THE GHOST IN THE CUPBOARD ROOM.
Mr. Beaver,
on being “spoke” (as his friend and ally, Jack Governor, called it), turned
out of an imaginary hammock with the greatest promptitude, and went straight
on duty. “As it’s Nat Beaver’s watch,” said he, “there shall be no
skulking.” Jack looked at me, with an expectant and admiring turn of his eye
on Mr. Beaver, full of complimentary implication. I noticed, by the way,
that Jack, in a naval absence of mind with which he is greatly troubled at
times, had his arm round my sister’s waist. Perhaps this complaint
originates in an old nautical requirement of having something to hold on by.
These were the terms of Mr. Beaver’s revelation to us:
What I have got to put forward, will not take very long; and I shall beg
leave to begin by going back to last night—just about the time when we all
parted from one another to go to bed.
The members of this good company did a very necessary and customary thing,
last night—they each took a bedroom candlestick, and lit the candle before
they went up-stairs. I wonder whether any one of them noticed that I left my
candlestick untouched, and my candle unlighted; and went to bed, in a
Haunted House, of all the places in the world, in the dark? I don’t think
any one of them did.
That is, perhaps, rather curious to begin with. It is likewise curious, and
just as true, that the bare sight of those candlesticks in the hands of this
good company set me in a tremble, and made last night, a night’s bad dream
instead of a night’s good sleep. The fact of the matter is—and I give you
leave, ladies and gentlemen, to laugh at it as much as you please—that the
ghost which haunted me last
night, which has haunted me off and on for many years past, and which will
go on haunting me till I am a ghost myself (and consequently spirit-proof in
all respects), is, nothing more or less than—a bedroom candlestick.
Yes, a bedroom candlestick and candle, or a flat candlestick and candle—put
it which way you like—that is what haunts me. I wish it was something
pleasanter and more out of the common way; a beautiful lady, or a mine of
gold and silver, or a cellar of wine and a coach and horses, and such-like.
But, being what it is, I must take it for what it is, and make the best of
it— and I shall thank you all kindly if you will help me out by doing the
same.
I am not a scholar myself; but I make bold to believe that the haunting of
any man, with anything under the sun, begins with the frightening of him. At
any rate, the haunting of me with a bedroom candlestick and candle began
with the frightening of me with a bedroom candlestick and candle—the
frightening of me half out of my life, ladies and gentlemen; and, for the
time being, the frightening of me altogether out of my wits. That is not a
very pleasant thing to confess to you all, before stating the particulars;
but perhaps you will be the readier to believe that I am not a downright
coward, because you find me bold enough to make a clean breast of it
already, to my own great disadvantage, so far.
These are the particulars, as well as I can put them.
I was apprenticed to the sea when I was about as tall as my own
walking-stick; and I made good enough use of my time to be fit for a mate’s
berth at the age of twenty-five years.
It was in the year eighteen hundred and eighteen, or nineteen, I am not
quite certain which, that I reached the before-mentioned age of twenty-five.
You will please to excuse my memory not being very good for dates, names,
numbers, places, and such-like. No fear, though, about the particulars I
have undertaken to tell you of; I have got them all ship-shape in my
recollection; I can see them, at this moment, as clear as noonday in my own
mind. But there is a mist over what went before, and, for the matter of
that, a mist likewise over much that came after—and it’s not very likely to
lift, at my time of life, is it?
Well, in eighteen hundred and eighteen, or nineteen, when there was peace in
our part of the world—and not before it was wanted, you will say—there was
fighting, of a certain scampering, scrambling kind, going on in that old
fighting ground, which we seafaring men know by the name of the Spanish
Main. The possessions that belonged to the Spaniards in South America had
broken into open mutiny and declared for themselves years before. There was
plenty of bloodshed between the new Government and the old; but the new had
got the best of it, for the most part, under one General Bolivar—a famous
man in his time, though he seems to have dropped out of people’s memories
now. Englishmen and Irishmen with a turn for fighting, and nothing
particular to do at home, joined the general as volunteers; and some of our
merchants here found it a good venture to send supplies across the ocean to
the popular side. There was risk enough, of course, in doing this; but where
one speculation of the kind succeeded, it made up for two, at the least,
that failed. And that’s the true principle of trade, wherever I have met
with it, all the world over.
