The brief pause that followed showed the captain as well as the second-mate, to be not a little astonished. In fact, the fellow was one of the boatswain’s mates, a bushy whiskered giant of a sailor, assuredly not of a kind to connive at any Jack’s horse-play or tomfoolery in his watch on deck and under the eye of the officer in charge. The captain sent one of the midshipmen for his binocular glass, the second mate meanwhile staggering back a few paces to stare aloft. But there was no magic in the skipper’s lenses to resolve the conundrum. Indeed, I reckoned my own eyes to be as good as any glasses for such an inspection as that; but view the swelling heights as I would, going from one part of the deck to another, that no fathom of the length of the yards should escape me, I could witness nothing resembling a human shape, nothing whatever with the least stir of life in it. ‘Well, this beats my time!’ said Mr. Cocker, drawing a deep breath. ‘What sort of voice was it?’ demanded Captain Keeling, letting fall the binocular with which he had been sweeping the fabric of spar and sail, and coming to the brass rail overlooking the quarter-deck. The first of the two men who had been terrified cried out from the group near the hatchway, before the other could answer: ‘It was exactly like the voice of Punch, sir, in the Judy show.’ ‘Then there _must_ be a pair of ’em!’ roared the other fellow with great excitement. ‘What I heard was like a drunken old man swearing in his sleep.’ ‘Captain,’ said I, stepping forward, ‘let me go aloft, will you? I’ve long wanted to believe in ghosts, and here is a chance now for me to embark in that faith.’ ‘Ghosts, Mr. Dugdale? Yet it is an extraordinary business too. There has been nothing to hear from the deck, has there?’ ‘Nothing, sir,’ answered Mr. Cocker. ‘But, Mr. Dugdale, if you will take the weather rigging, I’ll slip up to leeward; and it’ll be strange if between us we don’t let the life out of the wonder, be it what it will.’ I jumped at once into the weather shrouds, and was promptly travelling aloft with the sight of the figure of the second mate in the rigging abreast clawing the ratlines, and the frog-like spread of his legs showing out against the faintness of the space of the mainsail behind him. We came together in the maintop, and there stood looking up and listening a minute. ‘I see nothing,’ said I. ‘Nor I,’ said the second mate. We peered carefully round us, then got into the topmast rigging and climbed to the level of the topsail yard, where we waited for the wonderful voice to address us; but nothing spoke, nor was there anything to be seen. ‘Those two sailors must have fallen crazy,’ said I. ‘There’s no need to go any higher,’ said Mr. Cocker; ‘the topgallant and royal yards lie clear as rules against the stars. On deck there!’ ‘Hallo?’ came the voice of the captain, floating up in a sort of echo from the hull of the ship, that looked a mile down in that gloom.