"But, mother, I had a companion in my misfortunes; was he saved along
with me; or have the waves parted us for ever?"

"Never trouble yourself about that: _you_ are saved; that's news enough
for one day:--if the other fellow is drowned all the better for him;
he'll not need hanging." Here the old woman laughed scornfully, and
sang a song of which the burthen was

High is the gallows, the ocean is deep;
One aloft, one below: how sound is their sleep!

Bertram now descended again into the hovel: and, finding that the old
woman would answer no more questions, he stretched himself upon his
bed; and throughout the day resigned himself to the rest which his late
exhaustion had rendered necessary.

From a slumber, into which he had fallen towards evening, he was awaked
by a gentle pressure upon his arm. He unclosed his eyes for one moment,
but shut them again immediately under the dazzling glare of a resinous
torch which the old woman held. In his present situation he thought it
best to dissemble; and therefore kept his eyes half closed, peering at
the same time from beneath his eye-lids and watching the old woman's
motions. She was kneeling by the side of his bed: with her left hand
she raised aloft a torch; with her right she had raised a corner of the
blanket and was in the act of examining his left arm, having stripped
his shirt sleeve above his elbow, and appearing at this moment to be in
anxious search of some spot or mark of recognition. Her whole attitude
and action betrayed a feverish agitation: her dark eyes flashed with
savage fire and seemed as though straining out of their sockets: and
Bertram observed that she trembled--a circumstance which strikingly
contrasted with the whole of her former deportment, which had
discovered a firmness and intrepidity very alien to her sex and age.
Presuming that her guest was asleep, the old woman now transferred her
examination to his right arm, which lay doubled beneath his body, and
which she endeavoured gently to draw out. Not succeeding in this, she
made an effort to turn him completely over. To this effort however,
without exactly knowing why, Bertram opposed all the resistance which
he could without discovering that he was awake: and the old woman,
unless she would rouse him up--which probably was not within her
intention, found herself obliged to desist. Her failure however seemed
but to increase the fiendish delirium which possessed her. She snatched
a bl