Page:An Antarctic Mystery.pdf/223

Rh "If it is a grave matter, and you fear any indiscretion, Dirk Peters, why do you speak to me?"

"If!—I must! Ah, yes! I must! It is impossible to keep it there! It weighs on me like a stone."

And Dirk Peters struck his breast violently.

Then he resumed:

"Yes! I am always afraid it may escape me during my sleep, and that someone will hear it, for I dream of it, and in dreaming—"

"You dream," I replied, "and of what?"

"Of him, of him. Therefore it is that I sleep in corners, all alone, for fear that his true name should be discovered."

Then it struck me that the half-breed was perhaps about to respond to an inquiry which I had not yet made—why he had gone to live at the Falklands under the name of Hunt after leaving Illinois?

I put the question to him, and he replied,—

"It is not that; no, it is not that I wish—"

"I insist, Dirk Peters, and I desire to know in the first place for what reason you did not remain in America, for what reason you chose the Falklands—"

"For what reason, sir? Because I wanted to get near Pym, my poor Pym—because I hoped to find an opportunity at the Falklands of embarking on a whaling ship bound for the southern sea."

"But that name of Hunt?"

"I would not bear my own name any longer—on account of the affair of the Grampus."

The half-breed was alluding to the scene of the "short straw" (or lot-drawing) on board the American brig, when it was decided between Augustus Barnard, Arthur Pym,