope's-end, declared that, upon waking
suddenly one night, he saw the ghost sated on his locker, either
imitating the action of a person ating voraciously, or making a series
of such horribly ugly grimaces as would have done honour to Vanity Fair
itself.
The whole affair was considered a good joke by the skipper and
cabin-passengers; but those in the steerage and the ship's crew placed
implicit confidence in the cook's narrative, corroborated and supported
as it was by the sailors and the boatswain.
For my part, I had no faith in any worse sperrits than those than that
come out of a bottle, or, maybe, a hogshead, and I lost no chance of
trotting out the friends of the ghost.
But my turn had to come--and come it did, with a vingeance.
One night, boy-like, I had been braggin' mightily loud about my courage.
Ould Sam offered to bet his three days' grog against mine I daren't
slape in the caboose he had deserted since he saw the sperrit that same
night.
The wager was made, and I turned in, thinking what a laugh I should have
against the ould darky when I handed him back his complement of rum.
I'll do the ould nagur the justice to say, whin I accepted the wager, he
offered to let me off; and, when he found I was determined to stick to
it, he warned me, with a sigh that sounded like a groan, I had much
better not; but anyway, happen what might, he hoped I would hould him
harmless, and forgive him for my misfortune, if any should overtake me.
Wid a smile, bedad! I promised to do so, and, when the time came,
turned into the bunk, and was soon fast aslape.
How long this lasted, I don't know; but I was suddenly awoke by feeling
a cowld, clammy hand passing over my face, and whin I opened my
pay-pers, judge of my dread whin I saw the lank spectre I had been
making a joke of standing by my side. Bedad! if Saint Patrick's
Cathedral was stuck in my throat, I couldn't have felt more nearly
choked. The crature, whatever it was, seemed as tall as the manemast,
and as thin as a rasher of wind.
Every hair on my head sprang up, and my eyes seemed starting out of
their sockets to meet those of the ghost, which were as big as saucers,
and were fixed on mine with a look that seemed to go through and through
them, and come out at the back of my head.
I tried to cry out, but I couldn't; but if my tongue couldn't chatter,
my teeth could. If the big skeleton's bones had been put in an empty
cask, and well shuck up by a couple of strong min, they couldn't have
made a bigger noise than my jaws did.
I tried my hardest to remimber and reharse a prayer; but sorrow the
taste of one would come into my head. Shure, everything dacent was
frightened clane out of it. The only good thing I could call to mind
was what my mother taught me to say before males. I thought that was
better than nothing, so I whispered out, while I was shivering with the
fear that was upon me, "For what I am going to recave, may the Lord make
me truly thankful!"
Whin I had done, the ghost's jaws moved, and, in a voice so hoarse and
hollow, that it might have come from the bottom of a churchyard vault,
half-moaned, half-groaned, "It's grace you're saying, you imperint young
blaggard!"
"It is," says I, trimbling all over. "That is, if it's not displasing
to your honour's lordship."
"That depinds," says he, "upon what you are going to give me to ate
after it."
"Ate!" says I. "Why, thin, be good to us! can you ate?"
"Thry me," says he, "and you'll see whether I can or not; and make
haste, for my time's short! I must go down agin almost immadiately, and
it isn't the bit or sup I've had for near onto five days; and by rason
of that, although I was a strong man once, it's nearly gone I am!"
"Gone where?" I asked.
"To my grave," says he.
"Bad cess to them, whoever they were, that ought to have done it, and
didn't! Haven't they buried you yet?" I inquired.
"What would they bury me for?" says he.
"It's customary with corpses where I come from," I answered.
"I come from the same place," says he. "They are bad enough there, in
all conscience--more particularly, by the same token, the middlemen,
tithe-proctors, and excisemen; but they didn't bury live min in my
time," says he.
"But they did dead ones," says I.
"Of coorse," he assented. "And it's you that will have to bury me
mighty soon, unless--"
"Unless what?" I demanded, in a bigger fright than ever at the thought
of having to turn sexton to a sperrit.
"Well, unless you give me something to ate and drink," says he.
"Take all there is in that locker," says I, "and welcome--and be off out
of this."
"Don't say it agin," says he; and he opened the locker, and walked into
the cook's store like a shark that had been kaping a six weeks' fast.
It was wonderful to see how the tears stood in the poor ghost's eyes,
how his jaws worked, and his throat swelled, as he swallowed mouthful
after mouthful, the bigness of a big man's fist. In a few minutes he
turned to me, and said, "Take my blessing for this, Phil!"
I was startled to hear the ghost call me by my own name; but as I didn't
want to encourage him to kape on visiting terms, I thought it wouldn't
do to let him become too familiar, so I said, mighty stiff like, "Fill
yourself, honest spirit, as much as you plase, but don't be Phil-ing
me--I don't like such freedom on a short acquaintance--and you are no
friend of mine," says I.
