could not touch me; besides, most people know it. You would
hear it from some one else if not from me."

"Then tell me."

"It is a short story. When I was only a lad, not quite twenty, I went
to sea to seek my fortune. I bound myself as stoker on board a Trieste
steamboat. We sailed with a cargo of meal to the Brazils. Our voyage
there was prosperous. On our return we took black coffee and wool. On
this side of the equator we met a tornado, which broke our engine,
smashed our mainmast, and drove the vessel upon a sandbank, where she
foundered. Some of the passengers took to the boat; they went only a
short way when she upset, and they were all drowned. The rest made a
raft from the planks of the sunken ship, and trusted to this frail
thing on the open sea. I was one of them. We were in all thirty-nine,
including the captain, the steersman, and a merchant from Rio de
Janeiro, with his wife and a three-year-old child. We had no other
woman or child, for the rest had perished in the open boat. We thought
them unfortunate, but now I think they were happy. Better, far better,
to have died then. Out of our thirty-nine, soon only nine remained.
Oh, how I wish I had been among the dead! For eight days we floated
upon the water, the sport of the waves; now buffeted here and there,
again in a calm, immovable, nailed as it were to the ocean, without
one drop of water to quench our thirst or one morsel of food. Ten of
us had died of hunger. For two days we had never eaten, and the ninth
day came, and no hope of succor. The sun was burning us up, and the
water reflected the heat, so that we lay between two fires. Oh, the
horror of that awful time! That evening we took the resolve that one
of us should be a victim for the others--that is, that we should draw
lots which should be eaten by the others. We threw our names into a
hat, and we made the innocent child draw for us. That child drew its
own name.

"I cannot tell you, sir, the rest of the ghastly business. Often I
dream the whole thing over again, and I always awake at the moment
when the miserable mother cursed all those who partook of that
horrible meal, invoking heaven that we might never again have peace.
At the recollection of her words I spring out of my bed, I run into
the woods and wait, to see if I shall be changed into a wolf. It would
serve me right.

"Of the partakers of the cursed meal I am the only survivor. The
thought haunts me; it burns into my very soul.