of blackness in which dim-seen, evil things menaced
me, and a horror of dreams wherein I, fettered and fast bound, must
watch my sweet lady struggle, weeping, in the arms of vile rogues
whiles I strove desperately to break my bonds, and finding this vain,
fell to raging madness and dashed myself hither and thither to slay
myself and end my torment. Or, axe in hand, amid smoke and flame, I
fell upon her murderers; then would I smite down the man Humphrey only
for him to rise to be smitten again and yet again, nodding shattered
head and flapping nerveless arms in derision of me until, knowing I
might never slay him--he being already dead--I turned to flee, but with
him ever behind me and in my ears his sobbing cry of "Death for all of
us--death!" And feeling his hands on me I would fall to desperate
struggle until the blackness closed over me again thick and stifling
like a sea.

And behind all these horrors was a haunting knowledge that I was going
mad, that this man Humphrey was waiting for me out beyond the surf
beckoning to me with flapping arms, and had cast on me a spell whereby,
as my brain shrivelled to madness, my body was shrivelling and changing
into that of Black Bartlemy. Always I knew that Humphrey waited me
beyond the reef, watchful for my coming and growing ever more querulous
and eager as the spell wrought on me so that he began to call to me in
strange, sobbing voice, hailing me by my new name:

"Bartlemy, ahoy! Black Bartlemy--Bartlemy ho! Come your ways to
Humphrey, that being dead can die no more and, knowing all, doth know
you for Bartlemy crept back from hell. So come, Bartlemy, come and be
as I am. And there's others here, proper lads as wants ye too, dead
men all--by the rope, by the knife, by the bullet--oho!

There be two at the fore,
At the main be three more,
Dead men that swing all of a row;
Here's fine, dainty meat
For the fishes to eat:
Black Bartlemy--Bartlemy ho!

There's a fine Spanish dame,
Joanna's her name,
Must follow wherever ye go;
Till your black heart shall feel
Your own cursed steel:
Black Bartlemy--Bartlemy ho!"

And I, hearkening to this awful sobbing voice, sweating and shivering
in the dark, knew that, since I was indeed Black Bartlemy, sooner or
later I must go.

Thus it befell that of a sudden I found myself, dazzled by a fierce
sun, supporting me against a rock and my breath coming in great gasps.
And in a while, my eyes growin