El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1899-08-12
PAGES 9 TO u.

| kalelQO-
scopic figures on the beams overhead,
through the perforated lantern-top-
! went out!
81 was in total darkness now, but
more awake than ever
81 felt as if in 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 whip
ped the water occasionally.
| II 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 Door
| fellows who had died in the bertbs
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 frst-the man in
the larboard, or he in the starboard
berth? Why were they thus aban-
| doned? What had they said to each
other? What messages had they sent
| to wife, to father, or mother? What
tale of love to repeat-of guilt to re-
veal-messages given by the dead to
the dead, and never delivered.
These thoughts crowded upon me
till l almost imagined the dead men
lay there still, and that they might
rise up and give their last messages to
me.
Then heard a sound in the forehold.
1t made my blood curdle! Was it
caused by rats? Perhaps they had fed
On the dead Spsniards and now were
come to take a nibble at me- Rats
were bad enough. but ghosts were
worse. I took third and last pull at
the Jamaica jar; said my prayers over
again, with more than usual devotion,
adding thereto the wish that 1 should
soon have a spanking craft of my
own.
Still the idea of the two dead men,
with their pale faces and Enclosed eyes,
would come before me again and again.
and 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, just as this horrid idea of an over
strained fancy, fostered by magma
ton 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, CHASTITY
light glimmering about, and playing :
while shrinking into a corner of
the cabin, with eyeballs straining, 1
gazed at them alternately with a 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 play
ed upon the curtain and in the recess
of each berth, port and starboard in
And while these lights shone, there
came upon my ear the palpable sound
of heavy breathing and snorting, as
from the oppressed chest of some one,
close by me.
Il placed my hands upon my eyes
and on my ears to shut out these hor-
rid lights and sounds; but when I
looked again the former had diseap-
peared, and all was opaque darkness.
ION putting forth my hand to rise, a
cry of uncomfortable 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 gltstening eyes seemed to
peer and to glare into mine!
In horror and bewilderment and
followed by something, knew not
what, 1 sprang up the companion, and,
half faintlng, reached the deck of the
polacca. Then I turned to find that
the object which had excited so much
d1smay was no other than my poor dog
Hector, which had swan off to the brig
in pursuit Of me.
THE eyes that in the dark seemed to
glare into mine, were his; the icy OBJ
ject, from which my fingers shrank,
was his honest black nose; and what
seemed wet head of hair, was his
own curly front; while the lights-the
mysterious lambert lights-that had
ficekered about the dead mems berths.
proved to be nothing more than the
green beacon on the promontory of
Santa Cruz. which snone at times
through the two stern windows of the
polacca.
Being moored with the chain cable
ahead and a MANILA 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
CLEANS that terrified me.
'Ha! hal said 1, on descending in
to the cabin, wiser and a more
sleepy man, scared by my own dog
Hector! 1 have been as great gull
as ever touched salt water
"A fortnight afterwards I shipped
with old Jack Hislop as second mate.
and the fifteenth day saw us running
before smart topgallant breeze into
the Gulf of Florida, bound with a car
go of rum, sugar and molasses for the
Clyde.
so that is my ghost yarn. 1t con-
veys moral, does it not? Or