of
the lanthorns and a sound of splashing in the water below.

The crew of the Yankee continued firing at the phosphorescent wakes of
the swimming bodies, but whether with effect it was impossible at the
time to tell.

IV

The pirate captain did not die immediately. He lingered for three or
four days, now and then unconscious, now and then semi-conscious, but
always deliriously wandering. All the while he thus lay dying, the
mulatto woman, with whom he lived in this part of his extraordinary dual
existence, nursed and cared for him with such rude attentions as the
surroundings afforded. In the wanderings of his mind the same duality
of life followed him. Now and then he would appear the calm, sober,
self-contained, well-ordered member of a peaceful society that his
friends in his faraway home knew him to be; at other times the nether
part of his nature would leap up into life like a wild beast, furious
and gnashing. At the one time he talked evenly and clearly of peaceful
things; at the other time he blasphemed and hooted with fury.

Several times Mainwaring, though racked by his own wounds, sat beside
the dying man through the silent watches of the tropical nights.
Oftentimes upon these occasions as he looked at the thin, lean face
babbling and talking so aimlessly, he wondered what it all meant. Could
it have been madness--madness in which the separate entities of good and
bad each had, in its turn, a perfect and distinct existence? He chose to
think that this was the case. Who, within his inner consciousness, does
not feel that same ferine, savage man struggling against the stern,
adamantine bonds of morality and decorum? Were those bonds burst
asunder, as it was with this man, might not the wild beast rush forth,
as it had rushed forth in him, to rend and to tear? Such were the
questions that Mainwaring asked himself. And how had it all come about?
By what easy gradations had the respectable Quaker skipper descended
from the decorum of his home life, step by step, into such a gulf of
iniquity? Many such thoughts passed through Mainwaring's mind, and he
pondered them through the still reaches of the tropical nights while he
sat watching the pirate captain struggle out of the world he had so long
burdened. At last the poor wretch died, and the earth was well quit of
one of its torments.

A systematic search was made through the island for the scattered crew,
but none was captured. Either there were some secre