"Pray, is Mr Wilson still with you?" "No, to my surprise (I will confess), he is not. It seems he came home before me from Roseapple's, packed his portmanteau, paid half of our joint bills, and bolted"---- "Honour amongst thieves," whispered Twig to me-- "But where he is gone I can't tell. He _did_ intend to have started for Kingston to-day at one time, but last night he said he would put it off until to-morrow." "There again," said I, looking at Jacob, who seemed to think it was his cue. "He must be a bit of a rogue that same Wilson; so I hope he is no friend of yours, Turner, _my dear fellow_," quoth Twig--and here he told him of all that had occurred, and what we suspected. Mr Turner, a most respectable man, was highly incensed at having been so grossly duped, and willingly accompanied us to the place where we expected to find the custos. We were on our way, when the mate of the timber ship overtook us, running very fast. "Gentlemen, piracy is not the worst of it--piracy is not the worst of it. _There has been murder committed_." "Murder!" quoth Jacob Twig--"the deuce there has!" "Murder!" quoth Don Felix--"worse, and more of it." And, "murder!" quoth I Benjie. "Where, my good man?--and what proof?" "Come with me, gentlemen," said the still breathless seaman. "The ship's boat, with Captain Batten himself in it, is lying at the wharf. Come with me, and you shall see yourselves that it is as I say." We reached the wharf, and immediately pulled straight for the brig's buoy. As we got between it and the sun, which was now declining in the west, we witnessed a very uncommon appearance. The Ballahoo had let go her anchor in five fathoms water, so clear, and the sand at the bottom so white and free of weeds or rocks, that when we were about & cable's length distant from the anchor, it appeared from the refraction of the sun's rays, to be buoyed up, and to float on the surface of the gentle swell that rolled in from the offing--the shank, flukes, and stock twisting and twining, and the cable waving in its whole length, as if the solid anchor had been a living thing in the fangs of a gigantic watersnake. When we got right over the anchor, we saw a dark object, at about three fathoms to windward of it, of the size of a man's body, glimmering and changing its shape, from the jaugle of the water. At the request of the mate I shaded my eyes with my hands, and held my face close to the surface, when the indistinct appearance, as I looked steadily, settled itself into the figure of a sailor, floating, as near as I could judge, midway between the bottom and the surface; suspended in the water, as the fable alleges Mahomet's coffin to be in air.