All about him was the tramp of feet muffled upon grass; and sometimes it seemed they laboured uphill and sometimes down, but always these two voices disputed, now waxing so loud and clear that he seemed on the point of recognising them, now blurred and indistinct, sinking to a murmur, a whisper, until they were not, and it seemed he was asleep and plagued by nightmare. It was after one of these many lapses that he was conscious the painful jolting had ceased, felt himself dragged roughly from the horse’s back, and had a dim vision of many legs that hemmed him in as he lay upon the grass. “Ain’t dead, is ’e?” inquired a hearty voice, faintly interested. “Dead—no, dang ’im!” answered the Sullen Voice, and a foot spurned him savagely. “Dead—not ’im! Though ’e ought to be, aye an’ would be, if I ’ad my way.” “Easy, mate, easy!” admonished the Hearty Voice. “Hold y’r tongue, you do!” cried the Querulous Voice. “Hold your tongue for a bloody-minded rogue or——” “Avast, shipmates!” quoth the Hearty Voice. “Throat-slittin’ be a ticklish business.” “Yah—dead men doan’t talk!” “Mebbe not, mate, but live-un’s do! An’ then there be ghosts, shipmate, ghosts, d’ye see.” “When can ye take him aboard?” demanded the Querulous Voice. “Why, the tide wun’t sarve for ’arf an hour yet. Plenty time to finish my pipe.... An’ talkin’ o’ ghosts, there was my mate Jerry Banks as was knifed aboard the _Belle Fortun’_ ... pore Jerry’s ghost used to come an’ sit o’ nights perched aloft on our main-yard an’ mew like a cat! Aye, mew ’e would, an’ carry on that mournful ’twas ’orrible, mates——” “Hold your tongue!” cried the Querulous Voice. “Aye, we doan’t want none o’ your ghosts, do us, lads?” quoth the Sullen Voice; whereupon was a mutter of hearty assent. “Why, very well,” answered he of the hearty voice, spitting, “only if you’d a-heered the ghost o’ pore Jerry ... used to mew like any cat, it did, only more dismal-like.... I never ’eered nothing in all my days so shiversome and——” The Hearty Voice ended in a hiss of breath suddenly in-drawn and thereafter was utter silence, a strange, unnatural stillness wherein it seemed that none moved or breathed; and then rose a hoarse, stammering whisper: “Lord ... O Lord a’ mercy! What’s yon?”