Among the Englishmen who were concerned in this Spanish-American business,
I, your humble servant, happened, in a small way, to be one. I was then mate
of a brig belonging to a certain firm in the City, which drove a sort of
general trade, mostly in queer out-of-the-way places, as far from home as
possible; and which freighted the brig, in the year I am speaking of, with a
cargo of gunpowder for General Bolivar and his volunteers. Nobody knew
anything about our instructions, when we sailed, except the captain; and he
didn’t half seem to like them. I can’t rightly say how many barrels of
powder we had on board, or how much each barrel held—I only know we had no
other cargo. The name of the brig was The
Good Intent—a queer name
enough, you will tell me, for a vessel laden with gunpowder, and sent to
help a revolution. And as far as this particular voyage was concerned, so it
was. I meant that for a joke, ladies and gentlemen, and I’m sorry to find
you don’t laugh at it.
The Good Intent was the
craziest old tub of a vessel I ever went to sea in, and the worst found in
all respects. She was two hundred and thirty, or two hundred and eighty tons
burden, I forget which; and she had a crew of eight, all told—nothing like
as many as we ought by rights to have had to work the brig. However, we were
well and honestly paid our wages; and we had to set that against the chance
of foundering at sea, and, on this occasion, likewise, the chance of being
blown up into the bargain. In consideration of the nature of our cargo, we
were harassed with new regulations which we didn’t at all like, relative to
smoking our pipes and lighting our lanterns; and, as usual in such cases,
the captain who made the regulations preached what he didn’t practise. Not a
man of us was allowed to have a bit of lighted candle in his hand when he
went below—except the skipper; and he used his light, when he turned in, or
when he looked over his charts on the cabin table, just as usual. This light
was a common kitchen candle or “dip,” of the sort that goes eight or ten to
the pound; and it stood in an old battered flat candlestick, with all the
japan worn and melted off, and all the tin showing through. It would have
been more seamanlike and suitable in every respect if he had had a lamp or a
lantern; but he stuck to his old candlestick; and that same old candlestick,
ladies and gentlemen, has ever afterwards stuck to me. That’s another
joke, if you please; and I’m much obliged to Miss Belinda in the corner for
being good enough to laugh at it.
Well (I said “well” before, but it’s a word that helps a man on like), we
sailed in the brig, and shaped our course, first, for the Virgin Islands, in
the West Indies; and, after sighting them, we made for the Leeward Islands
next; and then stood on due south, till the look-out at the mast-head hailed
the deck, and said he saw land. That land was the coast of South America. We
had had a wonderful voyage so far. We had lost none of our spars or sails,
and not a man of us had been harassed to death at the pumps. It wasn’t often
The Good Intent made such a
voyage as that, I can tell you.
I was sent aloft to make sure about the land, and I did make sure of it.
When I reported the same to the skipper, he went below, and had a look at
his letter of instructions and the chart. When he came on deck again, he
altered our course a trifle to the eastward—I forget the point on the
compass, but that don’t matter. What I do remember is, that it was dark
before we closed in with the land. We kept the lead going, and hove the brig
to in from four to five fathoms water, or it might be six—I can’t say for
certain. I kept a sharp eye to the drift of the vessel, none of us knowing
how the currents ran on that coast. We all wondered why the skipper didn’t
anchor; but he said, No, he must first show a light at the
foretop-mast-head, and wait for an answering light on shore. We did wait,
and nothing of the sort appeared. It was starlight and calm. What little
wind there was came in puffs off the land. I suppose we waited, drifting a
little to the westward, as I made it out, best part of an hour before
anything happened—and then, instead of seeing the light on shore, we saw a
boat coming towards us, rowed by two men only.
We hailed them, and they answered, “Friends!” and hailed us by our name.
They came on board. One of them was an Irishman, and the other was a coffee-coloured
native pilot, who jabbered a little English. The Irishman handed a note to
our skipper, who showed it to me. It informed us that the part of the coast
we were off then, was not oversafe for discharging our cargo, seeing that
spies of the enemy (that is to say, of the old Government) had been taken
and shot in the neighbourhood the day before. We might trust the brig to the
native pilot; and he had his instructions to take us to another part of the
coast. The note was signed by the proper parties; so we let the Irishman go
back alone in the boat, and allowed the pilot to exercise his lawful
authority over the brig. He kept us stretching off from the land till noon
the next day—his instructions, seemingly, ordering him to keep us well out
of sight of the shore. We only altered our course, in the afternoon, so as
to close in with the land again a little before midnight.
