histories both at this time and afterwards, and I design to insert one here, not because I think it at all credible, but because it is a very good specimen of the histories of ghosts, phantoms, and other supernatural appearances which were current among the Buccaneers. This story was told by Stout Jem very solemnly, and listened to with no less eagerness; and in recounting it I will endeavour to put the matter into the narrator’s words, of which, for an uncultivated seaman, he had a good flow. Stout Jem called his history ‘The Legend of Foul-Weather Don,’ and to it I will devote the next chapter. CHAPTER VIII. THE LEGEND OF FOUL-WEATHER DON. Stout Jem told it thus:— ‘My story, mates, is a strange one, and I say not whether it be true or false. I heard it in the middle watch, one fine night, slipping down the coast of Porto Rico, and the seaman who told it to us, said, that when he was a boy he sailed with the man to whom the thing happened, in a big ship which hailed from Bristol. That the spirits of the dead walk the world—ay, and sail the seas—is a thing I cannot say nay to. I cannot tell you that I ever saw anything of the sort myself, but credible mariners and grave and sober men have assured me of things which have made my marrow creep, and the hair stand up, all bristling out of my flesh. Well, then, about this story. The man to whom the adventure happened, was by name Ned Purvis, a mariner. It must be nigh sixty years ago since he sailed out of the port of London, on a trading voyage to the coast of Guinea. Purvis was then a younker, there being little better than a year since he had followed the sea, and this was his first voyage abroad; he having undertaken it in the ship of his uncle, a good old man, of a mild disposition, and well loved of the crew. As for Ned Purvis, he was a reckless, ruffling blade, that cared neither for man nor devil, when his blood was up, and who thought but little of the glimmer of a drawn cutlass, or the flash of a pistol, in a quarrel. But as I told you, mates, the old man, the captain, was mild of speech and of heart, and greatly loved his nephew, and thought much of the lad’s spunk and wild spirit. So they sailed southerly, as became navigators, bound as they were to traffic for spices and rich oils and gold with the blacks of Africa.