Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/378

364 though the lad could help him; and many times he cried out: "My God! the ship's going—hands, lower boats!" Or he raved with fierce threats and awful cries at the American he had buried, or made desperate appeals to some apparition that came to him in his dreadful dream. But at the last he grew almost incoherent, thinking that I was the dead lad; and he set himself wildly to chafe my hand, and put spirit at my lips. I was then nigh dead with want of sleep and fatigue, for I had not rested during the fight with the ironclads; and when he covered me with the small tarpaulin, and made a rough pillow in the bow, I went to sleep almost at once; and was as one drunk with the torpor of the rest.

Twice during that long night I must have roused myself. I recall well a heaven of stars, and a moonlit sea glowing with the pale light; while looking down upon me were the eyes of a madman, who clutched the sides of the dinghy with trembling and claw-like hands, and had a scream upon his lips. And again at the second time I looked upward to behold a faint break of grey in the leaden sky, and to feel warm raindrops beating upon me. But I heard no sound, and scarce turning in my heaviness, I slept again; and all through my sleep I dreamed that there was the echo of a voice, as of the voice of the damned, calling to me from the sea, and that, though I would have helped the man whose hand was above the waters, I could