ff
his breast. He had gone to bed a man, as I might take it, of fifty-six,
and during the night the angel of Time had visited him, and there he
sat, _a hundred and three years of age_!

He looked it. Ha, thought I, I was dreading your treachery yesterday;
there is nothing more to fear. Besides that he was nearly stone deaf, he
could hardly see; and I was sure, if he should be able to move at all,
he could not stir a leg without the help of sticks. I was going to roar
out to him that we were adrift, but he looked so imbecile that I
thought, to what purpose? If there be aught of memory in him, let him
sit and chew the cud thereof. He cannot last long; the cold must soon
stop his heart. And with that I went on eating my breakfast in silence,
but greatly affected by this astonishing mark of the hand of Providence,
and under a very heavy and constant sense of awe, for the like of such a
transformation I am sure had never before encountered mortal eyes, and
it was terrifying to be alone with it.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FRENCHMAN DIES.

However, if I expected my Frenchman to sit very long silent, he soon
undeceived me by beginning to complain in his tremulous aged voice of
his weakness and aching limbs.

"'Tis the terrible cold that has affected me," said he, whilst his head
nodded nervously. "I feel the rheumatism in every bone. There is no
weakness like the rheumatic, I have heard, and 'tis true, 'tis true. It
may lay me along--yes, by the Virgin, 'tis rheumatism--what else?" Here
he was interrupted by a long fit of coughing, and when it was ended he
turned to address me again, but looked at the bulkhead on my right, as
if his vision could not fix me. "But my capers are not over!" he cried,
setting up his rickety shrill throat; "no, no! Vive l'amour! vive la
joie! The sun is coming--the sun is the fountain of life--ay, mon brave,
there are some shakes in these stout legs yet!" He shook his head with
a fine air of cunning and knowingness, grinning very oddly; and then,
falling grave with a startling suddenness, he began to dribble out a
piratical love-story he had once before favoured me with, describing the
charms of the woman with a horrid leer, his head nodding with the
nervous affection of age all the time, whilst he looked blindly in my
direction--a hideous and yet pitiful object!

I could not say that his mind was gone, but he talked with many breaks
for breath, and not very coherently, as though the office o