the riot of death in an inferred quarrel over
the "chest on chest full of Spanish gold, with a ton of plate in the middle
hold." Strangely enough all these shifts and additions do not appear to
have altered the sentiment in the least and at times I am amazed, in
reading over old versions, that I do not appreciably miss certain lines and
ideas that seem vital to the finished product.

Shortly after the five verses had been privately printed for his friends on
a single slip, Allison conceived the rather daring idea of injecting the
trace of a woman on board the Derelict which up to this time he had very
closely developed in the Stevensonian spirit. While there was no woman in
"Treasure Island," he proved to himself by analysis that his new thought
would do no violence to Stevenson's idea, because Billy Bones' song was a
reminiscence of _his own past_ and not of Treasure Island. Hence the trace
of a woman, skillfully injected, might be permissible. Here, too, his
analysis gave him the melancholy tone--of which Poe speaks as so highly
desirable--greatly accentuated by doubt of whether she was "wench" or
"maid," and a further possible incentive for the extermination of the whole
ship's list. This verse[7] has undergone little change since the woman
trace was first injected:

More we saw, through the stern-light screen--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Chartings ondoubt where a woman had been--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
A flimsy shift on a bunker cot,
With a dagger-slot in the bosom spot
And the lace stiff-dry in a purplish blot.
Now whether wench
Or a shuddering maid,
She dared the knife
And she took the blade.
By God! She was stuff for a plucky jade--
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!

[7] Reproduced in facsimile.

There were certain niceties of word adjustment to follow as for instance
the substitution of "a thin dirk-slot" for "a dagger-slot," the word "thin"
carrying a keen mental impression of a snaky, hissing sound-sensation as
the idea unfolded of the dirk slipping through the flimsy fabric of the
shift, cast on the bunker cot to remain the silent evidence of the tragedy.
The very acme of touches came in the punctuation[8] of the concluding
lines--pauses that emphasize with so much ingenuity the very question that
lends the speculatively mournful cadence to the whole:

Or was she wench ...
Or some shuddering maid...?
That dared the k