The Ghost In The Crosstrees

: A Deal In Wheat And Other Stories

I



Cyrus Ryder, the President of the South Pacific Exploitation Company,

had at last got hold of a "proposition"--all Ryder's schemes were, in

his vernacular, "propositions"--that was not only profitable beyond

precedent or belief, but that also was, wonderful to say, more or less

legitimate. He had got an "island." He had not discovered it. Ryder had

not felt a deck under his shoes for twenty years other han the

promenade deck of the ferry-boat San Rafael, that takes him home to

Berkeley every evening after "business hours." He had not discovered it,

but "Old Rosemary," captain of the barkentine Scottish Chief, of

Blyth, had done that very thing, and, dying before he was able to

perfect the title, had made over his interest in it to his best friend

and old comrade, Cyrus Ryder.



"Old Rosemary," I am told, first landed on the island--it is called

Paa--in the later '60's.



He established its location and took its latitude and longitude, but as

minutes and degrees mean nothing to the lay reader, let it be said that

the Island of Paa lies just below the equator, some 200 miles west of

the Gilberts and 1,600 miles due east from Brisbane, in Australia. It is

six miles long, three wide, and because of the prevailing winds and

precipitous character of the coast can only be approached from the west

during December and January.



"Old Rosemary" landed on the island, raised the American flag, had the

crew witness the document by virtue of which he made himself the

possessor, and then, returning to San Francisco, forwarded to the

Secretary of State, at Washington, application for title. This was

withheld till it could be shown that no other nation had a prior claim.

While "Old Rosemary" was working out the proof, he died, and the whole

matter was left in abeyance till Cyrus Ryder took it up. By then there

was a new Secretary in Washington and times were changed, so that the

Government of Ryder's native land was not so averse toward acquiring

Eastern possessions. The Secretary of State wrote to Ryder to say that

the application would be granted upon furnishing a bond for $50,000; and

you may believe that the bond was forthcoming.



For in the first report upon Paa, "Old Rosemary" had used the magic word

"guano."



He averred, and his crew attested over their sworn statements, that Paa

was covered to an average depth of six feet with the stuff, so that this

last and biggest of "Cy" Ryder's propositions was a vast slab of an

extremely marketable product six feet thick, three miles wide and six

miles long.



But no sooner had the title been granted when there came a dislocation

in the proceedings that until then had been going forward so smoothly.

Ryder called the Three Black Crows to him at this juncture, one certain

afternoon in the month of April. They were his best agents. The plums

that the "Company" had at its disposal generally went to the trio, and

if any man could "put through" a dangerous and desperate piece of work,

Strokher, Hardenberg and Ally Bazan were those men.



Of late they had been unlucky, and the affair of the contraband arms,

which had ended in failure of cataclysmic proportions, yet rankled in

Ryder's memory, but he had no one else to whom he could intrust the

present proposition and he still believed Hardenberg to be the best boss

on his list.



If Paa was to be fought for, Hardenberg, backed by Strokher and Ally

Bazan, was the man of all men for the job, for it looked as though Ryder

would not get the Island of Paa without a fight after all, and nitrate

beds were worth fighting for.



"You see, boys, it's this way," Ryder explained to the three as they sat

around the spavined table in the grimy back room of Ryder's "office."

"It's this way. There's a scoovy after Paa, I'm told; he says he was

there before 'Rosemary,' which is a lie, and that his Gov'ment has given

him title. He's got a kind of dough-dish up Portland way and starts for

Paa as soon as ever he kin fit out. He's got no title, in course, but if

he gits there afore we do and takes possession it'll take fifty years o'

lawing an' injunctioning to git him off. So hustle is the word for you

from the word 'go.' We got a good start o' the scoovy. He can't put to

sea within a week, while over yonder in Oakland Basin there's the Idaho

Lass, as good a schooner, boys, as ever wore paint, all ready but to

fit her new sails on her. Ye kin do it in less than no time. The stores

will be goin' into her while ye're workin', and within the week I expect

to see the Idaho Lass showing her heels to the Presidio. You see the

point now, boys. If ye beat the scoovy--his name is Petersen, and his

boat is called the Elftruda--we're to the wind'ard of a pretty pot o'

money. If he gets away before you do--well, there's no telling; we

prob'ly lose the island."





