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Show n DICK RODIN EY; S : Or. The Adventures of J ; An Eton Boy... m ) by JAMES GRANT, j "Still the Idea of the two dead mn with their pale faces and unclosed eyes' would come before me again and again and I could have groaned but for dread of some similar response that might make my heart wither up and my flesh creep. And creep It soon did-for, did-for, just as this horrid idea of an overstrained over-strained fancy, fostered by imagination imagina-tion and fashioned out of the silence and darkness, became strongest within me, what were my emotions how painful the throbbing of my heart on beholding a strange, green, ghastly light glimmering about, and playing within each of the side berths. "While shrinking into a corner of the cabin, with eyeballs straining, I gazed at them alternately with a species spe-cies of horrid fascination. The two lights were weird, wavering and pale; they seemed to me as two warnings from the land of spirits, for they played play-ed upon the curtain and in the recess of each berth, port and starboard in which a dead man had been fonnd. And while these lights shone, there came upon my ear the palpable sound of a heavy breathing and snorting, as from the oppressed chest of some one, close by me. "I placed my hands vipon my eyes and on my ears to shut out these horrid hor-rid lights and sounds; but when I looked again the former had diseap-pearsd, diseap-pearsd, and all was opaque darkness. "On putting forth my hand to rise, a cry of uncontrollable terror escaped me a yell that rang in wild echoes through the silent polacca when my fingers came in contact with something icy, and then a cold, clammy, and wet head of hair! "Then two glistening eyes seemed to peer and to glare into mine! "In horror and bewilderment, and followed by something, I knew not what, I sprang up the companion, and, half fainting, reached the deck of the polacca. Then I turned to find that the object which had excited so much dismay was no other than my poor dog Hector, which had swam off to the brig in pursuit of me. that two of her crew who remarked on board ' " 'Were dead; yes, true enough. They were found in their berths, one on the starboard, and the other on the port side of the cabin. But what of that? I buried them off the point of Santa Cruz, and there they sleep sound enough, believe me, each with a couple of cold shot at his heels. Here is the key of the companion hatch, and take my revolver with you, for picaros are pretty common hereabouts.' "'Thanks, Hislop,' said I; 'but how am I to get on board?' "'Scull over to her in the punt that is moored beside the quay. When on board make yourself quite at home, for the agent and I left plenty of grog, beef, biscuits and tobacco in the cabin. On the morrow I'll overhaul you, in the forenoon watch. Till then, good-by;' and before I could say anything more old Jack was gone, and 1 found myself my-self alone on the stone mole, with the key of the polacca's companion in my hand. "There seemed nothing for me but to accept the temporary home thus offered; of-fered; so, in the hope that it might lead to something better, I stepped into the light punt, cast loose the painter, and after a few minutes' vigorous sculling found myself on the lonely deck of the silent polacca. "Her canvass was unbent; most of the running rigging had also been taken off her and stowed away so her tall and taper spars stood nakedly up from the straight flush deck, with a sharp rake aft. "Thick banks of dark-blue clouds were coming heavily up from the Gulf of Florida. The air was hot and sulphurous; sul-phurous; some drops of rain, warm and broad as doubloons, began to splash upon the deck and to make circles on the sea; while at the far edge of the horizon a narrow streak of bright moonlight, against which the waves were seen chasing each other, glittered through the flying scud, the bottom of which was uplifted in the offing, like a dark curtain that was battered bat-tered and rent. "Then a flash of red lightning, tipping tip-ping the waves with Are, shone, but to be replaced by instant darkness, and all became black chaos to seaward, save where a pale-green beacon burned steadily at Santa Cruz, on the western side of the bay. "These signs prognosticated a rough night, but I was glad to perceive that the polacca was well moored at stem and stern; so I unlocked the companion compan-ion door and descended, not without a shudder, into