I know I was rather confused, and that I had swallowed quite a deal of salt water, ere I got my hands on the rungs of the ladder and climbed to the top of the house. On my way aft along the bridge I encountered the crew coming for’ard. Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike were talking in the lee of the chart-house, and inside, as I passed below, Captain West was smoking a cigar. After a good rub down, in dry pyjamas, I was scarcely back in my bunk with the _Mind of Primitive Man_ before me, when the stampede over my head was repeated. I waited for the second rush. It came, and I proceeded to dress. The scene on the poop duplicated the previous one, save that the men were more excited, more frightened. They were babbling and chattering all together. “Shut up!” Mr. Pike was snarling when I came upon them. “One at a time, and answer the captain’s question.” “It ain’t no barrel this time, sir,” Tom Spink said. “It’s alive. An’ if it ain’t the devil it’s the ghost of a drownded man. I see ’m plain an’ clear. He’s a man, or was a man once—” “They was two of ’em, sir,” Richard Giller, one of the “bricklayers,” broke in. “I think he looked like Petro Marinkovich, sir,” Tom Spink went on. “An’ the other was Jespersen—I seen ’m,” Giller added. “They was three of ’em, sir,” said Nosey Murphy. “O’Sullivan, sir, was the other one. They ain’t devils, sir. They’re drownded men. They come aboard right over the bows, an’ they moved slow like drownded men. Sorensen seen the first one first. He caught my arm an’ pointed, an’ then I seen ’m. He was on top the for’ard-house. And Olansen seen ’m, an’ Deacon, sir, an’ Hackey. We all seen ’m, sir . . . an’ the second one; an’ when the rest run away I stayed long enough to see the third one. Mebbe there’s more. I didn’t wait to see.” Captain West stopped the man. “Mr. Pike,” he said wearily, “will you straighten this nonsense out.” “Yes, sir,” Mr. Pike responded, then turned on the men. “Come on, all of you! There’s three devils to tie down this time.” But the men shrank away from the order and from him. “For two cents . . . ” I heard Mr. Pike growl to himself, then choke off utterance. He flung about on his heel and started for the bridge. In the same order as on the previous trip, Mr. Mellaire second, and I bringing up the rear, we followed. It was a similar journey, save that we caught a ducking midway on the first span of bridge as well as a ducking on the ’midship-house. We halted on top the for’ard-house. In vain Mr. Pike flashed his light-stick. Nothing was to be seen nor heard save the white-flecked dark water on our deck, the roar of the gale in our rigging, and the crash and thunder of seas falling aboard. We advanced half-way across the last span of bridge to the fore-castle head, and were driven to pause and hang on at the foremast by a bursting sea.