he ship, or
'cashion'd the wrack in airy a way, nor yet yerself, cap, neither. It
wer summat else."

"Thunder!" exclaimed the skipper, puzzled by this. "What dew ye make it
out fur to be?"

"Rum, an' not `thunder,' mister," at once responded Hiram, equally
laconically. "I guess if ye hedn't took to raisin' yer elber thet
powerful ez to see snakes, an' hev the jim-jams, we'd all be now, slick
ez clams, safe in port at 'Frisco!"

This home truth silenced the captain for the moment, but the next
instant he startled us all with an utterly inconsequent question, having
no reference to what he had before been speaking of.

"Where hev ye stowed it?"

Hiram stared at him.

"I don't mean ye," said the skipper, dropping his eyes as if he could
not stand being gazed at; and I could see his face twitching about in a
queer manner, and his hands trembling, as he turned and twisted the
fingers together. "I mean the nigger an' thet other skunk thaar--the
white man thet's got a blacker heart inside his carkiss than the nigger
hez. Whaar hev they stowed it?"

"Stowed what, cap?" inquired Hiram, humouring him, as he now noticed,
for the first time, in what an excited state he was. "I don't kinder
underconstubble 'zactly what yer means."

"The chest o' gold," snorted out the skipper. "Ye know durned well what
I means!"

"Chest o' goold?" repeated Hiram, astonished. "I hevn't seed no chests
o' goold about hyar. No such luck!"

"Ye lie!" roared the captain, springing on him like a tiger, and
throwing him down by his sudden attack, he clutched poor Hiram's throat
so tightly as almost to strangle him. "I saw the nigger makin' off with
it, an' thet scoundrel the carpenter; fur the buccaneers told me jest
now. Lord, thaar's the skull rollin' after me, with its wild eyes
flashin' fire out of the sockets, an' its grinnin' teeth--oh, save me!
Save me!"

With that, he took to crying and sobbing like mad; and it was only then
we realised the fact that the skipper was suffering from another of his
fits of delirium, though it was a far worse one than any we had seen him
labouring under during the voyage.

Tom Bullover and Sam had the greatest difficulty in unclenching his
hands from Hiram's neck and then restraining him from doing further
violence, our unfortunate shipmate being quite black in the face and
speechless for some minutes after our releasing him.

As for Captain Snaggs, he afterwards went on like a raging madman