The Phantom Ship

About the middle of the seventeenth century, in the outskirts of the small butfortified town of Terneuse, situated on the right bank of the Scheldt, and nearlyopposite to the island of Walcheren, there was to be seen, in advance of a few othereven more humble tenements, a small but neat cottage, built according to theprevailing taste of the time. The outside front had, some years back, been paintedof a deep orange, the windows and shutters of a vivid green. To about three feetabove the surface of the earth, it was faced alternately with blue and white tiles. Asmall garden, of about two rods of our measure of land, surrounded the edifice; andthis little plot was flanked by a low hedge of privet, and encircled by a moat full ofwater, too wide to be leaped with ease. Over that part of the moat which was infront of the cottage door, was a small and narrow bridge, with ornamented ironhand-rails, for the security of the passenger. But the colours, originally so bright, with which the cottage had been decorated, had now faded; symptoms of rapiddecay were evident in the window-sills, the door-jambs, and other wooden parts ofthe tenement, and many of the white and blue tiles had fallen down, and had notbeen replaced. That much care had once been bestowed upon this little tenement, was as evident as that latterly it had been equally neglecte