I may as well here observe that the carpenter had been listening to the story as he sat by the hatchway on deck, and it was he who had favored us with the _miaw_ which had so frightened the boy. As soon as the lantern had been received and the candle relighted, Dick recommenced. "Well, my lads, I said that the captain went down below, brought up his gun, and let fly at the cat, and then--well, and then--the cat gave a loud shriek, and falls down upon the deck. The captain walks forward to it, takes it up by the tail, brings it aft, and shies it among the men. "'There, you fools,' said he, 'it is the cat himself; will you believe your own eyes?' "And sure enough, so it was; for, you see, when Jim tumbled overboard, it being then dark, and we so busy with Jim, we did not look after the cat, and so it must have crawled up the cable and run down into the hold while the hatches were off; and all that noise heard aft must have been the brute chasing the rats, I suppose. Jim may have heard, but he could not have seen, the cat; that was all fancy and fright. You know how long a cat will live without much food, and so the animal was pretty quiet after it had killed all the rats. Then when the gale came on, and the upper part of the cargo fetched way a little, for it was loosely stowed, we suppose that it got jammed now and then with the rolling, and that made it miaw; and then, when we took off the hatches to look at the cargo, after we had sprung the leak, the cat, o' course, came out, and a pretty skeleton it was, as you may suppose. Now do you understand the whole of it?" "Yes, that's all clear," replied Bill; "and it was no ghost, after all? But still the cat did do mischief, for if the mate had not been frightened by it, he wouldn't have let go the wheel, and the masts would not have gone by the lee." "That's true enough, and he might have done more mischief still if the captain had not shot him, for the men would never have gone to the pumps again; but when they found out that it was nothing but the cat himself, then they set to, and before the next evening the vessel was clear, and only required pumping out every two hours, for the leak wasn't great, after all. So there's a ghost story for you, and I believe that all others will be found, like mine, to end in moonshine. Now, suppose we turn in, for we shall weigh at three o'clock in the morning."