Page:Doctor Syn - A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh.djvu/304

 something splashed into the sea. The captain looked over the side and saw a black bottle. It was not a dark night, and he could see it floating away toward the shore, where the beacons were alight.

"He's in that cabin!" the captain shouted. "He threw that rum bottle out of the stern hole."

"If he is there," replied the sexton, "I wouldn't advise you nor any other of my friends to go in, for it'll be the worse for you if you do. Hark! he's in song tonight, and when Clegg's in song, you can take it from me that he's in a devil of a mood."

From the cabin came that horrible song:

And then words were uttered in a drunken voice, the voice of a drunkard in terror.

"It's the drink! There's nobody there, there's nobody in this cabin, I say. It's a shadow, nothing but a shadow. He couldn't have got here. It's a shadow risen from hell to mock me, I say. He couldn't have got off that reef. There was nothing for him to live upon but the filthy body of the yellow cook, and would even the foulest man eat food not fit for sharks., There was nothing else. No vegetation, simply a thin coral reef. I can hear the surf now breaking into the lagoon. There, listen! There, hark at him cursing! It's no