II



About ten days before the morning set for their departure I went over to

the Oakland Basin to see how the Three Black Crows were getting on.



Hardenberg welcomed me as my boat bumped alongside, and extending a

great tarry paw, hauled me over the rail. The schooner was a wilderness

of confusion, with the sails covering, apparently, nine-tenths of the

decks, the remaining tenth encumbered by spars, cordage, tangled

rigging, chains, cables and the like, all helter-skeltered together in

such a haze of entanglements that my heart misgave me as I looked on it.

Surely order would not issue from this chaos in four days' time with

only three men to speed the work.



But Hardenberg was reassuring, and little Ally Bazan, the colonial, told

me they would "snatch her shipshape in the shorter end o' two days, if

so be they must."



I stayed with the Three Crows all that day and shared their dinner with

them on the quarterdeck when, wearied to death with the strain of

wrestling with the slatting canvas and ponderous boom, they at last

threw themselves upon the hamper of "cold snack" I had brought off with

me and pledged the success of the venture in tin dippers full of

Pilsener.



"And I'm thinking," said Ally Bazan, "as 'ow ye might as well turn in

along o' us on board 'ere, instead o' hykin' back to town to-night.

There's a fairish set o' currents up and daown 'ere about this time o'

dye, and ye'd find it a stiff bit o' rowing."



"We'll sling a hammick for you on the quarterdeck, m'son," urged

Hardenberg.



And so it happened that I passed my first night aboard the Idaho Lass.



We turned in early. The Three Crows were very tired, and only Ally Bazan

and I were left awake at the time when we saw the 8:30 ferryboat

negotiating for her slip on the Oakland side. Then we also went to bed.



And now it becomes necessary, for a better understanding of what is to

follow, to mention with some degree of particularization the places and

manners in which my three friends elected to take their sleep, as well

as the condition and berth of the schooner Idaho Lass.



Hardenberg slept upon the quarterdeck, rolled up in an army blanket and

a tarpaulin. Strokher turned in below in the cabin upon the fixed lounge

by the dining-table, while Ally Bazan stretched himself in one of the

bunks in the fo'c's'le.



As for the location of the schooner, she lay out in the stream, some

three or four cables' length off the yards and docks of a ship-building

concern. No other ship or boat of any description was anchored nearer

than at least 300 yards. She was a fine, roomy vessel, three-masted,

about 150 feet in length overall. She lay head up stream, and from where

I lay by Hardenberg on the quarterdeck I could see her tops sharply

outlined against the sky above the Golden Gate before I went to sleep.



I suppose it was very early in the morning--nearer two than three--when

I awoke. Some movement on the part of Hardenberg--as I afterward found

out--had aroused me. But I lay inert for a long minute trying to find

out why I was not in my own bed, in my own home, and to account for the

rushing, rippling sound of the tide eddies sucking and chuckling around

the Lass's rudder-post.



Then I became aware that Hardenberg was awake. I lay in my hammock,

facing the stern of the schooner, and as Hardenberg had made up his bed

between me and the wheel he was directly in my line of vision when I

opened my eyes, and I could see him without any other movement than that

of raising the eyelids. Just now, as I drifted more and more into

wakefulness, I grew proportionately puzzled and perplexed to account for

a singularly strange demeanour and conduct on the part of my friend.



He was sitting up in his place, his knees drawn up under the blanket,

one arm thrown around both, the hand of the other arm resting on the

neck and supporting the weight of his body. He was broad awake. I could

see the green shine of our riding lantern in his wide-open eyes, and

from time to time I could hear him muttering to himself, "What is it?

What is it? What the devil is it, anyhow?" But it was not his attitude,

nor the fact of his being so broad awake at the unseasonable hour, nor

yet his unaccountable words, that puzzled me the most. It was the man's

eyes and the direction in which they looked that startled me.



His gaze was directed not upon anything on the deck of the boat, nor

upon the surface of the water near it, but upon something behind me and

at a great height in the air. I was not long in getting myself broad

awake.





III



I rolled out on the deck and crossed over to where Hardenberg sat

huddled in his blankets.



"What the devil--" I began.



He jumped suddenly at the sound of my voice, then raised an arm and

pointed toward the top of the foremast.



