“Well, your honour, he was mortalized,” replied the old man; “for on that station of musketoes and grog-blossoms, there warn’t a blue jacket nor yet a jolly but would have followed him into the devil’s kitchen at cooking time. And it’s a rum place that West Ingees, too. I remembers being ashore at one of the resurrections among the niggers, and the ship’s corporal stuck his spoon in the wall; because, I’m thinking, it warn’t very likely that a fellow would ever sup burgoo again, when his head and his body had parted company. Well, we buried him in a wild kind of a spot, where there was a few grave-stones with names chiselled on ’em, and some were cut with a knife, showing a foul anchor or a rammer and sponge, and the trees grew all over the ground, and the rank grass and weeds run up the tombs; it was a wilderness sort of a place, and here it was that Corporal Jack was laid up in ordinary. The party to which I belonged was commanded by Mr. Quinton, a master’s mate, and our bounds lay within a short distance of this here burying-ground; and so, d’ye mind, the morning after they’d lowered the corporal down the hatchway of t’other world, I was posted at the point next the corporal’s berth, and a shipmate was with me by way of companion like,--not that I was afeard of any thing living or dead, but I had always a sort of nat’ral antipathy to being left alone on shore, particularly in the dark. There was also a nigger belonging to the plantation, who we allowed to join us just by way of being civil to him, as he was a kind of steward’s mate in the house, and used to splice the main brace for us occasionally. Well, messmates, we got knotting our yarns to keep us from getting drowsy; and to cheer our spirits, we overhauled a goodish deal about ghosts, and atomies, and hobblegoblins, and all such like justices of the peace, till the nigger--they called him Hannibal, arter the line-of-battle ship, I suppose;--I say, till the nigger declared that every hair on his head stood as stiff as a crow-bar.” “Avast there!” exclaimed Bill Jennings, “tell that to the marines an you will; why the black fellow’s head was woolly and curled like a Flemish fake, and yet you say it was as stiff as a crow-bar.” “And so it was,--the more the wonder, and be d---- to you;” growled the boatswain’s-mate. “Would you have his honour there think I keep a false reckoning? Well, as I was a saying, his head looked like a black porcupine with his quills up. All at once we heard a tremendous rattling amongst the dry leaves of a plantain-ground; but the trees were too thick to see what it was even if there had been light enough, which there warn’t, as the sun hadn’t brought his hammock up, but was only just turning out. “‘Dere him debbil come agin,’ cried the nigger; and away he started, as if a nor-wester had kicked him end-ways. “‘What the black rascal arter,’ said my messmate.