This same pilot was about as ill-looking a vagabond as ever I saw; a skinny,
cowardly, quarrelsome mongrel, who swore at the men, in the vilest broken
English, till they were every one of them ready to pitch him overboard. The
skipper kept them quiet, and I kept them quiet, for the pilot being given us
by our instructions, we were bound to make the best of him. Near nightfall,
however, with the best will in the world to avoid it, I was unlucky enough
to quarrel with him. He wanted to go below with his pipe, and I stopped him,
of course, because it was contrary to orders. Upon that, he tried to hustle
by me, and I put him away with my hand. I never meant to push him down; but,
somehow, I did. He picked himself up as quick as lightning, and pulled out
his knife. I snatched it out of his hand, slapped his murderous face for
him, and threw his weapon overboard. He gave me one ugly look, and walked
aft. I didn’t think much of the look then; but I remembered it a little too
well afterwards.
We were close in with the land again, just as the wind failed us, between
eleven and twelve that night; and dropped our anchor by the pilot’s
directions. It was pitch dark, and a dead, airless calm. The skipper was on
deck with two of our best men for watch. The rest were below, except the
pilot, who coiled himself up, more like a snake than a man, on the
forecastle. It was not my watch till four in the morning. But I didn’t like
the look of the night, or the pilot, or the state of things generally, and I
shook myself down on deck to get my nap there, and be ready for anything at
a moment’s notice. The last I remember was the skipper whispering to me that
he didn’t like the look of things either, and that he would go below and
consult his instructions again. That is the last I remember, before the
slow, heavy, regular roll of the old brig on the ground swell rocked me off
to sleep.
I was woke, ladies and gentlemen, by a scuffle on the forecastle, and a gag
in my mouth. There was a man on my breast and a man on my legs; and I was
bound hand and foot in half a minute.
The brig was in the hands of the Spaniards. They were swarming all over her.
I heard six heavy splashes in the water, one after another—I saw the captain
stabbed to the heart as he came running up the companion—and I heard a
seventh splash in the water. Except myself, every soul of us on board had
been murdered and thrown into the sea. Why I was left, I couldn’t think,
till I saw the pilot stoop over me with a lantern, and look, to make sure of
who I was. There was a devilish grin on his face, and he nodded his head at
me, as much as to say, You were the man who hustled me down and
slapped my face, and I mean to play the game of cat and mouse with
you in return for it!
I could neither move nor speak; but I could see the Spaniards take off the
main hatch and rig the purchases for getting up the cargo. A quarter of an
hour afterwards, I heard the sweeps of a schooner, or other small vessel, in
the water. The strange craft was laid alongside of us; and the Spaniards set
to work to discharge our cargo into her. They all worked hard except the
pilot; and he came, from time to time, with his lantern, to have another
look at me, and to grin and nod always in the same devilish way. I am old
enough now not to be ashamed of confessing the truth; and I don’t mind
acknowledging that the pilot frightened me.
The fright, and the bonds, and the gag, and the not being able to stir hand
or foot, had pretty nigh worn me out, by the time the Spaniards gave over
work. This was just as the dawn broke. They had shifted good part of our
cargo on board their vessel, but nothing like all of it; and they were sharp
enough to be off with what they had got, before daylight. I need hardly say
that I had made up my mind, by this time, to the worst I could think of. The
pilot, it was clear enough, was one of the spies of the enemy, who had
wormed himself into the confidence of our consignees without being
suspected. He, or more likely his employers, had got knowledge enough of us
to suspect what our cargo was; we had been anchored for the night in the
safest berth for them to surprise us in; and we had paid the penalty of
having a small crew, and consequently an insufficient watch. All this was
clear enough—but what did the pilot mean to do with me?
On the word of a man, it makes my flesh creep, now, only to tell you what he
did with me.
After all the rest of them were out of the brig, except the pilot and two
Spanish seamen, these last took me up, bound and gagged as I was, lowered me
into the hold of the vessel, and laid me along on the floor; lashing me to
it with ropes’ ends, so that I could just turn from one side to the other,
but could not roll myself fairly over, so as to change my place. They then
left me. Both of them were the worse for liquor; but the devil of a pilot
was sober—mind that!—as sober as I am at the present moment.
I lay in the dark for a little while, with my heart thumping as if it was
going to jump out of me. I lay about five minutes so, when the pilot came
down into the hold, alone. He had the captain’s cursed flat candlestick and
a carpenter’s awl in one hand, and a long thin twist of cotton yarn, well
oiled, in the other. He put the candlestick, with a new “dip” lighted in it,
down on the floor, about two feet from my face, and close against the side
of the vessel. The light was feeble enough; but it was sufficient to show a
dozen barrels of gunpowder or more, left all round me in the hold of the
brig. I began to suspect what he was after, the moment I noticed the
barrels. The horrors laid hold of me from head to foot; and the sweat poured
off my face like water.
