they looked aft along her decks, and not a soul in sight, and every-thin'
bleached, and gray, and iron-rusted, and the riggin' all slack and white's
though it had been chawed, and nothin' left of her sails but some old
rags flappin' like a last year's scarecrow. They went and looked in the
fo'k'sel: there wan't nothin' there but some chists, men's chists, with a
little old beddin' left in the bunks. They went down the companion-way:
cabin-door unlocked, everything in there as nat'ral's though it had just
been left, only 'twas kind o' mouldy-smellin'. I expect the cap'n give a
kind of a start as he looked around. 'Twan't no old greasy whaler's cabin,
nor no packet-ship neither. There wan't many craft like her on the seas in
them days. She was fixed up inside more like a gentleman's yacht is now.
Merchantmen in them days didn't have their Turkey carpets and their colored
wine-glasses jinglin' in the racks. While they was explorin' round in
there, movin' round kind o' cautious, the door of the cap'n's stateroom
swung open with a creak, just's though somebody was a-shovin' it slow like,
and the ship give a kind of a stir and a rustlin', moanin' sound, as if
she was a-comin' to life. The old man never made no secret but what he was
scairt when he went through her that night. 'Twan't so much what he said as
the way he looked when he told it. I expect he thought he'd seen enough,
about the time that door blew open. He said he knowed 'twas nothin' but a
puff o' wind struck her, and that he'd better be a-gittin' on to his own
craft before he lost her in the fog. So he went back and got under weigh,
and sent a line aboard of the stranger and took her in tow, and all that
night with a good southeast wind they kept a-movin' toward home. The old
man was kind o' res'less and wakeful, walkin' the decks and lookin' over
the stern at the big ship follerin' him like a ghost. The moonlight was a
little dull with fog, but he could see her, plain, a-comin' on before the
wind with her white riggin' and bare poles, and hear the water sousin'
under her bows. He said 'twas in his mind more 'n a dozen times to cut her
adrift. You see he had his misgivin's about her from the fust, though he