othered by this stagnant heat, he said, he was
confident that in a very few days he would be able to come up on deck
and help me.

While he was speaking I trembled lest this effort of energy should leave
him lifeless before my eyes. But I cannot deny that there was something
comforting in his willingness. I made a suitable reply, but pointed out
to him that the only thing that could really help us was wind--a fair
wind.

He rolled his head impatiently on the pillow. And it was not comforting
in the least to hear him begin to mutter crazily about the late captain,
that old man buried in latitude 8 d 20', right in our way--ambushed at
the entrance of the Gulf.

"Are you still thinking of your late captain, Mr. Burns?" I said. "I
imagine the dead feel no animosity against the living. They care nothing
for them."

"You don't know that one," he breathed out feebly.

"No. I didn't know him, and he didn't know me. And so he can't have any
grievance against me, anyway."

"Yes. But there's all the rest of us on board," he insisted.

I felt the inexpugnable strength of common sense being insidiously
menaced by this gruesome, by this insane, delusion. And I said:

"You mustn't talk so much. You will tire yourself."

"And there is the ship herself," he persisted in a whisper.

"Now, not a word more," I said, stepping in and laying my hand on his
cool forehead. It proved to me that this atrocious absurdity was rooted
in the man himself and not in the disease, which, apparently, had
emptied him of every power, mental and physical, except that one fixed
idea.

I avoided giving Mr. Burns any opening for conversation for the next few
days. I merely used to throw him a hasty, cheery word when passing his
door. I believe that if he had had the strength he would have called out
after me more than once. But he hadn't the strength. Ransome, however,
observed to me one afternoon that the mate "seemed to be picking up
wonderfully."

"Did he talk any nonsense to you of late?" I asked casually.

"No, sir." Ransome was startled by the direct question; but, after a
pause, he added equably: "He told me this morning, sir, that he was
sorry he had to bury our late captain right in the ship's way, as one
may say, out of the Gulf."

"Isn't this nonsense enough for you?" I asked, looking confidently at
the intelligent, quiet face on which the secret uneasiness in the man's
breast had thrown a transparent veil of care.

Ransome didn't