been singular, for — after sundry modest requests to be excused on the score that “the gen’l’m’n wouldn’t care nowt for his old tales” — the follow- ing was the one he favoured us with. I will not bother the compositors and reader by attempting to preserve the old fellow’s peculiar phraseology, but will give the story as I heard it as nearly as I can, without sacrificing orthography, or making any great breaches in Priscian’s head, or a fool of myself by a landsman’s misuse of the nautical lingo.
“In the year ’twenty-six,” said Chips, “just when I was out of my time, I took it into my head to go whaling, not as carpenter, but before the mast. I shipped on board the old, one of Gale’s of Deptford. We took in some Shetlanders at Lerwick, as whalers mostly do, as hardy chaps as any afloat; but one of them died before we’d left Ronas Head a month. He was a strange, silent fellow, that was always looking over his shoulder in the forecastle at night, as if he expected to see something. We chaffed him about it at first, but he wasn’t a safe man to plague. His mates told us all kinds of queer yarns about him; that he’d been away from the Islands for ever so long, and that nobody knew where he’d been to. All that he'd say was that he’d been in the ‘Spanish sendee,’ and some made out that that meant a slaver, some a pirate, some one thing, some another; but none of them any good. The Shetlanders don’t mind smuggling, but they are quite a pious people in the main, and they didn’t relish the way in which this man cursed and swore, and was for ever sneering at the kirk. He struck a minister one day when he’d got the horrors, and the parson had gone to look after him; saying, ‘that he didn’t want any spies about his bed.’ His eyes were staring at the wall on one side of him, as if some one was standing there. They said that he had got the horrors; but, as I’ve told you, he had always that frightened look in the dark, even when he was quite sober. Something bad was on his mind, that’s very certain.
“The day he died he was queerer than ever, keeping out of the way of everybody as much as he could, rolling his eyes about like a madman, talking to himself, and as pale as a sheet. You’d better turn in, Galt,’ the doctor said to him; and down he went without a word, and presently the doctor sent him some stuff, thinking he was in a fever. My bunk was next to his, and when I turned in at eight bells I could hear him hissing through his clenched teeth, just as if he was trying to keep in a shriek. It was much such a night as this, only there was a deal more ice ranging about than what we’ve seen. I soon fell asleep, for we had been making-off blubber all day, and I had got quite tired .over the casks. I might have been asleep about a couple of hours, when I was woke by a horrid scream — as if a soul was just dropping into the lower regions. I tumbled out in next to no time, and so did the other chaps, and we all came crowding round Galt’s berth. He was squeezed up against the side (we could see, when we lifted up the lantern) as if he wanted to drive his back into the wood, and was striking out with his right hand clutched as if he’d got a knife in it, and his left with all the fingers spread out. His face was a horrid sight. It was as white and as wet as the side of a chalk-pit, and his eyes were regularly a-light with rage and fear. I don’t know which there was most of in them.
“ ‘Take her off! take her off! ’ he yelled, when he saw us. ‘ You won’t! won’t you, you villains? Then, confound you! go to blazes with me! I’ll haunt you, and sink the ship! ’
“And then his face gave a twitch like a devil trying to laugh, and he fell over on it dead, with his arms still stiff. We could hardly get them down by his sides without breaking them. The next day but one we buried him, and — you may believe me or not, as you like — but I can tell you that his body didn’t drop into the sea, but was dragged down the moment he touched the water.
“The first slack day afterwards the skipper had his chest brought up, and tried to sell his things: but none of us would bid; so the skipper and the doctor, like good fellows, bid against each other, to get a good round sum for his old mother, whom he'd never cared about, his mates told us. We didn’t bid, because we didn’t think it would be lucky to put on anything that such a man as he had worn; but we made out a list of what each of us would give to the old girl, and gave it to the skipper to be stopped out of our pay.
“Nevertheless, after that, we had nothing but misfortunes. Next to no fish came in sight. Scarce one of those that did come, could we get near; and when we happened to strike one, the line was sure to break. One of the boats, too, went down all of a sudden, just as if it had been swallowed. Galt was haunting us sure enough. We didn’t see anything of him, however, until the sun set for good. We were lying then, frozen up, in a great floe, some sixty miles N.W. of the Devil’s Thumb. We could just make it out when the sun dipped — not to come up again for weeks to come. There we were, fairly shut in for the whole winter. Well, we were sawing out a dock for the ship by moonlight, when suddenly — the bears had done growling, and the wolves howling for a bit, and everything except the grating saws was still as death, for there wasn’t a breath of wind blowing — all of a sudden, I say, we heard shrieks and laughing. We knocked off work, and ran aboard in a minute — we were so scared; and when we ventured to look over the bulwarks, there, about two miles off, we could see the boat’s crew we had lost rushing through the mist, as big as giants, and Galt after them, even bigger, striking out just as he did when he died.
“Another time, we made out some water a mile off, with a whale floundering about in it, as if she was puzzled how to get out. We launched the boats over the ice, gave chase, and killed her, and towed her alongside the floe to flinch. We were glad enough of the crang ourselves, for we had been on short allowance for a long time. The bears and the wolves and the blue foxes scented it, and came down for their share. We drew off a bit to let them come near, and then let fly and killed a lot of them, too, for food. We had made quite a jolly pile of provisions, and were just about to spear an old shark — fried shark doesn’t taste unlike fried sole, when you’re hungry — that
I was bumping the whale with its ugly snout, to