"D'ye see it?" he muttered. "Say, huh? D'ye see it? I thought I saw it

last night, but I wasn't sure. But there's no mistake now. D'ye see it,

Mr. Dixon?"



I looked where he pointed. The schooner was riding easily to anchor, the

surface of the bay was calm, but overhead the high white sea-fog was

rolling in. Against it the foremast stood out like the hand of an

illuminated town clock, and not a detail of its rigging that was not as

distinct as if etched against the sky.



And yet I saw nothing.



"Where?" I demanded, and again and again "where?"



"In the crosstrees," whispered Hardenberg. "Ah, look there."



He was right. Something was stirring there, something that I had

mistaken for the furled tops'l. At first it was but a formless bundle,

but as Hardenberg spoke it stretched itself, it grew upright, it assumed

an erect attitude, it took the outlines of a human being. From head to

heel a casing housed it in, a casing that might have been anything at

that hour of the night and in that strange place--a shroud, if you like,

a winding-sheet--anything; and it is without shame that I confess to a

creep of the most disagreeable sensation I have ever known as I stood at

Hardenberg's side on that still, foggy night and watched the stirring of

that nameless, formless shape standing gaunt and tall and grisly and

wrapped in its winding-sheet upon the crosstrees of the foremast of the

Idaho Lass.



We watched and waited breathless for an instant. Then the creature on

the foremast laid a hand upon the lashings of the tops'l and undid them.

Then it turned, slid to the deck by I know not what strange process,

and, still hooded, still shrouded, still lapped about by its

mummy-wrappings, seized a rope's end. In an instant the jib was set and

stood on hard and billowing against the night wind. The tops'l followed.

Then the figure moved forward and passed behind the companionway of the

fo'c's'le.



We looked for it to appear upon the other side, but looked in vain. We

saw it no more that night.



What Hardenberg and I told each other between the time of the

disappearing and the hour of breakfast I am now ashamed to recall. But

at last we agreed to say nothing to the others--for the time being. Just

after breakfast, however, we two had a few words by the wheel on the

quarterdeck. Ally Bazan and Strokher were forward.



"The proper thing to do," said I--it was a glorious, exhilarating

morning, and the sunlight was flooding every angle and corner of the

schooner--"the proper thing to do is to sleep on deck by the foremast

to-night with our pistols handy and interview the--party if it walks

again."



"Oh, yes," cried Hardenberg heartily. "Oh, yes; that's the proper thing.

Of course it is. No manner o' doubt about that, Mr. Dixon. Watch for the

party--yes, with pistols. Of course it's the proper thing. But I know

one man that ain't going to do no such thing."



"Well," I remember to have said reflectively, "well--I guess I know

another."



But for all our resolutions to say nothing to the others about the

night's occurrences, we forgot that the tops'l and jib were both set and

both drawing.



"An' w'at might be the bloomin' notion o' setting the bloomin' kite and

jib?" demanded Ally Bazan not half an hour after breakfast. Shamelessly

Hardenberg, at a loss for an answer, feigned an interest in the grummets

of the life-boat cover and left me to lie as best I might.



But it is not easy to explain why one should raise the sails of an

anchored ship during the night, and Ally Bazan grew very suspicious.

Strokher, too, had something to say, and in the end the whole matter

came out.



Trust a sailor to give full value to anything savouring of the

supernatural. Strokher promptly voted the ship a "queer old hooker

anyhow, and about as seaworthy as a hen-coop." He held forth at great

length upon the subject.



"You mark my words, now," he said. "There's been some fishy doin's in

this 'ere vessel, and it's like somebody done to death crool hard, an'

'e wants to git away from the smell o' land, just like them as is killed

on blue water. That's w'y 'e takes an' sets the sails between dark an'

dawn."



But Ally Bazan was thoroughly and wholly upset, so much so that at first

he could not speak. He went pale and paler while we stood talking it

over, and crossed himself--he was a Catholic--furtively behind the

water-butt.



"I ain't never 'a' been keen on ha'nts anyhow, Mr. Dixon," he told me

aggrievedly at dinner that evening. "I got no use for 'em. I ain't never

known any good to come o' anything with a ha'nt tagged to it, an' we're

makin' a ill beginnin' o' this island business, Mr. Dixon--a blyme ill

beginnin'. I mean to stye awyke to-night."



