"What!" roared the Bo's'n again, in a tone somewhat between a squeal and a howl.
"And we buried them——"
"In the Ground, I Hope, Sir!"
"No, Bo's'n, in a much safer place than the ground. A purer, sweeter place, the place where poor Jack always wishes to lie. We buried them in the deep blue sea." My eye was moist, and I felt holy and poetic.
"What—! What——! What——!" With each word the Bo's'n's scream became more wild.
"At sixty fathoms, I should think, Bo's'n."
Now there was a faint "What?"
I looked at the Bo's'n. He was doubled up as if he had been taken with the colic. His arms clasped round his knees, he was weaving back and forth as if the agony that he suffered was excruciating in its intensity, and I doubt not from my own later attack that it was. He writhed, he groaned, he weaved, he wailed like a new-born infant. He roared like a lion, he gnashed his teeth and howled, he wept scalding tears. He rolled over and over in the dust of the cavern floor. He clutched his hair. His body shook as if he were in a rigor.
"Bo's'n! Bo's'n!" I cried. "What is it? What can I do for you? There is a little rum left in the bottle—take this."
I seized the bottle and tried to force some drops down his throat; but he shook himself away from me, scrambled to the other side of the cave, where he squatted in a corner, and glared at me as if he were a wild beast, and as if I had been one, too.