He recommenced reading, and once more began the mysterious noise. I felt sure there was some drunken person there whom my officer had overlooked, and accordingly rose and looked myself, and to my very disagreeable surprise found the cabin empty! After this evening, the noises became very frequent, varying in kind and in degree. Sometimes it was as though the seats and lockers were being banged about, sometimes it sounded as though decanters and tumblers were being clashed together. During these disturbances the vessel was lying more than a mile off shore. One evening I and the above-named officer went to drink tea at a friend's house at Queen's Ferry, near Chester, the vessel at the time being lashed to the lower stage opposite Church's Quay. We returned on board together about 10 p.m. While descending the companion ladder, I distinctly heard someone rush from the after cabin into the fore cabin. I stopped the officer who was behind me at the top of the ladder and whispered to him, "Stand still, I think I have caught the ghost." I then descended into my cabin, took my sword, which always hung over my bed, and placed it drawn in his hand saying "Now ----, allow no one to pass you; if anyone attempts to escape cut him down, I will stand the consequences. T then returned to the cabin, struck a light and searched everywhere, but nothing could I find to account for the noises I had heard, though I declare solemnly that never did I feel more certain of anything in my life than that I should find a man there. So there was nothing to be done but to repeat for the hundredth time, "Well, it is the ghost again!" Often when lying in my bed at night have I heard noises close to me as though my drawers were being opened and shut, the top of my washing stand raised and banged down again, and a bed which stood on the opposite side of my cabin, pulled about; while of an evening I often heard while sitting in my cabin a noise as though a percussion cap were snapped close to my head; also very often (and I say it with godly and reverential fear) I have been sensible of the presence of something invisible about me, and could have put my hand, so to say, on it, or the spot where I felt it was; and all this occurred, strange to say, without my feeling in the least alarmed or caring about it, except so far that I could not understand or account for what I felt and heard. One night, when the vessel was at anchor in Martyn Roads I was awoke by the quartermaster calling me and begging me to come on deck as the look-out man had rushed to the lower deck, saying that a figure of a lady was standing on the paddle box pointing with her finger to Heaven. Feeling angry, I told him to send the look-out man on deck again and keep him there till daybreak, but in attempting to carry my orders into execution the man went into violent convulsions, and the result was I had to go myself upon deck and remain there till morning.