"
"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.
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