Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/73

and moaned in their sleep; and I need not tell you what that same thing signifies.

“The next night, up comes the bo’s’n out of the hold screaming like a mad one, and the hair all turned gray on his head. We did be holding him and petting him awhile, and finally he managed to whisper,

“‘I seen it! Oh, my God, I seen it! There was two long, white, soft-looking hands with slender fingers—and they came through the side and started to ripping the planks off like they were paper. Oh, my God! Save me!"

“Then we felt the ship give a list and start to settling down.

“Well, three of us came floating ashore on an extra spar, and two of them crazed—poor souls— and wild like cats. I never did be hearing whether any others were saved or not, but I'm thinking not. And that’s the nearest I've ever seen with my eyes the things you do be talking of. But they say on clear nights in the Indian Ocean you can be seeing the poor murdered Hindu ghosts chasing the dead da Gama about in the sky. And I have heard that these same Hindus are a very unfruitful people to pick out, and you going in for murder.”

From the first day, the cook had taken it upon himself to instruct young Henry. The man seemed to crave to give information. It was a wistful instruction, as though he feared every minute to be contradicted. He was a gray man, the cook, with sad brown eyes like a dog’s eyes. There was some-