falling silent and
remaining so for the space of twenty minutes, during which I lighted my
pipe and sat with my feet close to the furnace, listening with eager
ears to the sounds of the ice and the dull crying of the wind, he
exclaimed sulkily, "Your scheme is a failure. The schooner is fixed.
What's to be done now?"

"I don't know that my scheme is a failure," said I. "What did you
suppose? that the blast would blow the ice with the schooner on it into
the ocean clear of the island? If the ice is so shaken as to enable the
swell to detach it, my scheme will have accomplished all I proposed."

"_If!_" he cried scornfully and passionately. "_If_ will not deliver us
nor save the treasure. I tell you the schooner is fixed--as fixed as the
damned in everlasting fire. Be it so!" he cried, clenching his fist.
"But you must meddle no more! The _Boca del Dragon_ is mine--_mine_,
d'ye see, now that they're all dead and gone but me"--smiting his
bosom--"and if ever she is to float, let nature or the devil launch her:
no more explosions with the risks your failure has made her and me run!"

His voice sank; he looked at me in silence, and then with a wild grin of
anger he exclaimed, "What made you awake me? I was at peace--neither
cold, hungry, nor hopeless! What demon forced you to bring me to
this--to bring me back to _this_?"

"Mr. Tassard," said I coldly, "I don't ask your pardon for my
experiment; I meant well, and to my mind it is no failure yet. But for
disturbing your repose I do sincerely beg your forgiveness, and solemnly
promise you, if you will return to the state in which I found you, that
I will not repeat the offence."

He eyed me from top to toe in silence, filled and lighted his hideous
pipe, and smoked with his back turned upon me.

Had there been another warm place in the schooner I should have retired
to it, and left this surly and scandalous savage to the enjoyment of his
own company. His temper rendered me extremely uneasy. The arms-room was
full of weapons; he might draw a pistol upon me and shoot me dead before
I should have time to clench my hand. Nor did I conceive him to have his
right mind. His panic terrors and outbursts of rage were such extremes
of behaviour as suggested some sort of organic decay within. He had
been for eight-and-forty years insensible; in all that time the current
of life had been frozen in him, not dried up and extinguished;
therefore, taking his age to be fifty-five when the