Man Overboard!Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Science
Man Overboard!
Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion)
Ghost stories; Sailors -- Fiction; Seafaring life -- Fiction
Anyhow, I know I never did tell any one but you. This is the
first time I have talked of all that, the first time since I took
the train from that place. I am not going to tell you all about
the day. Miss Mamie introduced me to her mother, who was a quiet,
hard-faced old New England farmer's widow, and to her cousins and
relations; and there were plenty of them too at dinner, and there
was the parson besides. He was what they call a Hard-shell
Baptist in those parts, with a long, shaven upper lip and a
whacking appetite, and a sort of superior look, as if he didn't
expect to see many of us hereafter--the way a New York pilot
looks round, and orders things about when he boards an Italian
cargo-dragger, as if the ship weren't up to much anyway, though
it was his business to see that she didn't get aground. That's
the way a good many parsons look, I think. He said grace as if he
were ordering the men to sheet home the topgallant-sail and get
the helm up. After dinner we went out on the piazza, for it was
warm autumn weather; and the young folks went off in pairs along
the beach road, and the tide had turned and was beginning to come
in. The morning had been clear and fine, but by four o'clock it
began to look like a fog, and the damp came up out of the sea and
settled on everything. Jack said he'd go down to his cottage and
have a last look, for the wedding was to be at five o'clock, or
soon after, and he wanted to light the lights, so as to have
things look cheerful.
"I will just take a last look," he said again, as we reached the
house. We went in, and he offered me another cigar, and I lit it
and sat down in the parlour. I could hear him moving about, first
in the kitchen and then upstairs, and then I heard him in the
kitchen again; and then before I knew anything I heard somebody
moving upstairs again. I knew he couldn't have got up those
stairs as quick as that. He came into the parlour, and he took a
cigar himself, and while he was lighting it I heard those steps
again overhead. His hand shook, and he dropped the match.
"Have you got in somebody to help?" I asked.
"No," Jack answered sharply, and struck another match.
"There's somebody upstairs, Jack," I said. "Don't you hear
footsteps?"
"It's the wind, captain," Jack answered; but I could see he was
trembling.
"That isn't any wind, Jack," I said; "it's still and foggy. I'm
sure there's somebody upstairs."
"If you are so sure of it, you'd better go and see for yourself,
captain," Jack answered, almost angrily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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