I saw him go, next, to one of the barrels of powder standing against the
side of the vessel, in a line with the candle, and about three feet, or
rather better, away from it. He bored a hole in the side of the barrel with
his awl; and the horrid powder came trickling out, as black as hell, and
dripped into the hollow of his hand, which he held to catch it. When he had
got a good handful, he stopped up the hole by jamming one end of his oiled
twist of cotton-yarn fast into it; and he then rubbed the powder into the
whole length of the yarn, till he had blackened every hairsbreadth of it.
The next thing he did—as true as I sit here, as true as the heaven above us
all—the next thing he did was to carry the free end of his long, lean,
black, frightful slow-match to the lighted candle alongside my face, and to
tie it, in several folds, round the tallow dip, about a third of the
distance down, measuring from the flame of the wick to the lip of the
candlestick. He did that; he looked to see that my lashings were all safe;
and then he put his face down close to mine; and whispered in my ear, “Blow
up with the brig!”
He was on deck again the moment after; and he and the two others shoved the
hatch on over me. At the farthest end from where I lay, they had not fitted
it down quite true, and I saw a blink of daylight glimmering in when I
looked in that direction. I heard the sweeps of the schooner fall into the
water—splash! splash! fainter and fainter, as they swept the vessel out in
the dead calm, to be ready for the wind in the offing. Fainter and fainter,
splash! splash! for a quarter of an hour or more.
While those sounds were in my ears, my eyes were fixed on the candle. It had
been freshly lit—if left to itself it would burn for between six and seven
hours—the slow-match was twisted round it about a third of the way down—and
therefore the flame would be about two hours reaching it. There I lay,
gagged, bound, lashed to the floor; seeing my own life burning down with the
candle by my side—there I lay, alone on the sea, doomed to be blown to
atoms, and to see that doom drawing on, nearer and nearer with every fresh
second of time, through nigh on two hours to come; powerless to help myself
and speechless to call for help to others. The wonder to me is that I didn’t
cheat the flame, the slow-match, and the powder, and die of the horror of my
situation before my first half-hour was out in the hold of the brig.
I can’t exactly say how long I kept the command of my senses after I had
ceased to hear the splash of the schooner’s sweeps in the water. I can trace
back everything I did and everything I thought, up to a certain point; but,
once past that, I get all abroad, and lose myself in my memory now, much as
I lost myself in my own feelings at the time.
The moment the hatch was covered over me, I began, as every other man would
have begun in my place, with a frantic effort to free my hands. In the mad
panic I was in, I cut my flesh with the lashings as if they had been
knife-blades; but I never stirred them. There was less chance still of
freeing my legs, or of tearing myself from the fastenings that held me to
the floor. I gave in, when I was all but suffocated for want of breath. The
gag, you will please to remember, was a terrible enemy to me; I could only
breathe freely through my nose—and that is but a poor vent when a man is
straining his strength as far as ever it will go.
I gave in, and lay quiet, and got my breath again; my eyes glaring and
straining at the candle all the time. While I was staring at it, the notion
struck me of trying to blow out the flame by pumping a long breath at it
suddenly through my nostrils. It was too high above me, and too far away
from me, to be reached in that fashion. I tried, and tried, and tried—and
then I gave in again and lay quiet again; always with my eyes glaring at the
candle and the candle glaring at me. The splash of the schooner’s
sweeps was very faint by this time. I could only just hear them in the
morning stillness. Splash! splash!—fainter and fainter—splash! splash!
Without exactly feeling my mind going, I began to feel it getting queer, as
early as this. The snuff of the candle was growing taller and taller, and
the length of tallow between the flame and the slow-match, which was the
length of my life, was getting shorter and shorter. I calculated that I had
rather less than an hour and a half to live. An hour and a half! Was there a
chance, in that time, of a boat pulling off to the brig from shore? Whether
the land near which the vessel was anchored was in possession of our side,
or in possession of the enemy’s side, I made it out that they must, sooner
or later, send to hail the brig, merely because she was a stranger in those
parts. The question for me was, how soon? The sun had not risen yet,
as I could tell by looking through the chink in the hatch. There was no
coast village near us, as we all knew, before the brig was seized, by seeing
no lights on shore. There was no wind, as I could tell by listening, to
bring any strange vessel near. If I had had six hours to live, there might
have been a chance for me, reckoning from sunrise to noon. But with an hour
and a half, which had dwindled to an hour and a quarter by this time—or, in
other words, with the earliness of the morning, the uninhabited coast, and
the dead calm all against me—there was not the ghost of a chance. As I felt
that, I had another struggle—the last—with my bonds; and only cut myself the
deeper for my pains.
