Australian Hauntings: A Second Anthology of Australian Colonial Supernatural Fiction by James Doig Page A

which to return to the anchored barque, and fill up the capacious maternal interior. Technically, this boat was known as a “drogher.” But it took a lot of room; and, in addition, there was a host of spare spars, big water-casks, etc., that gave the decks somewhat of a lumbered-up appearance.
    We were to haul out at high water that night; and, even now, the men were straggling down, more or less sober, and dumping their round-bottomed bags and their chests into the dark hatchway that led to their quarters below.
    I was kept too busy for a time to think of anything outside my work; but, after we brought up at the Nore with a westerly wind in our teeth, and I went aft to turn in for an hour or two, I laughed to myself when, glancing down the fok’sle scuttle, my eye caught the gleam of a brightly burning lamp, and my ear the dull, peaceful, rumbling notes of men’s voices. Before daybreak the wind came round with plenty of westing in it, and, calling all hands, we got up our anchor, made sail, and wallowed away down channel with a wake like a paddle-steamer; steady as a pyramid, dry as a baker’s oven, and with half-a-gale of wind roaring and hooting in the bellies of our topsails.
    “Fok’sle lamp burn all right last night, Mr Forbes, d’ye know?” asked the skipper at breakfast with a twinkle in his eye.
    “Yes, sir,” I replied.
    “At least, I’ve heard no complaint, so far.”
    “Ah,” said he, laughing, “I thought that long spell in the docks would have taken all the energy out of the best and staunchest ghost going.”
    And until we got clear of soundings it really seemed as if the captain was right; for his sake I only wish it had been so. But then the trouble began in earnest; and if I hadn’t so many available witnesses to back me up I don’t know that I’d care about putting what happened us into cold print. We had just cleared the Channel. It was four bells (six o’clock p.m.) in the second dog watch, a fine, bright cold evening, with a jump of a head sea on, and the Lizard light barely visible on the port quarter. As I stumped the poop to and fro from binnacle to break—having just relieved the second mate to let him get his supper—happening to glance for’ard, I saw, one after the other, the watch below come bolting up through their scuttle as if propelled from a catapult. It was not yet so dark but that I could distinguish the passionate gestures with which they told something to the little group of the port watch, that at once surrounded them, before, racing aft, they bundled up the poop ladder, at the head of which I met them. In each of the five faces fear and bewilderment strove for the mastery, and all five bodies shivered and trembled as with ague.
    “If you please, sir,” at once began an elderly man named Jones, his brown face turned to a nasty slate colour, and his words jostling each other as they came out, “we can’t stop down there,” jerking for’ard with outstretched thumb. “We was just havin’ our supper whan a stinkin’, freezin’ THING comes an’ douses our lamp. We all seen It, so there’s no error. An’ we all felt It—leastways the cold an’ the stench of It. Poof! It’s in my mouth yet!” And he spat over the side, imitated scrupulously by his mates. “No, sir,” he went on, raising his voice as he saw me grinning at him, “we ain’t no fools, an’ we knows our work as sailor-men; but we ain’t a-goin’ to stand no such larks as them. Harris was right arter all. The ship’s harnted; an’ you can’t expec’, sir, as ornery flesh an’ blood ’ll put up wi’ a bloomin’ ghost as comes foggn’ an’ stinkin’, strong as a whole churchyard full o’ corpuses, into a man’s fok’sle whiles he’s a-eatin’ of his bit of supper.”
    The fellow was perfectly civil, and I saw at once that, so bad a scare had they all got, the time had passed for an ordinary tongue-thrashing to have its usual effect.
    “Ay, ay, Bill’s right,” remarked