Craig shook his head.
‘What say you to the paste-board?’
‘No cards for me,’ replied the other, seating himself and leaning his cheeks between his hands, with his elbows on his knees, and his eyes fastened on the fire. ‘I want to be on the move. God! How I wish it was time! This cursed room is enough to suffocate one. Curse me, but it smells of coffins and dead men, and is as cold as a church-vault. It goes to a fellow’s very bones.’
There was something so unusual in the mood of his comrade, that Jones at last started up and said:
‘Blast me, Tim, but you must stop this. You’re making me as wild and frightened as yourself. Talk of your beaks, and courts, and prisons, and bullets, and pistols, as much as you like; but d—n it, leave your dead men, and coffins, and vaults, and all them ‘ere to themselves, will you! Curse me, if you ain’t enough to make a sneak of any man. So just stop, will you? If you can’t talk of something better, don’t talk at all.’
Craig took him at his word; and drawing his bench closer to the fire, maintained his position, without moving or speaking for more than an hour.
Jones, in the mean while, for want of employment, again examined the pistols; drew out the loads, and reloaded them; then going to the closet, he brought out two very dangerous-looking knives, and after trying the points on his finger, proceeded to oil them. This over, he betook himself to whistling, at the same time, keeping time to his music by drumming his heel heavily on the floor. This, however, could not last forever; and finally, wrapping a heavy coat around his shoulders, he stretched himself at full length in front of the fire, and was soon sound asleep.
Not so his companion. In silence, without stirring, and scarcely breathing, yet wide awake, with ears alive to every sound, and distorting every sigh of the wind into the voice of a human being, he sat with white lips and a shaking hand until the faint chime of a clock, which reached him even above the noise of the storm, told him that the hour was come.
‘Wake up!’ said he, touching Jones with his foot. ‘It’s time to be off.’
Jones, with instinctive quickness, obeyed the call by springing to his feet, apparently as wide awake as if he had not closed his eyes during the night.