"Well," said the captain after a pause, "we'll let you and your ghosts go this time; if you saw anything at all it was nothing but scuds of mist or fog blowing across the ship. If any ghost comes here again the man that sees him will get twenty lashes of a rope's end, and I want all you men to bear this in mind. I don't have any ghosts about the ship I command; they're no friends of mine, and I want 'em to stay away. Now, remember, men--twenty lashes to anybody who sees a ghost on the Washington." With that the crew were dismissed, those who had the watch on deck went to their duty, and the rest below, or anywhere else they pleased. You may be sure that there wasn't another ghost seen on the Washington during the rest of the voyage, or, if any man saw one, he kept the knowledge of the sight to himself. Twenty lashes of a rope's end is not an agreeable offset to a vision of something unearthly. But I want to say right here that most sailors believe in ghosts and can tell of good things that they've done as well as bad ones. There was a ghost seen by Captain Rogers, of the Royal Navy, in 1664. He commanded the ship Society that was on a voyage from England to Virginia; he was headed in for the Capes, and reckoned that he was about three hundred miles from them. A ghost came to him in the night and told him to turn out and look about. He turned out, looked around, found everything quiet, and all the watch alert, and so he turned in again. He hadn't been long in his bed when the ghost came again and told him to heave the lead. He got up at once and cast the lead, and found he was in only seven fathoms of water. He tacked ship in a hurry, and when daylight came found he was right under the Capes instead of being far out at sea as he supposed. When I had a chance to speak to Haines alone I asked him what he knew about ghosts. He rather evaded the question, by saying he had never seen one himself, but he'd been on ships where they were, and had known lots of sailors who had seen them. "I was on a ship once," said he, "where they not only saw a ghost but smelled him. For two or three nights he was seen several times, always in a certain spot in the ship, and he left a smell which was there all the time, whether the ghost was or not." "Do you think it was really a ghost?" I asked. "Our captain didn't believe it; anyway, he ordered a search made in the place where the ghost was, and after overhauling a lot of stuff they found a dead rat there. 'Twas the rat that caused the ghostly smell, and probably the imagination of the sailors did the rest. The man who first smelled the ghost got ten lashes for not reporting it right away.