"The first ghost that came was that of my comrade Elpenor, for he had not yet been laid beneath the earth.
"Thus, then, did we sit and hold sad talk with one another, I on the one side of the trench with my sword held over the blood, and the ghost of my comrade saying all this to me from the other side.
"Then came also the ghost of Theban Teiresias, with his golden sceptre in his hand.
"'This,' I answered, 'must be as it may please heaven, but tell me and tell me and tell me true, I see my poor mother's ghost close by us; she is sitting by the blood without saying a word, and though I am her own son she does not remember me and speak to me; tell me, Sir, how I can make her know me.'
Any ghost that you let taste of the blood will talk with you like a reasonable being, but if you do not let them have any blood they will go away again.'
`The whole time,' said the Ghost. `No rest, no peace.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
`Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.
`Hear me!' cried the Ghost. `My time is nearly gone.'
`That is no light part of my penance,' pursued the Ghost. `I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.
The Ghost was being wrenched and torn to fragments.
It seemed incredible that the next surge should not crush the Ghost down upon the tiny eggshell.
As the Ghost rolled her side out of water, the boat was lifted snugly against her, and before the return roll came, we had heaved it in over the side and turned it bottom up on the deck.
While I toiled up the fore-shrouds the Ghost slowly paid off.
Once more the Ghost bore away before the storm, this time so submerging herself that for some seconds I thought she would never reappear.