the dark and cold cabin, where the dead men had been found, and where all was silence and gloom. "I struck a lucifer match; my teeth chattered; and while groping about for a candle, to make myself comfortable for the night, I began to wish I had remained re-mained on shore. "I found a ship-lantern with the fag-pnrl fag-pnrl nf n candle in it. and this when "The eyes that in the dark seemed to glare into mine, were his; the icy object, ob-ject, from which my fingers shrank, was his honest black nose; and what seemed a wet head of hair, was his own curly front; while the lights the mysterious lambent lights that had flicekered about the dead men's berths, proved to be nothing more than the green beacon on the promontory of Santa Cruz, which shone at times through the two stern windows of the polacca. "Being moored with the chain cable ahead and a manilla warp from her port quarter to a buoy astern, she swung to and fro a little with the ebb and flow of the tide; hence the oscillation which caused the moving gleams that terrified me. " 'Ha! ha!' said I, on descending Into In-to the ' cabin, a wiser and a more sleepy man, 'scared by my own do? Hector! I have been as great a gull as ever touched salt water.' "A fortnight afterwards I shipped with old Jack Hislop as second mate, and the fifteenth day sa,w us running before a smart topgallant breeze into the Gulf of Florida, bound with a cargo car-go of rum, sugar and molasses for the Clyde. "So that Is my ghost yarn. It conveys con-veys a moral, does it not? Order Or-der them to strike the bell forward. Hislop, call the watch; see how her head bears, and let us turn in." (To be continued.) CHAPTER V. (Continued.) "In a moment his blue shirt was off and placed on the lift of the foreyard. This meant, Mr. Rodney, that as merchant mer-chant seamen we appealed to the man-o'-war for protection, and wanted an armed boat's crew. Thank heaven, such an apppeal is never made in vain by a poor Jack of any country to a British man-o'-war, but the lubberly Spaniards never noticed the signal, or if so, never heeded it." "The Yankee skipper uttered a fierce laugh. " "Douse that shirt and come down, you sir,' he thundered out; 'down instantly, in-stantly, or I will shoot you like a coon." "But, desperate with fear, the poor fellow now stood upon the yard, and while one hand grasped the topping lift, with the other he waved his shirt to the Spaniards. I heard the crack of a pistol, and next moment he fell a quivering mass upon the deck, stone dead, shot by the revolver. "That will teach you to make signals sig-nals from my ship, you varmint, snl- veiled the merciless skipper, giving the body a kick, 'and as for you,' he continued, con-tinued, addressing me, and ramming home his words "with an oath; but before be-fore he could get further I leveled him on the deck by a blow from a handspike, hand-spike, and tossed his knife and revolver overboard. "His right arm was broken. There was a great row about all this before the Alcalde when we got Into harbor; our bell was unshipped and our can--vas unbent by a party of Spanish marines; ma-rines; but the captain crossed the Alcalde's Al-calde's hand with silver or gold, and there was an end of it. There was an end of my engagement, too; for the Yankee weathered me about my salary, seized my chest, my quad'ftnt, even an old silver watch which my mother gave me to make me comfortable, when I first went to sea, and then turned me out of the ship. "So with nothing except a Mexican dollar in my pocket, but followed by my Newfoundland dog Hector, I found myself on a wet and dusty evening on the great quay' of Matanzas, which faces the bay that opens into the Gulf of Florida. "Low alike in spirits and funds, I had to endure being jostled by negro porters, scowled at by alguazils, ordered or-dered about by red-cappped and black-bearded black-bearded Spanish sentries, who were shirtless and tattered, and whose brown uniforms and red worsted epaulettes epau-lettes tainted the very sea breeze with the odor of garlic and coarse tobacco. "The sun had set behind clouds as red as blood. The bay was all of a deep brown tint, and the shores were black or purple. I was very sad at heart, and thought it hard that I, a British seaman, should be there an outcast, and all my kit reduced to the clothes on my back, in the very place where the same flag that Pococke and Albemarle hoisted on Havana, and brought all the Don Spaniards on their knees in