, somehow or
other, amid the wanderings of his unconscious brain, got mixed up with
the remembrance of what he had previously heard concerning the vessel I
had seen at sunset the two days prior.

It was now getting dark, the evening closing in quickly, and, what with
the dying man's queer talk and the boatswain harping on the same theme
immediately afterwards, I confess I felt far from comfortable, my nerves
being in a state of constant tension from the painful scene in the cabin
that I had just witnessed, while the gloomy shades of the night that
were fast enwrapping us, the dull roar of the ever-breaking sea and the
groaning of the ship as she rolled, like a living creature in pain, all
worked on my overtried fancy and made me almost afraid of my own shadow
as I slipped and stumbled along the sloppy deck, my mind being in a
complete whirl till I reached my goal--the bridge.

"What's the matther, me bhoy?" asked Garry O'Neil, who was speaking to
the skipper, the two examining a chart in the wheel-house, the light
from the doorway of which fell on my face. "Faith, ye look quite
skeared, Haldane, jist as if ye'd sane a ghoast, sure!"

I mentioned what had happened, however, and he at once dropped his
chaffing manner, looking as grave as a judge.

"Begorrah, it's moighty sorry I am to hear that, now!" said he in a more
serious tone. "Sure, and he was a foine, h'ilthy man entirely, barrin'
that accident, bad cess to it! He moight have lived till a hundred, an'
then aunly died of auld age; for he'd the constitution of an illiphent.
Faith, I never saw such a chist and thorax on a chap in me loife
before!"

"Poor fellow!" observed the skipper. "He seems to have gone off awfully
sudden at the last. I thought you said he was getting on well when you
went down to see him awhile ago?"

"Bedad, I did that, sir; father's no denyin' it," answered the Irishman,
off-hand. "But I niver s'id he'd git over it, cap'en. I tuld ye from
the first he couldn't reciver, for he was paralysed, poor craytur', from
the waist downwards, and had a lot of internal injury besides. It was
aunly bekase he was sich a shtrang man that he's lasted so long, sir.
Any one else would have died directly outright afther the accident, for
he was pretty well smashed to pieces!"

"Strange!" muttered Captain Applegarth, who, although hasty of temper
sometimes, was a man of deep feeling. "Sunday night again and that man
dead! Only a week ago, this ve