"
No more they did. On board the schooner they had faced the supernatural
with some kind of courage born of the occasion. Once on shore, and no
money could hire, no power force them to go aboard a second time.
The affair ended in a grand wrangle in Cy Rider's back office, and just
twenty-four hours later the bark _Elftruda_, Captain Jens Petersen,
cleared from Portland, bound for "a cruise to South Pacific ports--in
ballast."
* * * * *
Two years after this I took Ally Bazan with me on a duck-shooting
excursion in the "Toolies" back of Sacramento, for he is a handy man
about a camp and can row a boat as softly as a drifting cloud.
We went about in a cabin cat of some thirty feet over all, the rowboat
towing astern. Sometimes we did not go ashore to camp, but slept aboard.
On the second night of this expedient I woke in my blankets on the floor
of the cabin to see the square of gray light that stood for the cabin
door darkened by--it gave me the same old start--a sheeted figure. It
was going up the two steps to the deck. Beyond question it had been in
the cabin. I started up and followed it. I was too frightened not to--if
you can see what I mean. By the time I had got the blankets off and had
thrust my head above the level of the cabin hatch the figure was already
in the bows, and, as a matter of course, hoisting the jib.
I thought of calling Ally Bazan, who slept by me on the cabin floor, but
it seemed to me at the time that if I did not keep that figure in sight
it would elude me again, and, besides, if I went back in the cabin I was
afraid that I would bolt the door and remain under the bedclothes till
morning.
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