"So I see," observed Derval.
"See—what did you hear? I mutter odd things in my sleep, I am told. Those who hear them are not lucky. The last fellow who did so was lost overboard in the night," he added, with a diabolical grin.
Derval was silent.
"Speak, I tell you," bullied the other.
"Captain's orders are that you are instantly to relieve the deck; eight bells in the first watch have struck," said Derval, sharply, and went on deck, merely reporting that Mr. Rudderhead was coming, and the new watch was already on deck.
Derval acted with judicious care in not telling the first mate all he had heard; but the latter knew what was too often his use and wont, to mutter in his sleep, and thus a species of dread of Derval was added to his ill-concealed hatred of him.
The latter confided to Harry Bowline and to the boatswain the strange revelations Rudderhead had made in his sleep.
"The North Star, the North Star!" exclaimed Grummet, as he slapped his thigh, and with a gulp of astonishment, by which he nearly swallowed his quid; "why that's the very ship as was said to have foundered four miles off the Scilly Isles, after losing all her boats save one, in which Rudderhead, her second mate, reached St. Mary's, and I don't think the Mercantile Marine Insurance would have 'stumped up,' as he calls it, without a fight for it. I have heard him muttering in his dreams. I wish he was well out of the ship, that I do; good can't come to us with such a thief on board. My eyes! how many a better man has swung in Execution dock, and had his poor bones chained to those stumps, as we may see any day by the Essex marshes. I never liked the cut of his jib."
To Derval it was evident that what he had overheard was no dream or nightmare, simple and pure, but the recollection of a real event—the scuttling of the North Star, and leaving her to sink with all hands on board, the result of some foul scheme between himself and someone else; and now there took possession of him a great horror of this man, with whom he had to sit at table, and to converse and confer incidentally while conducting mutually the duty of the ship.
That the untoward incident of Derval coming upon him in his dream dwelt in the mate's memory, was evident, as the former frequently caught the latter regarding him with a stern and lowering eye when he thought his attention was turned another way; and once, when the mate was partially intoxicated, and had crept into the long-boat amidships to keep out of the captain's sight, Derval, who was busy near the mainmast, heard him muttering—