Sandford was a keen fisherman; and we used to wander together day after day along the banks of the beautiful Tay--he to indulge in an amusement which he enjoyed with enthusiastic relish, and I to gratify my love for the beauties of nature, which are nowhere seen to greater perfection than on the banks of that noble stream. We always returned home to a late dinner, and the evenings were enlivened with music and song, in which both the ladies excelled, and in talking over the adventures of the day, and the stirring scenes of our past lives. "What strange beings sailors must be!" said Alice to me one evening; "such compounds of contradictions!--so lavish, yet so selfish--so daring, yet so superstitious." "Do you remember that strange old fellow, Rodney, the quartermaster," said Grant, "who used to be such a favourite of yours? What yarns, as he called them, he used to spin!--enough to stagger the faith of the most credulous; and yet I really think the old fellow had told them so often that he believed them himself." "Come, Mr Douglas," said Alice, "can you not revive your recollections of the past sufficiently to favour us with a sample of his yarns, as you call them? We have a long evening before us, and you know we ladies are fond of novelty and excitement." "Well, Miss Alice, I will endeavour to gratify your love of the novel and marvellous; but, remember, the story I am about to tell is Rodney's, not mine. You talked of the superstition of sailors--I will repeat you one of his ghost stories, as it is less improbable than most of his yarns; and I know for a fact that there were numbers besides Rodney who firmly believed it." "Well, but, Douglas," said Sandford, "let us have it in true Rodney style--slang and all. Don't be alarmed, ladies, by slang I only mean the peculiar phraseology of men of the Rodney stamp." "Oh, do, Mr Douglas--now do! It will add so greatly to the effect of the story; and I am sure you will not say anything to shock our ears." "Well, Miss Alice, I will do my best to please you; but I must endeavour, in the first place, to give you some notion of Rodney's appearance. Do you remember him distinctly, Sandford? I have his figure before my mind's eye--long, thin, and muscular; a kind of prototype of that pink of all coxswains and quartermasters, 'Long Tom Coffin;' his round, brightly-blackened hat flapped down upon his head, with an air of careless indifference; his thin, iron-grey hair peeping out behind, as if it was wondering where the queue was going to; and his face looking out in front, as rough and unmoved as the surface of a weatherbeaten rock. "'Well, Rodney,' said I to him, one first-watch, when his spell at the cunn was over, and he was taking what he called a fisherman's walk[2] on the lee side of the poop--'well, Rodney, you really do believe in Flying Dutchmen, ghosts, and all that kind of nonsense?' [Footnote 2: "Fisherman's walk"--two steps and overboard.]