"I was onct," he replied.
"When?" asked I.
"When we were in the ould counthry," says he. "When you tuck the purse
from me for Mary Sheean, and promised to spake the last words I spoke to
her."
When I heard him say that, all my ould fears came over me fifty times
stronger than ever, for hadn't I broken my promise to O'Rourke? And I
could see now, from the family likeness, this was his spirit; and
instead of telling her _all_ he said, only given half his message to
poor Mary!
"Oh, be me sowl, good ghost!" says I.
"If I'm a ghost, I'm--"
He made a long pause, so I spoke.
"Never mind _what_," says I. "I don't want to axe any _post-mortem_
questions--"
"_Blest_!" says he.
"That's a great relief entirely," says I. "But if you are blessed, I'm
no fit company for you; so never mind your manners--don't stay to bid me
good-by, but go at onct!"
"You don't want me to stay?" says he.
"I don't," I replied.
"You are more changed than I am," he added.
"I shouldn't wonder," says I, "seeing the sort of company I am in."
"Do you find fault with my company?" asked he.
"I do," says I.
"And you wish me to go--down below again?"
"As soon as convanient," says I.
"Well, Philip Donavan," says he, "aither I or you are mortially
changed."
"It's you," says I. "My turn hasn't come yet, but it will, all in good
time."
"Phil Donavan, do you know who you are spaking to?"
"Faix I do, to my sorrow!" says I; "to Miles O'Rourke's ghost!"
"Miles O'Rourke's ghost!" says he.
"Dickens a doubt of it!" says I. "Didn't I see his body lying stark and
dead, wid the blood welling out in gallons from his heart?"
"It wasn't my heart, man alive--it was my shoulder; and shure it was the
loss of that same that made me faint! Take a hould of my hand, if you
doubt me! There's little left of it but skin and bone; but it's human
still!"
It was moightily against my own wish,--and wid a cowld shiver running
down my back, I did as he asked; but whin I did catch a hould of his
fist, ghost or no ghost, he nearly made mine into a jelly wid the
squeeze he gave it.
"Murther alive!" says I.
"Hould your whist! Remember, I'm a ghost!" says he.
"That's thrue for you!" says I; "and you must continue one for the rest
of the voyage, or maybe you will be trated as something worse!"
"What's that?" he asked.
"A stowaway!" says I. "The skipper's a good man enough; but if he
discovers you, the way he'll sarve you will be awful!"
"What will he do?" inquired he.
"Give you thirty-nine and land you!" says I.
"Land me where?"
"In the middle of the say!" says I.
"Murther!" says he.
"Moighty like it," says I; "but he'll do it!"
"I'd have to give up the ghost then!" says he.
"You would, in airnest!" I tould him. "But you mustn't do it yet.
Tell me how you come on boord?"
"I will," says he. "When the boys found me, I had only a flesh wound,
and had fainted from loss of blood. They got a car, and smuggled me
down to Cork. I had scarcely set my fut on deck, as the peelers came
rowing up the side. When the order was given to muster all hands, I
made my way to the hould, and hid myself in the straw in an empty crate
in the darkest corner of the place. The men searched pretty closely,
but, as good luck would have it, they passed by my hiding-place."
"You must go back to it. But now, Miles O'Rourke, answer me one
question, and, as you are a man, answer it truly!"
"What is it?"
"Did you kill the agint?"
Wake as was O'Rourke, he stood grandly up; the ould honest, proud look
came into his pale, wasted, but still handsome face; and pointing his
long, thin finger to heaven, he said, in a deep, low tone, the
earnestness of which I shall never forget to my dying day, "_As I hope
for justice some day here, and mercy hereafter_, I did not!"
The hug I gave him would have broken many a strong man's ribs, let alone
a ghost's; but I couldn't help it. Bedad, if I had been a Roosian bear
itself, that hug would have been a credit to me.
"What on earth am I to do?" asked Miles.
"Anything you plase," says I, "whin you get there! But you are on the
water now, worse luck--and that's what bothers me. I wouldn't give a
thrawneen for your life, if you are discovered and recognised as Miles
O'Rourke. There's two hundred pounds reward offered for you, and the
evidence seems pretty strong against you."
"How would they know me?" says he. "You didn't--and no wonder! Shure
whin I came on boord I weighed fourteen stone; and now, ten stone in the
one scale would pitch me up to the ceiling out of the other!"
"That's thrue enough," says I; "but you must bear in mind I tuck you for
somebody else's ghost, and didn't make any allowance for the starving
you have had, which, particularly as a stowaway, they would be sure to
do. But now you must get back to the hould. I'll contrive to drop half
my rations and a trifle of grog down every day--see Mary, and consult
with her. Shure, one woman's wit is worth a dozen men's in a case like
this."
"But--" says he.
"Hush!" says I; "I hear futsteps. We are in a tight place now! There's
only one chance for us: I'm aslape, and you're a ghost again!"
