.. someone coughed. We had thought
we were alone. Nippers jerked back. The tin came down with a clatter,
first to the bench, then to the floor. A big friendly potato rolled
under to where we were. We seized on it, divided it, ate it.
Contrary to our conjecture, some of the men must have stayed below.
Someone jumped out of a bunk.
"There's rats down here!"
"--mighty big rats, if you arsks me."
"It's not rats," and I could hear a fear in the voice that quavered the
words forth, "I tell you, buddy, this ship is haunted."
"--haunted!" boomed the voice of a man coming down the ladder, "you stop
this silly nonsense right now ... don't spread such talk as that ...
it's stowaways!"
We saw a pair of legs to the knees again. We lay still, breathless. A
watch chain dangled down in a parabolic loop. Then followed a round
face, beef-red with stooping. It looked under apoplectically at us.
"Ah, me b'yes, c'm on out o' there!"
And out we came, dragged by the foot, one after the other, as I myself
in my childhood have pulled frogs out from a hole in a brook-bank.
"I've been hearing them for hours, Mister," spoke up the little,
shrivelled, leathery-skinned West Indian negro, who spoke English
without a trace of dialect, "and I was sure the place was haunted."
* * * * *
We stood before the captain, cap deferentially in hand.
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