 victim of chicanery, and
that the apparition is not actually a visitant from the old world of shadows. It
is not too much to say that such remnants of doubt have been at the bottom of
almost every such visitation, and that the appalling horror which has sometimes
been brought about, is to be attributed, even in the cases most in point, and
where most suffering has been experienced, more to a kind of anticipative
horror, lest the apparition might possibly be real, than to an unwavering belief
in its reality. But, in the present instance, it will be seen immediately, that
in the minds of the mutineers there was not even the shadow of a basis upon
which to rest a doubt that the apparition of Rogers was indeed a revivification
of his disgusting corpse, or at least its spiritual image. The isolated
situation of the brig, with its entire inaccessibility on account of the gale,
confined the apparently possible means of deception within such narrow and
definite limits, that they must have thought themselves enabled to survey them
all at a glance. They had now been at sea twenty-four days, without holding more
than a speaking communication with any vessel whatever. The whole of the crew,
too - at least all whom they had the most remote reason for suspecting to be on
board - were assembled in the cabin, with the exception of Allen, the watch; and
his gigantic stature (he was six feet six inches high) was too familiar in their
eyes to permit the notion that he was the apparition before them to enter their
minds even for an instant. Add to these considerations the awe-inspiring nature
of the tempest, and that of the conversation brought about by Peters; the deep
impression which the loathsomeness of the actual corpse had made in the morning
upon the imaginations of the men; the excellence of the imitation in my person,
and the uncertain and wavering light in which they beheld me, as the glare of
the cabin lantern, swinging violently to and fro, fell dubiously and fitfully
upon my figure, and there will be no reason to wonder that the deception had
even more than the entire effect which we had anticipated. The mate sprang up
from the mattress on which he was lying, and, without uttering a syllable, fell
back, stone dead, upon the cabin floor, and was hurled to the leeward like a log
by a heavy roll of the brig. Of the remaining seven, there were but three who
had at first any degree of presence of mind. The four others sat for some time
rooted apparently to the floor - the most pitiable
