"Murder! what comes next?" groaned I--for I could now speak--as the shadow of the figure of the poor woman rescued from perishing with thirst on board of the American brig glided along the wall with her infant in her arms and her clothes in disorder, the wet blanket which the poor negro had been moistening, when I first saw her, hanging from her shoulders, and her hair dishevelled; her figure, in fact, in every point precisely as I had seen her in the cabin. The apparition seemed to pause for a moment, and then stepped towards the box of dry goods, and setting itself down, began to rock itself and moan; and the poor picaniny began to struggle and pule at its mother's bosom for all the world as naturally as it had done in the brig. "There's a phantasmagoria for you, Master Benjie;--free gratis for nothing, Master Benjie," said I to myself; whereupon my thumb, of the size of the Bologna sausage, took my nose, of the size of the cotton bag, such a crack! I thought it was knocked off. Presently I felt as if the latter had been set a-bleeding so furiously as to float the bed off the floor, and me in it. By and by the room became filled with blood; and there I lay, cruising about in the floating bed, until the door gave way, when the crimson torrent rushed down stairs like the rapids of Niagara, bursting into the other sleeping apartments in its descent--I could hear the suffocating coughs of the inmates as they were drowning. At length, the blood having had vent, the bed once more subsided, and took the ground on the very spot from whence it had originally been floated. The light on the wall, however, was still as strong as ever, but had changed from the moonlight tinge to a hot, deep red glare, such as the devils break out of rocks with in theatres. The shadow of the box had disappeared, and so had the figure of the poor woman and her child; but I now heard a noise as of some one singing snatches of the Carnival of Venice to himself, and dancing as if practising a new step, with occasionally a tap tap on the floor, as if the performer had been the owner of a wooden leg. "Come along, my lad," thought I; "why, what next, what next?"--on which the figure of a man, dressed in the old-fashioned coat commonly worn by physicians in Havanna, with frills at his wrists, and tight inexpressibles on, glided across the wall and disappeared. Presently I was conscious he was in the room, which became suddenly hot and choky, and, in fact, standing at my bedside, for I could hear some one breathe, although I had not the power of turning my neck to look at him.