I gave in once more, and lay quiet, and listened for the splash of the
sweeps. Gone! Not a sound could I hear but the blowing of a fish, now and
then, on the surface of the sea, and the creak of the brig’s crazy old
spars, as she rolled gently from side to side with the little swell there
was on the quiet water.
An hour and a quarter. The wick grew terribly, as the quarter slipped away;
and the charred top of it began to thicken and spread out mushroom-shape. It
would fall off soon. Would it fall off red-hot, and would the swing of the
brig cant it over the side of the candle and let it down on the slow-match?
If it would, I had about ten minutes to live instead of an hour. This
discovery set my mind for a minute on a new tack altogether. I began to
ponder with myself what sort of a death blowing-up might be. Painful? Well,
it would be, surely, too sudden for that. Perhaps just one crash, inside me,
or outside me, or both, and nothing more? Perhaps not even a crash; that and
death and the scattering of this living body of mine into millions of fiery
sparks, might all happen in the same instant? I couldn’t make it out; I
couldn’t settle how it would be. The minute of calmness in my mind left it,
before I had half done thinking; and I got all abroad again.
When I came back to my thoughts, or when they came back to me (I can’t say
which), the wick was awfully tall, the flame was burning with a smoke above
it, the charred top was broad and red, and heavily spreading out to its
fall. My despair and horror at seeing it, took me in a new way, which was
good and right, at any rate, for my poor soul. I tried to pray; in my own
heart, you will understand, for the gag put all lip-praying out of my power.
I tried, but the candle seemed to burn it up in me. I struggled hard to
force my eyes from the slow, murdering flame, and to look up through the
chink in the hatch at the blessed daylight. I tried once, tried twice; and
gave it up. I tried next only to shut my eyes, and keep them
shut—once—twice—and the second time I did it. “God bless old mother, and
sister Lizzie; God keep them both, and forgive me.” That was all I
had time to say, in my own heart, before my eyes opened again, in spite of
me, and the flame of the candle flew into them, flew all over me, and burnt
up the rest of my thoughts in an instant.
I couldn’t hear the fish blowing now; I couldn’t hear the creak of the
spars; I couldn’t think; I couldn’t feel the sweat of my own death agony on
my face—I could only look at the heavy, charred top of the wick. It swelled,
tottered, bent over to one side, dropped—red-hot at the moment of its
fall—black and harmless, even before the swing of the brig had canted it
over into the bottom of the candlestick.
I caught myself laughing. Yes! laughing at the safe fall of the bit of wick.
But for the gag, I should have screamed with laughing. As it was, I shook
with it inside me—shook till the blood was in my head, and I was all but
suffocated for want of breath. I had just sense enough left to feel that my
own horrid laughter, at that awful moment, was a sign of my brain going at
last. I had just sense enough left to make another struggle before my mind
broke loose like a frightened horse, and ran away with me.
One comforting look at the blink of daylight through the hatch was what I
tried for once more. The fight to force my eyes from the candle and to get
that one look at the daylight, was the hardest I had had yet; and I lost the
fight. The flame had hold of my eyes as fast as the lashings had hold of my
hands. I couldn’t look away from it. I couldn’t even shut my eyes, when I
tried that next, for the second time. There was the wick, growing tall once
more. There was the space of unburnt candle between the light and the slow
match shortened to an inch or less. How much life did that inch leave me?
Three-quarters of an hour? Half an hour? Fifty minutes? Twenty minutes?
Steady! an inch of tallow candle would burn longer than twenty minutes. An
inch of tallow! the notion of a man’s body and soul being kept together by
an inch of tallow! Wonderful! Why, the greatest king that sits on a throne
can’t keep a man’s body and soul together; and here’s an inch of tallow that
can do what the king can’t! There’s something to tell mother, when I get
home, which will surprise her more than all the rest of my voyages put
together. I laughed inwardly, again, at the thought of that; and shook and
swelled and suffocated myself, till the light of the candle leaped in
through my eyes, and licked up the laughter, and burnt it out of me, and
made me all empty, and cold, and quiet once more.
