Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/264

250 the hound Hall, who put the first nail in his coffin that night he came to my bed at Spezia. I saw him there, though he thought me sleeping; and that night I wrote death against his name, as I wrote it against yours when you entered my room in Paris. There's reasons why I've broken my word in your case, though you'll never know 'em; but there's no reason why you shouldn't swear to go through it with me and mine, man for man, life with life, be it rope's-end or bullet, to rot among the fish, or to share every mate among us what's got upon the sea. That's my question, and you'll answer it now, yes or no, plain word and no shuffle; meaning to you whether you go on as you've gone on in the past, or freeze amongst the others lying up there in the cavern; whether you swim in money, as my lot swim in it, or get bullets in you thick as hail from northward. That's my question, I say again, and there's my papers. Sign 'em now, or you lie a corpse before an hour on the clock."

He leant over his writing-table and put the paper into my hands, a rough sheet of parchment, which he wished me to read. But my eyes were dimmed with the restless excitement of the situation, with the dread terror of the alternative put to me; and I saw nothing but lines of writing which swam before me. The silence of the room was terrible to bear; and