old King George's time. "However, that would neither find me supper or a bed. I lost or missed my Newfoundland dog Hector, and in the bitterness of my heart I banned the poor animal for ingratitude in leaving me. Just as I was looking about for a humble posada, where a moiety of my dollar might procure me a bed, a man stumbled against me. " 'Look alive, cucumber shanks,' said he, angrily, in English. "'Do you take me for a negro?' I asked, fiercely. " 'You are grimy enough for anything,' any-thing,' said he; and after being a night in the Alcalde's lockup house, I certainly cer-tainly was not the cleanest of men; but now it seemed as 'if the voice of the stranger was familiar to me. I examined ex-amined his features. " 'What,' I exclaimed, 'Hislop Jack Hislop, is this you?' 'Tis I, Jack Hislop, certainly,' replied re-plied the other, who proved to be my old friend, Marc's father; 'but who the deuce are you?' " 'Your old shipmate, Sam Weston, who sallied with you for many a day in the Good Intent of Port Glasgow.' "For a moment his tongue seemed i-hsent without leave." " 'W7hat, you Sam Weston English Sam, as we called you adrift here at Matanzas among these Spanish land-crabs?' land-crabs?' " 'Aye, adrift sure enough,' said I, as we shook hands heartily, and then adjourned ad-journed to a taberna, when I told him all about my quarrel with the Yankee Yan-kee and my present hopeless condition, over a glass of nor'-nor'-west. " T have a brig here on the gridiron, grid-iron, repairing, for we lost some of her copper in scraping a rock near the Tortugas shoal. All my crew are of course ashore, and at present I am residing with a friend,' said Hislop; tut I can find permanent quarters for you till you get a berth. Do you see that craft out there in the bay?' " 'The polacca brig, about a mile off?' " 'Yes. Well, she is consigned to my Owner, but was found adrift, abandoned "fry all her crew except two, about fifty miles off, half way between mis and the Salt Key Bank. I have charge of her now, and there you may sleep every ev-ery night if you choose. What say you to that?' " 'That I thank you, old shipmate, with all my heart, but but " 'What?' " 'I have heard of that polacca. and lighted, enabled me to take a survey of the cabin; which stood on the table and when looking about, found my eyes wander so incessantly to the side berths In which the dead Spaniards had been found, that at last I almost fancied their pale sharp profiles and rigid figures were visible in the flickering flick-ering light of the candle. " 'Come,' said I, 'Sam Weston this will never do! Are you a man, or have you become a child again?' "Another application a long one, too to the rum jar, and I wrapped some bunting, a rug, and a pea-jacket that lay on the tocker, round me, and lay down on the cabin floor to sleep; and scarcely had I stretched myself there when the candle flared up, and, after casting some strange kaleidoscopic kaleido-scopic figures on the beams overhead, through the perforated lantern-top went out! "I was in total darkness now, but more awake than ever. "I felt as if in a great floating coffin, but heard no sound except the gurgle of the sea under the counter, or the splash of the stern warp, as it whipped whip-ped the water occasionally. "I kept my eyes closed resolutely, and determined, perforce, to sleep, and not to wake till morning; but still I could not help thinking of the two poor fellows who had died in the berths of that cold, dark, and silent cabin, and had been tossed to and fro so long upon the sea before they received Christian burial. "Which had died first the man in the larboard, or he in the starboard berth? Why were they thus abandoned? aban-doned? WThat had they said to each other? W7hat messages had they sent to wife, to father, or mother? What tale of love to repeat of guilt to revealmessages re-vealmessages given by the dead to the dead, and never delivered! These thoughts crowded upon me till I almost imagined the dead men lay there still, and that they might rise up and give their last messages to me. Then I heard a sound in the foreholrl. It made my blood curdle! Was it caused by rats? Perhaps they had fed on the dead Spaniards and now were come to take a nibble at me. Rats were bad enough, but ghosts were worse. I took a third and Inst pull at the Jamaica Jar; said my prayers over again, with more than usual "devotion, adding thereto the wish that I should soon have a spanking craft of my own. |