I heard them as plain as
I hear you."

As Tom talked, I seemed to hear Ulysses telling of his meeting with
Agamemnon in Hades, and those terrible ghosts drinking from the
blood-filled trench, and I shuddered in spite of myself; for it is
almost impossible entirely to refuse credence to beliefs held with such
certitude of terror across so many centuries and by such different
people.

"Well, Tom," I remarked, "you may be right, but of one thing I'm
certain; if the ghost's going to get any one, it sha'n't be you."

"We've both got one good chance against them--" Tom was beginning.

"Don't tell me again about that old sucking fish."

"Mind you keep it safe, for all that," said Tom gravely. "I wouldn't
lose mine for a thousand pounds."

"Well, all right, but let's forget the damned old ghosts for the
present," and I broke out into the catch we had sung on so momentous an
occasion--

_Some gave a nickel, some gave a dime;
But I didn't give no red cent--
She was no girl of mine--
Delia's gone! Delia's gone!_

And it did one good to hear Tom's honest laughter resounding in that
beautiful haunted wilderness, as the song brought back to both of us the
memories of that morning which already seemed so long ago.

"I wonder what's become of our friend of 'the wonderful works of God,'"
I queried.

"Wherever he is, he's up to no good, we may be sure of that," answered
Tom.

At last we decided to try a plan that was really no plan at all; that is
to say, to seek more or less at random, till we consumed all our stores
except just enough to take us home. Meanwhile, we would, each of us,
every day, cut a sort of radiating swathe, working single-handed, from
the cove entrance. Thus we would prospect as much of the country as
possible in a sort of fan, both of us keeping our eyes open for a
compass carved on a rock. In this way we might hope to cover no
inconsiderable stretch of the country in the three weeks, and, moreover,
the country most likely to give some results, as being that lying in a
semi-circle from the little harbour where the ships would have lain. It
wasn't much of a plan perhaps, but it seemed the most possible among
impossibles.

So the next morning, bright and early, we started work, I letting Tom
take Sailor with him as company and protection against the spirits of
the waste; also we took a revolver apiece and cartridge belts, and it
seemed to me that the old fellow showed n