"I'd
not have had that sea chest in the house for any money; I'll
warrant he'd come racketing after it at nights, and making a
haunted house of the inn. And as to his going to sea in his chest,
I recollect what happened to Skipper Onderdonk's ship on his voyage
from Amsterdam.
"The boatswain died during a storm, so they wrapped him up in a
sheet, and put him in his own sea chest, and threw him overboard;
but they neglected, in their hurry-skurry, to say prayers over him,
and the storm raged and roared louder than ever, and they saw the
dead man seated in his chest, with his shroud for a sail, coming
hard after the ship, and the sea breaking before him in great
sprays like fire; and there they kept scudding day after day and
night after night, expecting every moment to go to wreck; and every
night they saw the dead boatswain in his sea chest trying to get up
with them, and they heard his whistle above the blasts of wind, and
he seemed to send great seas, mountain high, after them that would
have swamped the ship if they had not put up the deadlights. And
so it went on till they lost sight of him in the fogs off
Newfoundland, and supposed he had veered ship and stood for Dead
Man's Isle.
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