‘When it comes to my getting command,’ said he, ‘the world will find that I am for carrying on. What my ship can’t carry, she’ll have to drag. I’ve made my calculations, and there’s nothing with decent heels that shouldn’t be able to make the voyage to India in seventy-five days. It is the trick of wind-jamming that stops us all. A skipper’ll sweat his yards fore and aft sooner than be off his course by the fraction of a point. For my part, I’d make every foul wind a fair one.’ He called out some order to the group of shadows at work upon the lower studdingsail, and I went to the skylight with half a mind in me to go below and see what was doing there; but changed my intention when I saw friend Colledge leaning over a draught-board with Miss Temple, Miss Hudson looking on at the game from the opposite side, and Mr. Johnson drawing diagrams with his forefinger to Mrs. Hudson in explanation of something I suppose that he was talking about. I went right aft and sat myself upon a little bit of grating abaft the wheel, and there, spite of the adjacency of the man at the helm, I felt as much alone as if I had mastheaded myself. The great body of the Indiaman went away from me in a dark heap; the white deck of the poop was a mere faintness betwixt the rails. Her canvas rose in phantasmal ashen outlines, with a slow swing of stars betwixt the squares of the rigging, and a frequent flashing of meteors on high sailing amongst the luminaries in streaks of glittering dust. There was little more to be heard than the chafe of the tiller gear in its leading blocks, the occasional dim noise of a rope straining to the quiet lift of the Indiaman, the bubbling of water going away in holes and eddies from the huge rudder, and a dull tinkling of the piano in the saloon, and some lady singing to it. All at once I spied the figure of a man dancing down the main shrouds in red-hot haste. I was going in a lounging way forward at the moment, and heard Mr. Cocker say: ‘What the deuce is it?’ The fellow standing on a ratline a little above the bulwark rail made some answer. ‘You are mad,’ cried the mate. ‘What _are_ you--an Irishman?’ ‘No, sir.’ I had now drawn close enough to catch what was said. ‘If I was, maybe I’d be a Papish, and then the sign of the cross would exercise [exorcise, I presume] the blooming voice overboard.’ ‘Voice in your eye!’ cried Mr. Cocker. ‘Up again with you! This is some new dodge for skulking. But you’ll have to invent something better than a ghost before you knock off on any job you’re upon aboard this ship.’ ‘What is it, sir?’ called the voice of the captain from the companion, and he came marching up to us in his buttoned-up way, as though he sought to neutralise the trick of a deep sea roll by a soldierly posture. ‘Why, sir,’ answered Mr. Cocker, ‘this man here has come down from aloft with a run to tell me that there’s a ghost talking to him upon the topsail yard.’ ‘A what?’ cried the captain.