"There was no jar or jabber betwixt us, d'you see me."
"Not at the time, I understand you to mean; but surely you must have long owed him a grudge?"
"No, but long loved him; and he me."
"Then, in heaven's name, what put the dreadful thought in your head?"
"The devil, commodore, (the horned lubber!) and another lubber to help him"--pointing at Jeremiah, who shrank to the skirts of the crowd. "I'll tell you every word of it, commodore, as true as a log-book. For twenty long and merry years, Harry and I sailed together, and worked together, thro' a hard gale sometimes, and thro' hot sun another time; and never a squally word came between us till last night, and then it all came of that lubberly swipes-seller, I say again. I thought as how it was a real awful thing that a strange landsman, before ever he laid eyes on either of us, should come to have this here dream about us. After falling in with Harry, when the lubber and I parted company, my old mate saw I was cast down, and he told me as much in his own gruff, well-meaning way; upon which I gave him the story, laughing at it. He didn't laugh in return, but grew glum--glummer than I ever seed him; and I wondered, and fell to boxing about my thoughts, more and more (deep sea sink that cursed thinking and thinking, say I!--it sends many an honest fellow out of his course); and 'It's hard to know the best man's mind,' I thought to myself. Well, we came on the tack into these rocky parts, and Harry says to me all on a sudden, 'Tom, try the soundings here, ahead, by yourself--or let me, by myself.' I axed him why? 'No matter,' says Harry again, 'but after what you chawed about, I don't like your company any farther, till we fall in again at the next village.' 'What, Harry,' I cries, laughing heartier than ever, 'are you afeard of your own mind with Tom Mills?' 'Pho,' he made answer, walking on before me, and I followed him.
"'Yes,' I kept saying to myself, 'he is afeard of his own mind with his old shipmate.' 'Twas a darker night than this, and when I looked ahead, the devil (for I know 'twas he that boarded me!) made me take notice what a good spot it was for Harry to fall foul of me. And then I watched him making way before me, in the dark, and couldn't help thinking he was the better man of the two--a head and shoulders over me, and a match for any two of my inches. And then again, I brought to mind that Harry would be a heavy purse the better of sending me to Davy's locker, seeing we had both been just paid off, and got a lot of prize-money to boot;--and at last (the real red devil having fairly got me helm a-larboard) I argufied with myself that Tom Mills would be as well alive, with Harry Holmes's luck in his pocket, as he could be dead, and his in Harry Holmes's; not to say nothing of taking one's own part, just to keep one's self afloat, if so be Harry let his mind run as mine was running.
"All this time Harry never gave me no hail, but kept tacking through these cursed rocks; and that, and his last words, made me doubt him more and more. At last he stopped nigh where he now lies, and sitting with his back to that high stone, he calls for my blade to cut the bread and cheese he had got at the village; and while he spoke I believed he looked glummer and glummer, and that he wanted the blade, the only one between us, for some'at else than to cut bread and cheese; though now I don't believe no such thing howsumdever; but then I did: and so, d'you see me, commodore, I lost ballast all of a sudden, and when he stretched out his hand for the blade (hell's fire blazing up in my lubberly heart!)--'Here it is, Harry,' says I, and I gives it to him in the side!--once, twice, in the right place!" (the sailor's voice, hitherto calm, though broken and rugged, now rose into a high, wild cadence)--"and then how we did grapple! and sing out one to another! ahoy! yeho! aye; till I thought the whole crew of devils answered our hail from the hill-tops!--But I hit you again and again, Harry! before you could master me," continued the sailor, returning to the corpse, and once more taking its hand--"until at last you struck,--my old messmate!--And now--nothing remains for Tom Mills--but to man the yard-arm!"
The narrator stood his trial at the ensuing assizes, and was executed for this avowed murder of his shipmate; Jeremiah appearing as a principal witness. Our story may seem drawn either from imagination, or from mere village gossip: its chief acts rest, however, upon the authority of members of the Irish bar, since risen to high professional eminence; and they can even vouch that at least Jeremiah asserted the truth of "The Publican's Dream."
AILLEEN