"That's just where I was going to take you, sir."
"Suppose we waken the Captain and take him along?" said I.
"No, sir, I couldn't go then. In fact, sir, the Captain has become so abhorrent to me, Mr. Jones, that sometimes I think I must separate from the party."
"What under heaven do you mean?"
"Can't tell, sir; there is something about—— Are you sure, sir, that you did throw that——"
"If your own eyes are not sufficient witness," I began; and then, looking him square in the eye, "But tell me, Bo's'n, why that simple ring——"
"I beg you, sir," he said.
"You do not fear the halls of death, the skeletons of what were living men, you do not fear——"
"That is death, Mr. Jones," he said. "Death—quiet, peaceful rest, without fear of a beyond. This is life—horrible, torturing life. That sickening, coiling body which will crush the very being out of one. Those eyes with red flames of vision: they see the future. They know what will befall us, they gloat over our misery. As long as that thing, that dreadful presence, is even out there in the water, but so near, so near, we are fated! That it is which drew us upon the rocks! That it is which brought the pirates down upon us! That it was which put you in that cage of which you tell me! That it is which will hold us, and coil about us, and never let us go, man, woman, or child, until it has crushed the life from our bodies!"
"But if you do not mind death, Bo's'n, and you say not—if you do not mind leaving this world and——"