“However, little of moment was said at first—the talk turning chiefly on the heat, and the cholera, and the prospect of getting to sea. One fellow was beginning a story about the fever on the African coast, when suddenly the carpenter asked the captain’s stroke-oars-man, about the ghost he had seen in the cabin. “‘You see, mate,’ said Kennebunk, ‘the story they made up aft about the jackanapes be all in my eye; and if Frank, here, be of a mind, he can give us the rights of it.’ “‘That be blowed!’ said the man-of-war’s man in his wild way. ‘If it weren’t the monkey, with a table-cloth round him, as the steward said, it might have been a ghost, or the devil hisself, for all I care. Pass the pannakin this way—here’s sweethearts and wives, any how!—and no malice to the new mate, for the clout on the sconce with the capstan-bar.’ “‘Ay, ay,’ rejoined the carpenter, ‘you men-of-war’s men are all of one mark; you know one another, meet where you may, jist as a shoal o’ whales comes togither, arter a squanderin’.’ “‘B—t me!’ said Frank, ‘if ever I sot eyes on him afore he joined this ship, howsomever it may be with you, Chips.’ “Why,’ said Charley again, ‘may be I have, and may be I haven’t—I’m not goin’ for to say now. Only so much, d’ ye see—he’s the very man to take the old craft home, in case of any thing had happenin’ to the skipper. If we _do_ go to sea on Sunday, as is give out in the ship—what I want you lads of the larboard watch to do, is to keep a small helm till we once gits in the Cape latitudes. If the skipper lays her course for the Brazil coast, then—leave the rest to Charley Toppin.’ “‘Well,’ answered Frank, ‘we’re all of one mind, Chips; and if the soft-sawderin’, murderin’, buccaneerin’ thief tries his hand at that game, more than half t’other watch’ll jine with us. You see, lads, fair play’s a jewel, and I did promise the steward to say nothin’ about what I seed in the after-cabin to-day—hows’iver, as all hands is concarned—and you all heerd the screach—why, sink me, if it’s a man’s part to keep back the truth:—Either the ship’s haunted by the captain’s wife’s ghost—or else he’s got a live missus stowed away in the cabins.’ “There was a regular burst of top-gallant oaths and exclamations at this, until the carpenter took the word in a sort of triumph. “‘I knowed it—I knowed it—I told you all the same thing—and who was most ready to laugh at the spurrit but Frank—and now you hear him.’ “‘I only tell what _I_ saw, shipmates,’ rejoined the man-of-war’s man; you may believe what _you_ like.’ “‘But let’s hear the rights of it, Frank,’ said the cooper.