"Duppy come! Duppy come! Massa Tom Cringle ghost stand at for we door;
we all shall dead, oh--we all shall go dead, oh!" bellowed the father of
gods, my old ally Jupiter.
"Guid guide us, that's an awful sicht!" quod the Scotch bookkeeper.
"By the hockeytt speak if you be a ghost, or I'll exercise [exorcise] ye
wid this butt of a musket," quoth the cowboy@an Irishman to be sure,
whose round bullet head was discernible in the human mass, by his black,
twinkling, half--drunken--looking eyes.
"Well--a--day," groaned another of them, a Welshman, I believe, with a
face as long as my arm, and a drawl worthy of a Methodist parson; "and
what can it be--flesh and blood, it is not--can these dry bones live?"
Ill as I was, however, I could perceive that all this row had now more of
a tipsy frolic in it--whatever it might have had at first--than absolute
fear; for the red--faced visitor, and Mr Fyall, as if half ashamed,
speedily extricated themselves from the chaos of chairs and living
creatures, righted the table, replaced the candles, and having sat down,
looking as grave as judges on the bench, Aaron Bang exclaimed--"I'll bet
a dozen, it is the poor fellow himself returned on our hands, half--dead
from the rascally treatment he has met with at the hands of these
smuggling thieves!"
"Smugglers, or no," said Fyall, "you are right for once, my peony rose, I
do believe.
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