"These signs prognosticated a rough night, but I was glad to perceive that the polacca was well moored at stem and stern; so I unlocked the companion door and descended, not without a shudder, into the dark and cold cabin, where the dead men had been found, and where all was silence and gloom.
"I struck a lucifer match; my teeth chattered; and while groping about for a candle, to make myself comfortable for the night, I began to wish I had remained on shore.
"I found a ship-lantern with the fag-end of a candle in it, and this, when lighted, enabled me to take a survey of the cabin; but I first applied to the jar of right Jamaica which stood on the table; and when looking about, found my eyes wander so incessantly to the side berths in which the dead Spaniards had been found, that at last I almost fancied their pale sharp profiles and rigid figures were visible in the flickering light of the candle.
"'Come,' said I, 'Sam Weston—this will never do! Are you a man, or have you become a child again?'
"Another application—a long one, too—to the rum jar, and I wrapped some bunting, a rug, and a pea-jacket that lay on the locker, round me, and lay down on the cabin floor to sleep; and scarcely had I stretched myself there when the candle flared up, and, after casting some strange kaleidoscopic figures on the beams overhead, through the perforated lantern-top—went out!
"I was in total darkness now, but more awake than ever.
"I felt as if in a great floating coffin, but heard no sound except the gurgle of the sea under the counter, or the splash of the stern warp, as it whipped the water occasionally.
"I kept my eyes closed resolutely, and determined, perforce, to sleep, and not to wake till morning; but still I could not help thinking of the two poor fellows who had died in the berths of that cold, dark, and silent cabin, and been tossed to and fro so long upon the sea before they received Christian burial.
"Which had died first,—the man in the larboard, or he in the starboard berth? Why were they thus abandoned? What had they said to each other? What messages had they sent to wife, to father, or mother? What tale of love to repeat.—of guilt to reveal?—messages given by the dead to the dead, and never delivered!
"These thoughts crowded upon me till I almost imagined the dead men lay there still, and that they might rise and give their last messages to me.