He of us all was spared the chills and
the harrowings that laid hold upon the rest of us during these still
gray hours after midnight when we huddled on the deck of the _Idaho
Lass_ and watched the sheeted apparition in the rigging; for by now
there was no more charging forward in attempts to run the ghost down. We
had passed that stage long since.
But so far from rejoicing in this immunity or drawing courage therefrom,
Ally Bazan filled the air with his fears and expostulations. Just the
fact that he was in some way differentiated from the others--that he was
singled out, if only for exemption--worked upon him. And that he was
unable to scale his terrors by actual sight of their object excited them
all the more.
And there issued from this a curious consequence. He, the very one who
had never seen the haunting, was also the very one to unsettle what
little common sense yet remained to Hardenberg and Strokher. He never
allowed the subject to be ignored--never lost an opportunity of
referring to the doom that o'erhung the vessel. By the hour he poured
into the ears of his friends lugubrious tales of ships, warned as this
one was, that had cleared from port, never to be seen again. He recalled
to their minds parallel incidents that they themselves had heard; he
foretold the fate of the _Idaho Lass_ when the land should lie behind
and she should be alone in midocean with this horrid supercargo that
took liberties with the rigging, and at last one particular morning, two
days before that which was to witness the schooner's departure, he came
out flatfooted to the effect that "Gaw-blyme him, he couldn't stand the
gaff no longer, no he couldn't, so help him, that if the owners were
wishful for to put to sea" (doomed to some unnamable destruction) "he
for one wa'n't fit to die, an' was going to quit that blessed day.
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