But if he was awake the little colonial was keeping close to his bunk at

the time when Strokher and Hardenberg woke me at about three in the

morning.



I rolled out and joined them on the quarterdeck and stood beside them

watching. The same figure again towered, as before, gray and ominous in

the crosstrees. As before, it set the tops'l; as before, it came down to

the deck and raised the jib; as before, it passed out of sight amid the

confusion of the forward deck.



But this time we all ran toward where we last had seen it, stumbling

over the encumbered decks, jostling and tripping, but keeping

wonderfully close together. It was not twenty seconds from the time the

creature had disappeared before we stood panting upon the exact spot we

had last seen it. We searched every corner of the forward deck in vain.

We looked over the side. The moon was up. This night there was no fog.

We could see for miles each side of us, but never a trace of a boat was

visible, and it was impossible that any swimmer could have escaped the

merciless scrutiny to which we subjected the waters of the bay in every

direction.



Hardenberg and I dived down into the fo'c's'le. Ally Bazan was sound

asleep in his bunk and woke stammering, blinking and bewildered by the

lantern we carried.



"I sye," he cried, all at once scrambling up and clawing at our arms,

"D'd the bally ha'nt show up agyne?" And as we nodded he went on more

aggrievedly than ever--"Oh, I sye, y' know, I daon't like this. I eyen't

shipping in no bloomin' 'ooker wot carries a ha'nt for supercargo. They

waon't no good come o' this cruise--no, they waon't. It's a sign, that's

wot it is. I eyen't goin' to buck again no signs--it eyen't human

nature, no it eyen't. You mark my words, 'Bud' Hardenberg, we clear this

port with a ship wot has a ha'nt an' we waon't never come back agyne, my

hearty."



That night he berthed aft with us on the quarterdeck, but though we

stood watch and watch till well into the dawn, nothing stirred about the

foremast. So it was the next night, and so the night after that. When

three successive days had passed without any manifestation the keen edge

of the business became a little blunted and we declared that an end had

been made.



Ally Bazan returned to his bunk in the fo'c's'le on the fourth night,

and the rest of us slept the hours through unconcernedly.



But in the morning there were the jib and tops'l set and drawing as

before.





IV



After this we began experimenting--on Ally Bazan. We bunked him forward

and we bunked him aft, for some one had pointed out that the "ha'nt"

walked only at the times when the colonial slept in the fo'c's'le. We

found this to be true. Let the little fellow watch on the quarterdeck

with us and the night passed without disturbance. As soon as he took up

his quarters forward the haunting recommenced. Furthermore, it began to

appear that the "ha'nt" carefully refrained from appearing to him. He of

us all had never seen the thing. He of us all was spared the chills and

the harrowings that laid hold upon the rest of us during these still

gray hours after midnight when we huddled on the deck of the Idaho

Lass and watched the sheeted apparition in the rigging; for by now

there was no more charging forward in attempts to run the ghost down. We

had passed that stage long since.



But so far from rejoicing in this immunity or drawing courage therefrom,

Ally Bazan filled the air with his fears and expostulations. Just the

fact that he was in some way differentiated from the others--that he was

singled out, if only for exemption--worked upon him. And that he was

unable to scale his terrors by actual sight of their object excited them

all the more.



And there issued from this a curious consequence. He, the very one who

had never seen the haunting, was also the very one to unsettle what

little common sense yet remained to Hardenberg and Strokher. He never

allowed the subject to be ignored--never lost an opportunity of

referring to the doom that o'erhung the vessel. By the hour he poured

into the ears of his friends lugubrious tales of ships, warned as this

one was, that had cleared from port, never to be seen again. He recalled

to their minds parallel incidents that they themselves had heard; he

foretold the fate of the Idaho Lass when the land should lie behind

and she should be alone in midocean with this horrid supercargo that

took liberties with the rigging, and at last one particular morning, two

days before that which was to witness the schooner's departure, he came

out flatfooted to the effect that "Gaw-blyme him, he couldn't stand the

gaff no longer, no he couldn't, so help him, that if the owners were

wishful for to put to sea" (doomed to some unnamable destruction) "he

for one wa'n't fit to die, an' was going to quit that blessed day." For

the sake of appearances, Hardenberg and Strokher blustered and fumed,

but I could hear the crack in Strokher's voice as plain as in a broken

ship's bell. I was not surprised at what happened later in the day, when

he told the others that he was a very sick man. A congenital stomach

trouble, it seemed--or was it liver complaint--had found him out again.

