started up, with a ghastly and disturbed countenance, and lighting a
candle, proceeded to the galley or cook-room of the vessel. He sate down
with his eyes open, staring before him as on some terrible object which
he beheld with horror, yet from which he could not withhold his eyes.
After a short space he arose, took up a tin can or decanter, filled it
with water, muttering to himself all the while--mixed salt in the water,
and sprinkled it about the galley. Finally, he sighed deeply, like one
relieved from a heavy burden, and, returning to his hammock, slept
soundly. In the next morning the haunted man told the usual precise
story of his apparition, with the additional circumstances, that the
ghost had led him to the galley, but that he had fortunately, he knew
not how, obtained possession of some holy water, and succeeded in
getting rid of his unwelcome visitor. The visionary was then informed of
the real transactions of the night, with so many particulars as to
satisfy him he had been the dupe of his imagination; he acquiesced in
his commander's reasoning, and the dream, as often happens in these
cases, returned no more after its imposture had been detected. In this
case, we find the excited imagination acting upon the half-waking
senses, which were intelligent enough for the purpose of making him
sensible where he was, but not sufficiently so to judge truly of the
objects before him.

But it is not only private life alone, or that tenor of thought which
has been depressed into melancholy by gloomy anticipations respecting
the future, which disposes the mind to mid-day fantasies, or to nightly
apparitions--a state of eager anxiety, or excited exertion, is equally
favourable to the indulgence of such supernatural communications. The
anticipation of a dubious battle, with all the doubt and uncertainty of
its event, and the conviction that it must involve his own fate and that
of his country, was powerful enough to conjure up to the anxious eye of