nd I were now, to the best of our belief, alone on the
island, and a lonesomer spot it would be hard to imagine, or one touched
at certain hours with a fairer beauty--a beauty wraith-like and, like a
sea-shell, haunted with the marvel of the sea. But we, alas!--or let me
speak for myself--were sinful, misguided men, to whom the gleam and
glitter of God's making spoke all too seldom, and whose hearts were
given to the baser shining of such treasure as that of which I for one
still dreamed--with an obstinacy all the more hardened by the opposition
we had encountered, and by the menace of danger the enterprise now held
beyond peradventure--a menace, indeed, to which Tobias's words had given
the form of a precise challenge. Perhaps but for that, remembering the
count of so many dead men--men who had lost their lives in the
prosecution of my probably vain desire--I would have given the whole
thing up, and sailed the boat back to less-haunted regions, which Tom
and I might easily have done, and as Tom, I could plainly see, would
himself have preferred.

But Tobias's challenge made such a course impossible for any man worthy
of the name, and I never gave the alternative a moment's consideration.
But I did give Tom his choice of staying or going--a choice made
possible that day by a schooner sailing close in shore and easy to
signal. Yet Tom, while making no secret of his real feelings, would not
hear of quitting.

"I sha'n't think a cent worse of you, Tom," I assured him. "Indeed, I
won't. It's no doubt a mad business anyway, and I'm not sure I've the
right to endanger in it any other lives than my own."

"No, sar," said Tom; "I came with you, you have treated me right, and I
am going to see you through."

"You're the real thing; God bless you, Tom," I exclaimed. "But I doubt
if I've the right to take advantage of your goodness. I'm not sure that
I oughtn't to signal those fellows to take you off with them
willy-nilly."

"No, sar, you wouldn't do that, I'm sure. I'm a free man, God be
praised, though my mother and father were slaves"--and he drew himself
up with pathetic pride--"and I can choose my own course, as they
couldn't. Besides, there's no one needs me at home; all my girls and
boys are well fixed; and if I have to go, perhaps there's some one needs
me more in heaven."

"All right, Tom, and thank you; we'll say no more about it." And so we
let the schooner go by, and turned to the consideration of our plans.