‘Why, he comes up to me and says, “Capt’n,” he says, “there’s Joe Cutbill, Jemmy Smithers, that funeral chap Muffin, and the t’others who was in the boat that went to the wreck this afternoon, all a-swearing that they heard a voice in the air!” and so saying, he bursts out a laughing like a parrot. “A woice!” says he. “So me and Mr. Monson aren’t the only ones, d’ye see. Damme,” says he, “if it don’t do my heart good to think on’t. There’s the whole bloomin’ boiling of us now,” says he, “to laugh at, capt’n; not Jacob Crimp only,” and here he bursts into another laugh.’ ‘What does the old chap want to convey?’ said I. ‘Why, sir, joyfulness as that he no longer stands alone as having heard a woice, for though to be sure you was with him that night, and some sound like to a cuss rose up off yon quarter, he feels like being alone in the hearing of it, for, ye see, a man in his position can’t comfortably hitch on to a gent like you, and it was the harder for him, for that the man at the wheel swore that he never heard the cry.’ ‘He is superstitious, like most old lobscousers, no doubt,’ said I. ‘Have the others been talking about this mysterious hail from the wreck?’ ‘Ay, sir; ’tis a pity. It’s raised an uneasiness ’mongst the men. There’s that Irish fool O’Connor, him that foundered the “Dago,” going about with his face as long as a wet hammock and swearing that ’taint lucky.’ ‘I don’t know about it’s being unlucky,’ said I, ‘but it certainly is most confoundedly curious, Captain Finn.’ I saw him peering hard at me in the dusk. ‘But surely your honour’s not going to tell me there _was_ a woice?’ said he. ‘As we were shoving off,’ said I, ‘We were hailed in God’s name to return. Every man of us in the boat heard it. There were but two bodies in the wreck, as stone dead as if they had died before the days of the flood. What say you to _that_, Captain Finn?’ He pulled off his hat to scratch his head. After a pause he exclaimed slowly, ‘Well, I’m for leaving alone what isn’t to be understood. There was ghosts maybe afore I was born, but none since; and the dead h’aint talked, to my knowledge, since New Testament times. Old Jamaicy rum isn’t to be had by dropping a bucket over the side, and if a truth lies too deep to be fished up by creeps, better drop it, says I, and fix the attention on something else.’ ‘You tell me the men are uneasy?’ ‘Ay, sir.’ ‘Do you mean all hands?’ ‘Well, your honour knows what sailors are. When they’re housed together under one deck they’re like a box of them patent lucifer lights--if one catches, the whole mass is aflame.’ ‘It’s a passing fit of superstition,’ said I. ‘Give it time. Best say nothing about it to Sir Wilfrid.’ ‘Bless us, no, sir. Sorry it’s raised so much satisfaction in that there old Jacob, though. A laugh in Jacob don’t sound natural. Any sort o’ joyfulness in such a constitution is agin nature.’