ll hopes of saving him, and
made another attempt to get down to the cabin. The doors were now
unfastened, and I opened them without any difficulty. The first thing
I saw on going below, was Angerstoff stretched along the floor,
and fast asleep. His torpid look, flushed countenance, and uneasy
respiration, convinced me that he had taken a large quantity of ardent
spirits. Marietta was in her own apartment. Even the presence of a
murderer appeared less terrible than the frightful solitariness of the
deck, and I lay down upon a bench determining to spend the remainder
of the night there. The lamp that hung from the roof soon went out,
and left me in total darkness. Imagination began to conjure up a
thousand appalling forms, and the voice of Angerstoff, speaking in his
sleep, filled my ears at intervals--"Hoist up the beacon!--the lamps
won't burn--horrible!--they contain blood instead of oil. Is that a
boat coming?--Yes, yes, I hear the oars. Damnation!--why is that
corpse so long of sinking?--if it doesn't go down soon they'll find me
out. How terribly the wind blows!--we are driving ashore--See! see!
Morvalden is swimming after us--how he writhes in the water!" Marietta
now rushed from her room, with a light in her hand, and seizing
Angerstoff by the arm, tried to awake him. He soon rose up with
chattering teeth and shivering limbs, and was on the point of
speaking, but she prevented him, and he staggered away to his berth,
and lay down in it.

Next morning, when I went upon deck, after a short and perturbed
sleep, I found Marietta dashing water over it, that she might efface
all vestige of the transactions of the preceding night. Angerstoff did
not make his appearance till noon, and his looks were ghastly and
agonised. He seemed stupified with horror, and sometimes entirely lost
all perception of the things around him for a considerable time. He
suddenly came close up to me, and demanded, with a bold air, but
quivering voice, what I had meant by calling him a murderer?--"Why,
that you are one," replied I, after a pause.

"Beware what you say," returned he fiercely,--"you cannot escape my
power now--I tell you, sir, Morvalden fell overboard."--"Whence, then,
came that blood that covered the deck?" inquired I. He grew pale, and
then cried, "You lie--you lie infernally--there was none!"--"I saw
it," said I--"I saw Morvalden himself--long after midnight. He was
clinging to the stern-cable, and said"--"Ha, ha, ha--devils!-