Mother and Lizzie. I don’t know when they came back; but they did come
back—not, as it seemed to me, into my mind this time; but right down bodily
before me, in the hold of the brig.
Yes: sure enough, there was Lizzie, just as light-hearted as usual, laughing
at me. Laughing! Well why not? Who is to blame Lizzie for thinking I’m lying
on my back, drunk in the cellar, with the beer barrels all round me? Steady!
she’s crying now—spinning round and round in a fiery mist, wringing her
hands, screeching out for help—fainter and fainter, like the splash of the
schooner’s sweeps. Gone!—burnt up in the fiery mist. Mist? fire? no: neither
one nor the other. It’s mother makes the light—mother knitting, with ten
flaming points at the ends of her fingers and thumbs, and slow-matches
hanging in bunches all round her face instead of her own gray hair. Mother
in her old arm-chair, and the pilot’s long skinny hands hanging over the
back of the chair, dripping with gunpowder. No! no gunpowder, no chair, no
mother—nothing but the pilot’s face, shining red hot, like a sun, in the
fiery mist; turning upside down in the fiery mist; running backward and
forward along the slow-match, in the fiery mist; spinning millions of miles
in a minute, in the fiery mist—spinning itself smaller and smaller into one
tiny point, and that point darting on a sudden straight into my head—and
then, all fire and all mist—no hearing, no seeing, no thinking, no
feeling—the brig, the sea, my own self, the whole world, all gone together!
After what I’ve just told you, I know nothing and remember nothing, till I
woke up, as it seemed to me in a comfortable bed, with two rough and ready
men like myself sitting on each side of my pillow, and a gentleman standing
watching me at the foot of the bed. It was about seven in the morning. My
sleep (or what seemed like my sleep to me) had lasted better than eight
months—I was among my own countrymen in the island of Trinidad—the men at
each side of my pillow were my keepers, turn and turn about—and the
gentleman standing at the foot of the bed was the doctor. What I said and
did in those eight months, I never have known and never shall. I woke out of
it, as if it had been one long sleep—that’s all I know.
It was another two months or more before the doctor thought it safe to
answer the questions I asked him.
The brig had been anchored, just as I had supposed, off a part of the coast
which was lonely enough to make the Spaniards pretty sure of no
interruption, so long as they managed their murderous work quietly under
cover of night. My life had not been saved from the shore, but from the sea.
An American vessel, becalmed in the offing, had made out the brig as the
sun rose; and the captain, having his time on his hands in consequence of
the calm, and seeing a vessel anchored where no vessel had any reason to be,
had manned one of his boats and sent his mate with it, to look a little
closer into the matter, and bring back a report of what he saw. What he saw,
when he and his men found the brig deserted and boarded her, was a gleam of
candlelight through the chink in the hatchway. The flame was within about a
thread’s breadth of the slow-match, when he lowered himself into the hold;
and if he had not had the sense and coolness to cut the match in two with
his knife, before he touched the candle, he and his men might have been
blown up along with the brig, as well as me. The match caught and turned
into sputtering red fire, in the very act of putting the candle out; and if
the communication with the powder barrel had not been cut off, the Lord only
knows what might have happened.
What became of the Spanish schooner and the pilot I have never heard from
that day to this. As for the brig, the Yankees took her, as they took me, to
Trinidad, and claimed their salvage, and got it, I hope, for their own
sakes. I was landed just in the same state as when they rescued me from the
brig, that is to say, clean out of my senses. But, please to remember it was
a long time ago; and, take my word for it, I was discharged cured, as I have
told you. Bless your hearts, I’m all right now, as you may see. I’m a little
shaken by telling the story, ladies and gentlemen—a little shaken, that’s
all.
First published 13 December 1859 in The Haunted House, the Christmas
number of All
The Year Round pp.21-26 and in
Harper’s Weekly, New York, 24
December 1859 Christmas Supplement.
The two introductory paragraphs were almost certainly by Charles Dickens. The whole of the rest of the story is by Wilkie Collins. It was republished, with some minor amendments, as ‘”Blow up with the Brig!” A Sailor’s Story’ in Miss or Mrs.? and Other Stories in Outline, London 1873; in Harper’s Weekly 1 March 1873 vol. XVII No.844 pp.174-175; in After Dark and other stories, New York, 1875; and in Alicia Warlock (A Mystery) and Other Stories, Boston, 1875. It was often republished in collections of mystery, horror, or suspense tales.