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“These circumstances—the swell of the
river and our undoubted strength—removed
from the breasts of many the effects of an
unfavourable occurrence, of which I have not
yet spoken. It will be remembered, that honest
master Jones had informed me of the
river being haunted by a spectral Indian in a
canoe, whose appearance was the forerunner,
if not the cause, of disaster; and that our
boatmen had also been made acquainted with
the legend. The night before we reached
Marietta, such a spectre was seen, and seen
by all on board—that is to say, a canoe with
a human shape in it, dogging us at a considerable
distance behind, and dogging us all night
long. The watch, at first surprised, and then

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alarmed, woke up their sleeping companions;
and, as I said, all on board saw it, though all
were not, perhaps, of the same opinion in regard
to its character. The superstitious declared
it could be nothing less than the phantom
of which so much had been told: while
even those who denied its spectral nature,
could explain the phenomenon only by supposing
it was the boat of some Indian spy,
whose cut-throat companions were lying in
wait somewhere nigh at hand.

“Captain Sharpe, to whom we commonly
looked as our acting commander, (Colonel
Storm being seldom able to come on deck,)
upon being called up, laughed at us for a pack
of `cowardly noodles,' as he very politely
called us, declared we saw nothing but a floating
log, or at best, a drift canoe—certainly,
he vowed `there was no man in it'—and ordered
us to back oars a little, to let it float
by. Unfortunately for the Captain's explanation,
the moment the broad-horn ceased to
move, that moment the canoe, also, became
stationary; and some of us swore we could
hear the dip of the paddle by which it was
brought to a stand and made to stem the current.
`Ghost or no ghost,' said Captain
Sharpe, dryly enough, `it can do us no harm,

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so long as it keeps at a distance. If it
comes nearer, hail it; and if it make no answer,
let it have a taste of your rifles.' With
these words, and a desperate yawn, that cut
the last word in two, and kept it some forty
seconds in the utterance, the gallant soldier
went down to his mattress, treating the ghost
with a degree of contempt nobody else could
summon to his assistance. The ghost—for
so the majority were resolved to consider the
appearance—was well watched during the
night: it kept at a highly respectful distance,
and at, or before daylight, it suddenly vanished
away.

“The night after we left Marietta, which
was very dark and cloudy, the phantom again
appeared, and caused as much discussion, and,
among some, as much alarm as before; the
more so, perhaps, as, when first discovered,
it was found to be much nearer to us than on
the former occasion; a degree of audacity
which those on deck, the men of the second
watch, rewarded by a volley of rifle-bullets,
according to Captain Sharpe's instructions;
forgetting, however, the important preliminary
of hailing the mysterious voyager. The
effect of the volley was very happy, as boat
and boatman instantly vanished from view,

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and were no more seen: for which reason no
one, not even Captain Sharpe himself, found
fault with the men for only half obeying his
orders.

“The disappearance of the phantom restored
us all to good humour; and, conscious
now of our strength, conscious, too, of our
security on the top of the flood, by which we
were so rapidly borne upon our voyage, with
no necessity before us except that of keeping
our boat in the centre of the river, and so
out of all danger of Indian bullets from the
shore, we began to laugh at past terrors, and
assure each other that the voyage to Kentucky
was by no means the dreadful thing it
was represented to be.

“From this state of things it is not surprising
there resulted a certain degree of
carelessness among the men in the night-watches;
who, feeling that the hand at the
steering-oar could perform all the duty supposed
to be requisite to their safety—that is,
of keeping the boat in the mid-channel—very
frequently took advantage of the watch-hours
to throw themselves on the deck and steal a
pleasanter nap than could be enjoyed in the
crowded cabin below. And this kind of watching,
I confess, on two or three occasions, I
practised with great satisfaction myself.

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