Turner_ and of the Ancient Mariner's part in it. "It is mighty nigh five
bells, and I should be very pleased to have one of your delicious
cocktails ere I go down to dine."

More suspicious than ever of him was Daughtry after this episode. But,
as the days went by, he came more and more to the conclusion that Charles
Stough Greenleaf was a senile old man who sincerely believed in the
abiding of a buried treasure somewhere in the South Seas.

Once, polishing the brass-work on the hand-rails of the cabin
companionway, Daughtry overheard the ancient one explaining his terrible
scar and missing fingers to Grimshaw and the Armenian Jew. The pair of
them had plied him with extra drinks in the hope of getting more out of
him by way of his loosened tongue.

"It was in the longboat," the aged voice cackled up the companion. "On
the eleventh day it was that the mutiny broke. We in the sternsheets
stood together against them. It was all a madness. We were starved
sore, but we were mad for water. It was over the water it began. For,
see you, it was our custom to lick the dew from the oar-blades, the
gunwales, the thwarts, and the inside planking. And each man of us had
developed property in the dew-collecting surfaces. Thus, the tiller and
the rudder-head and half of the plank of the starboard stern-sheet had
become the property of the second officer. No one of us lacked the
honour to respect his property. The third officer was a lad, only
eighteen, a brave and charming boy. He shared with the second officer
the starboard stern-sheet plank. They drew a line to mark the division,
and neither, lapping up what scant moisture fell during the night-hours,
ever dreamed of trespassing across the line. They were too honourable.

"But the sailors--no. They squabbled amongst themselves over the dew-
surfaces, and only the night before one of them was knifed because he so
stole. But on this night, waiting for the dew, a little of it, to become
more, on the surfaces that were mine, I heard the noises of a dew-lapper
moving aft along the port-gunwale--which was my property aft of the
stroke-thwart clear to the stern. I emerged from a nightmare dream of
crystal springs and swollen rivers to listen to this night-drinker that I
feared might encroach upon what was mine.

"Nearer he came to the line of my property, and I could hear him making
little moaning, whimpering noises as he licked the damp wood. It was
like listenin