"Well, Jack!" bluntly observed the latter in a gruff
whisper that resembled the suppressed growling of a
mastiff, "what the hell are ye thinking of now?--Not got
over your flumbustification yet, that ye stand here,
looking as sanctified as an old parson!"
"I'll tell ye what it is, Mr. Mullins," returned the
sailor, in the same key; "you may make as much game on
me as you like; but these here strange sort of doings
are somehow quizzical; and, though I fears nothing in
the shape of flesh and blood, still, when it comes to
having to do with those as is gone to Davy Jones's locker
like, it gives a fellow an all-overishness as isn't quite
the thing. You understand me?"
"I'm damned if I do!" was the brief but energetic rejoinder.
"Well, then," continued Fuller, "if I must out with it,
I must. I think that 'ere Ingian must have been the devil,
or how could he come so sudden and unbeknownst upon me,
with the head of a 'possum: and then, agin, how could he
get away from the craft without our seeing him? and how
came the ghost on board of the canoe?"
"Avast there, old fellow; you means not the head of a
'possum, but a beaver: but that 'ere's all nat'r'l enough,
and easily 'counted for; but you hav'n't told us whose
ghost it was, after all.
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