“You do not feel worse, I hope?” said I.

“I don’t like my sensations. I don’t understand them. It has crossed my mind that I am dying.”

“Ill you are and have been, captain; yet less ill to-night, it seems to me, than you were yesterday. God preserve you! What can I do? Here we are, out upon the wild sea, nothing but Spanish ports to make for; but say the word and I’ll head the brig for the port you shall name. We must forfeit our dollars, but your life stands first.”

“It is too late,” he said.

“For God’s sake don’t say that! Ought I to have sought help on the coast?”

“It is too late,” he repeated, and sank into a silence that lasted a minute or two.

“Have you believed that I am dying?” said he.

“I have believed you ill—sometimes very ill.”

“It will be hard to die here, all this way from home. The launch over the side makes a deep burial. I buried a man hereabouts last voyage, and—— How deep is it? Has he touched the bottom yet?—with a twenty-four pound shot at his heels too.”

“Don’t think of such things.”