"Our Vessel was captured by a Spanish cruiser soon afterwards. I, with one other, succeeded in making our escape. "The captain, and all the rest, who were not killed in the battle, were strung out on the yard-arm." "Does the ghost never speak to you?" asked the Parson. "Never," replied Old Ropes. "I suppose that's because she's a Spaniard, and thinks you don't understand her language," remarked the Parson, sneeringly. "I wonder why this ghost of the cave don't show himself, and not try to frighten us with his horrible boo-wooing." "Well, you may make as much fun as you please," replied Old Ropes; "but, mark my words for it, if the captain don't pay attention to the warning he has had, that ghost will show himself in a way that won't be agreeable to any of us." "If he takes my advice, he'll leave the cave, and take up his quarters somewhere else." "What! you don't mean to say you're afraid!" quietly remarked the Parson. "Put an enemy before me in the shape of flesh and blood, and I'll show you whether I'm afeard, or not," said Old Ropes; "but this fighting with dead men's another affair. The odds is all agin you. Lead and steel wont reach 'em, and the very sight on 'em takes the pluck out of a man, whether he will or no. "An enemy of real flesh and blood, when he does kill you, stabs you or shoots you down at once, and there's an end of it; but, these ghosts have a way of killing you by inches, without giving a fellow a chance to pay them back anything in return." "It's pretty clear, anway, that they're a 'tarnal set of cowards," remarked the Parson. "The biggest coward's the bravest men, when there's no danger," retorted Old Ropes. To this, the Parson made no reply, thinking, probably, that he had carried the joke far enough, and not wishing to provoke a quarrel with his companion. "As to the affair of the cave," said Jones Bradley; "I think very much as Old Ropes does about it. I'm opposed to troubling the dead, and I believe there's them buried there that don't want to be disturbed by us, and if we don't mind the warning they give us, still the worse for us." "The captain don't seem to be very much alarmed about it," said the Parson; "for he stays in the cave. And, then, there's the Indian woman and the darkey; the ghost don't seem to trouble them much." "I'll say this for Captain Flint," remarked Old Ropes, "if ever I knowed a man that feared neither man nor devil, that man is Captain Flint; but his time'll come yet." "You don't mean to say you see breakers ahead, do you?" asked the Parson. "Not in the way of our business, I don't mean," said Ropes; "but, I've had a pretty long experience in this profession, and have seen the finishing up of a good many of my shipmates; and I never know'd one that had long experience, that would not tell you that he had been put more in fear by the dead than ever he had by the living."