le! If there is one this
time, and you will be so kind as to point it out, I will--I will run the
reesk of shooting you instead of--"

A pinch of his baggy throat, between the fingers and thumbs of both
hands, foreshadowed a cleaner end; and yet I could look at him; nay, it
was more than I could do not to look upon that bloodless face, with the
two dry blots upon the parchment, that were never withdrawn from mine.

"No you won't, messmate! If it's him or us for it, let a bullet do it,
and let it do it quick, you bloody Spaniard! You can't do the other
without me, and my part's done."

Harris was my only hope. I had seen this from the first, but my appeal
I had been keeping to the very end. And now he was leaving me before a
word would come! Santos had gone over to my grave, and there was Harris
at the door!

"It is not dip enough," said the Portuguese.

"It's as deep as I mean to make it, with you sittin' there talkin' about
it."

And the door stood open.

"Captain!" I screamed. "For Christ's sake, captain!"

He stood there, trembling, yet even now not looking my way.

"Did you ever see a man hanged?" asked Santos, with a vile eye for each
of us. "I once hanged fifteen in a row; abominable thifs. And I once
poisoned nearly a hundred at one banquet; an untrustworthy tribe; but
the hanging was the worse sight and the worse death. Heugh! There was
one man--he was no stouter than you are captain--"

But the door slammed; we heard the captain on the stairs; there was a
rustle from the leaves outside, and then a silence that I shall not
attempt to describe.

And, indeed, I am done with this description: as I live to tell the tale
(or spoil it, if I choose) I will make shorter work of this particular
business than I found it at the time. Perverse I may be in old age as
in my youth; but on that my agony--my humiliating agony--I decline
to dwell. I suffer it afresh as I write. There are the cobwebs on the
ceiling, a bloated spider crawling in one: a worse monster is gloating
over me: those dull eyes of his, and my own pistol-barrel, cover me in
the lamp-light. The crucifix pin is awry in his cravat; that is because
he has offered it me to kiss. As a refinement (I feel sure) my revolver
is not cocked; and the hammer goes up--up--

He missed me because a lantern was flashed into his eyes through the
grating. He wasted the next ball in firing wildly at the light. And
the last chamber's load became suddenly too precio