‘Tell him to come aft,’ Wilfrid bawled out. ‘If there’s anything wrong I must know it. Step aft, Crimp, step aft, d’ye hear?’ he cried. Old Jacob’s stunted figure came out of the darkness and walked along to where Finn stood. ‘What is the matter, I wonder?’ said Miss Laura. I cocked my ear, for there is something in a hail of this sort at sea on a dark night to put an alertness into one’s instincts and nerves. Besides, there was no sounder snorer on board than old Jacob, and his merely coming up on deck during his watch below, though he should have stood mute as a ghost, was something to raise a little uneasy sense of expectation. His voice rumbled, but I could not hear what he said. Wilfrid shouted ‘_What_ d’ye say?’ with an expression of astonishment and incredulity. Finn laughed in a sneering way, whilst old Jacob again rumbled out with some sentence. Then my cousin bawled out, ‘Charles, Charles, come here, will you?’ ‘What the deuce is the matter _now_?’ said I, and Miss Laura followed me as I went over to the group. ‘Here’s a nice pickle we’re in, Charles,’ cried Wilfrid. ‘What think you? Crimp swears the yacht’s haunted.’ ‘So she be,’ said Crimp. ‘Pity your mother didn’t sell vinegar, Jacob, that you might have stayed at home to bottle it off,’ exclaimed Finn. ‘Haunted! That may do for the marines, but you won’t get the sailors to believe it.’ ‘That’s jist what they do then,’ remarked Crimp. ‘All the watch below have heard it, and can’t sleep in consequence.’ ‘Heard what?’ I asked. ‘The woice,’ answered Jacob, ‘the same as you and me heard t’other night.’ ‘Have _you_ heard a voice, Charles?’ exclaimed Wilfrid, suddenly fetching a deep breath. ‘A mere fancy,’ said I. ‘Ye didn’t like it anyhow,’ said Crimp gruffly, as though speaking aside. ‘For God’s sake, tell me about this voice, Charles,’ cried Wilfrid, agitated all on a sudden and restless as a dog-vane, with the twitching of his figure and the shifting of his weight from one leg to another. I related the incident, making light of it, and tried to persuade him that the mere circumstance of my having said nothing about it proved that I regarded it as a deceit of the hearing. ‘Did you know of this, Laura?’ said Wilfrid. ‘As a joke only,’ she answered. ‘A joke,’ cried he, breathing deep again. ‘The voice sounded off the sea, hey? and two of you heard it? What did it say?’ and I could see him by the starlight looking towards the starboard quarter in the direction whence the syllables had floated to us. ‘What did it say?’ he repeated. ‘Why, that this here yacht was cussed,’ rattled out Jacob defiantly, ‘and dum me if I don’t think she be now that the blooming corpse belonging to the wreck is a-jawing and a-threatening of all hands down in the forepeak.’ ‘What is this man talking about?’ I exclaimed, believing that he must either be drunk or cracked.