Matterson softly swore and shifted the bandage on his face. Gleazen significantly looked over at me. Abe Guptil stood with his mouth open and stared at Seth Upham.
Never boys of a New England town made such an uproar as was going on outside. Those wails and yells and hideous drummings and trumpetings were African in every weird cadence and boisterous hoot and clang.
Then, as if the first words had broken a way through his silence, Seth Upham began to talk in a low, hurried voice; and however reluctant we had hitherto been to believe that he was mad, there was no longer any hope for him at all. The man had lost his mind completely under the terrific strain that he had endured.
Small wonder when you think of all that had happened: of how, for Cornelius Gleazen's mad project, he had thrown away a place of honor and assured comfort back in Topham;
of how he had been driven deeper and still deeper
into Gleazen's nefarious schemes by blackmail for we knew not what crimes that he had committed in his young-manhood; of how, even in that alliance of thieves, he had fallen from a place of authority to such a place that he got not even civil treatment; of how he had lost reputation, livelihood, money, and now even his vessel.
"I declare, we must put in another constable," he muttered. "Johnson can't even keep the boys in order—In order, did you say? Who else should keep the place in order?—O Sim, if only you had wits to match your good intentions! How can you expect to keep books if you can't keep the stock in order?—" He stopped suddenly and faced the door. "Hark! Who called? I declare, I thought I was a lad again."
Moment by moment, as he paced the hut, we watched his expression change with the mood of his delirium,—sometimes I have wondered if the fever of the tropics did not precipitate his strange frenzy,—and moment by moment his emotions seemed to become more intense.
Now, pursuing that latest fancy, he talked about his boyhood and told how deeply he repented of the wicked life he had led as a young man; told us, all unwittingly, of unsuspected ambitions that had led him from wild ways into sober ones, and of his youthful determination to win a creditable place in the community; told us of the hard honest work that he had given to accomplish it. Now he revealed the pride he had taken in all that he had succeeded in doing and building, and—which touched me more than I can tell you—how he had counted on me, his only kinsman, to take his place and carry on his work. All this, you understand, not as if he were talking to us or to anyone else, but as if he were thinking out loud,—as indeed he was,—merely running over in his own mind the story of his life.
Now he reverted again to his repentance for the wicked youth that he had lived. And now, suddenly, his manner of speaking changed, and from merely thinking aloud he burst out into wild accusation.
"The dice are loaded," he cried,—his voice was hoarse and strained with the agonies that he, like all of us, had endured and was still enduring,—"the dice are loaded. I'll not play with loaded dice, Neil Gleazen!"
At that Gleazen gasped out a queer whisper.