I fell back in my bunk, and began snoring like a porker wid the
influenzey, just as the door opened, and the ould nagur poked in his
black woolly mop.
Miles stood up to his full height, and raised his hands above his head,
as if he was going to pounce upon him.
The poor cook, terrified beyond measure, fell down as flat as a flounder
on his face, shrieking out at the top of his voice, "The ghost!--the
ghost!"
O'Rourke stepped over his body, and hurried back to his hiding-place,
unseen by the bewildered sailors.
I pretended to awake from a sound slape, and had the pleasure of hearing
the toughest yarn that ever was spun, from Sam, in which he gave a
soul-thrilling description of his encounter and hand-to-hand fight with
the dreadful apparition.
I saw Mary the next morning, and broke the news of O'Rourke's being on
board as gently as I could. Our plans were soon laid. By the time we
came to an anchor off New York, I contrived to drop, unseen by any one,
a bundle, containing a suit of O'Rourke's clothes, shaving materials,
and a small looking-glass, down the hold.
When the passengers were paraded, the police-officer, who had remained
on board, was too much engaged reading the following description of a
supposed murderer to pay much attention to pretty Mary Sheean, or the
poor, pale, stooping invalid she was supporting.
"Two hundred pounds reward for the apprehension of Miles O'Rourke.
Description.--Florid face, curling brown hair, large and muscular
limbs, finely developed chest. Height, about six feet; weight, rather
under fourteen stone."
Unlike as the half-starved wreck was to what he had been when he came on
boord, I was in an agony of fear, until I saw Mary safely landed on the
Battery, convulsively grasping the hand of the Ship's Ghost.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Yes, Paddy," says the doctor, "that's all very cheerful and
entertaining, but decidedly unscientific, and you didn't tell us how you
got here."
"Not he!" said Scudds, growling; "I thought it war going to be a real
ghost."
"I say, look at him!" said Bostock.
But nobody would stop to look at him; the men shuffling off once more--
all but the doctor and myself--as that figure regularly melted away
before our eyes--body, bones, clothes, everything; and at the end of
five minutes there was nothing there but a little dust and some clear
ice.
"It's very wonderful!" the doctor said; "but it won't do. We must find
another, take him up carefully, and not thaw him out, but get him back
to Hull in his ice, like a glass case."
"Come back, lads; the Irishman's gone," I said; and they came back
slowly; and we had to set up the tent in a fresh place, and, while we
did it, the doctor found another body, and set us to work to get it out.
We got this one out capitally; the ice running like in a grain; and
after six hours' hard work, there lay the body, like an ornament in a
glass paper-weight, and the doctor was delighted.
About two hours after, as we were all sitting together in the tent, we
heard a sharp crack, and started; but the doctor said it was only the
ice splitting with the heat of the sun; and so it proved, for five
minutes after, in came a gaunt, weird-looking figure, with a strange
stare in his glimmering, grey eyes; a wild toss in his long yellow hair
and beard, both of which were dashed with patches of white, that looked
as though the colour had changed by damp or mildew, or the bitter,
searching cold. With such a dreamy, far-off gaze, he looked beyond the
men who sat opposite, that they turned involuntarily and glanced over
their shoulders, as though they expected to see something uncanny
peering at them from behind. His long limbs and wiry frame, together
with this strange, eerie expression, give him the air of some old viking
or marauding Jute come to life again, and ready to recite a Norse
_rune_, or to repeat a mystic _saga_ of the deep, impenetrable North.
"Eh," he said, "I was just thinkin' a bit aboot the time when I went wi'
Captain Parry to his expedition."
"Why, you weren't with Captain Parry?" said the doctor.
"It's aboot mysel' I meant to tel ye, if ye'll no' be so clever wi'
contradictin', and I say once more--(here he glowered into space, as
though he saw something a long way off)--I was thinking about a man I
met wi' in about eighty-two degrees o' latitude, when I was out wi'
Captain Parry on the third expedition of the _Hecla_, in 1827, at which
time I was no more than forty year old."
"Forty in 1827!" said the doctor. "Why, how old do you make yourself?"
"I'll no mak' _mysel'_ any age; but let us--no' to be particular to a
year or so--put me down at seventy-six or seventy-eight."
"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed Scudds. "Why, man, you're not above fifty."
"Weel, if ye maun tell my story yersels--maybe ye'll gi'e me leave to
turn in, or light my pipe. I'll no' speak if ye've no wish to hear; but
now I mind that I'm eighty-four year old last Thursday was a week, for I
was four-and-twenty when I first had ten years' sleep at Slievochan."
The man's eyes were fixed on space, as though he saw all that he was
about to narrate going on in some strange way in the dim distance; and
except an occasional grunt of interest, a deep-drawn breath, or the
refilling and relighting of a pipe, all was still as he went on.