He had contracted it when a lad at Trincomalee, diving for pearls; it

was acutely painful, it appeared. Why, gentlemen, even at that very

moment, as he stood there talking--Hi, yi! O Lord !--talking, it was

a-griping of him something uncommon, so it was. And no, it was no manner

of use for him to think of going on this voyage; sorry he was, too, for

he'd made up his mind, so he had, to find out just what was wrong with

the foremast, etc.



And thereupon Hardenberg swore a great oath and threw down the capstan

bar he held in his hand.



"Well, then," he cried wrathfully, "we might as well chuck up the whole

business. No use going to sea with a sick man and a scared man."



"An' there's the first word o' sense," cried Ally Bazan, "I've heard

this long day. 'Scared,' he says; aye, right ye are, me bully."



"It's Cy Rider's fault," the three declared after a two-hours' talk. "No

business giving us a schooner with a ghost aboard. Scoovy or no scoovy,

island or no island, guano or no guano, we don't go to sea in the

haunted hooker called the Idaho Lass."



No more they did. On board the schooner they had faced the supernatural

with some kind of courage born of the occasion. Once on shore, and no

money could hire, no power force them to go aboard a second time.



The affair ended in a grand wrangle in Cy Rider's back office, and just

twenty-four hours later the bark Elftruda, Captain Jens Petersen,

cleared from Portland, bound for "a cruise to South Pacific ports--in

ballast."



* * * * *



Two years after this I took Ally Bazan with me on a duck-shooting

excursion in the "Toolies" back of Sacramento, for he is a handy man

about a camp and can row a boat as softly as a drifting cloud.



We went about in a cabin cat of some thirty feet over all, the rowboat

towing astern. Sometimes we did not go ashore to camp, but slept aboard.

On the second night of this expedient I woke in my blankets on the floor

of the cabin to see the square of gray light that stood for the cabin

door darkened by--it gave me the same old start--a sheeted figure. It

was going up the two steps to the deck. Beyond question it had been in

the cabin. I started up and followed it. I was too frightened not to--if

you can see what I mean. By the time I had got the blankets off and had

thrust my head above the level of the cabin hatch the figure was already

in the bows, and, as a matter of course, hoisting the jib.



I thought of calling Ally Bazan, who slept by me on the cabin floor, but

it seemed to me at the time that if I did not keep that figure in sight

it would elude me again, and, besides, if I went back in the cabin I was

afraid that I would bolt the door and remain under the bedclothes till

morning. I was afraid to go on with the adventure, but I was much more

afraid to go back.



So I crept forward over the deck of the sloop. The "ha'nt" had its back

toward me, fumbling with the ends of the jib halyards. I could hear the

creak of new ropes as it undid the knot, and the sound was certainly

substantial and commonplace. I was so close by now that I could see

every outline of the shape. It was precisely as it had appeared on the

crosstrees of the Idaho, only, seen without perspective, and brought

down to the level of the eye, it lost its exaggerated height.



It had been kneeling upon the deck. Now, at last, it rose and turned

about, the end of the halyards in its hand. The light of the earliest

dawn fell squarely on the face and form, and I saw, if you please, Ally

Bazan himself. His eyes were half shut, and through his open lips came

the sound of his deep and regular breathing.



At breakfast the next morning I asked, "Ally Bazan, did you ever walk in

your sleep."



"Aye," he answered, "years ago, when I was by wye o' being a lad, I used

allus to wrap the bloomin' sheets around me. An' crysy things I'd do the

times. But the 'abit left me when I grew old enough to tyke me whisky

strite and have hair on me fyce."



I did not "explain away" the ghost in the crosstrees either to Ally

Bazan or to the other two Black Crows. Furthermore, I do not now refer

to the Island of Paa in the hearing of the trio. The claims and title of

Norway to the island have long since been made good and conceded--even

by the State Department at Washington--and I understand that Captain

Petersen has made a very pretty fortune out of the affair.