id. "You're such a green goose, it makes
me sick a bit. You hevn't reckoned out the chances, not quite. It's a
kind of dead reckoning yeh hevn't had call to make. Eh?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, bewildered.

He looked at me, grinning, half naked, with amused contempt, for quite a
long time, and at last offered sardonically to open my eyes for me.

I said nothing.

"Do you know what will happen to you," he asked, "ef yeh don't get quit
of that Carlos of yours?"

I was surprised into muttering that I didn't know.

"I can tell yeh," he continued. "Yeh will get hanged."

By that time I was too amazed to get angry. I simply suspected the Blue
Nose of being drunk. But he glared at me so soberly that next moment I
felt frightened.

"Hanged by the neck," he repeated; and then added, "Young fellow, you
scoot. Take a fool's advice, and _scoot_. That Castro is a blame fool,
anyhow. Yeh want men for that job. Men, I tell you." He slapped his bony
breast.

I had no idea that he could look so ferocious. His eyes fascinated me,
and he opened his cavernous mouth as if to swallow me. His lantern jaws
snapped without a sound. He seemed to change his mind.

"I am done with yeh," he said, with a sort of sinister restraint. He
rose to his feet, and, turning his back to me, began to shave, squinting
into a broken looking-glass.

I had not the slightest inkling of his meaning. I only knew that going
out of his berth was like escaping from the dark lair of a beast into
a sunlit world. There is no denying that his words, and still more his
manner, had awakened in me a sense of insecurity that had no precise
object, for it was manifestly absurd and impossible to suspect my friend
Carlos. Moreover, hanging was a danger so recondite, and an eventuality
so extravagant, as to make the whole thing ridiculous. And yet I
remembered how unhappy I felt, how inexplicably unhappy. Presently the
reason was made clear. I was homesick. I gave no further thought to the
second mate. I looked at the harbour we were entering, and thought of
the home I had left so eagerly. After all, I was no more than a boy, and
even younger in mind than in body.

Queer-looking boats crawled between the shores like tiny water beetles.
One headed out towards us, then another. I did not want them to reach
us. It was as if I did not wish my solitude to be disturbed, and I was
not pleased with the idea of going ashore. A great ship, floating high
on the water, black