I imagined all manner of scenes in which
I should some day figure, and saw myself already holding off five
enemies at once with my flashing sword. These visions haunted my
dreams when at last I slept, and it was after a bout of especial
fierceness that I found myself lying awake, in a great heat and
breathlessness.
And then I was aware of an actual sound--a sound which no doubt had
entered into my dreams as the clash of arms. It was a soft and
regular tapping, a ghostly sound to hear at dead of night, and like
to scare a boy of quick imagination. I lay for some moments in a
state bordering on panic, unable to think, much less to act.
Tap, tap, tap--so it went on, like the ticking of the great clock
on the stairs, only louder and more substantial. It ceased, and I
held my breath, wondering whether I should hear it again. Then it
recommenced, and I was about to spring from my bed and run to tell
Mistress Pennyquick when a sudden thought held me: What would
Captain Galsworthy think if he knew I had fled from a sound? Would
he regard me as the right stuff of which to make a man?
The captain's good opinion was worth so much to me now that I
crushed down my fears and sat up in bed (yet keeping a tight clutch
upon the blanket), and tried to use my reason.
The tapping, I reflected, must be caused by some person or thing. A
ghost is a spirit, and insubstantial, and I had never heard that
the ghost which some of the townsfolk (chiefly servant maids) had
seen in St.
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