f his tongue
was performed by habit rather than memory, so that he often went far
astray and babbled into sentences that had no reference to what had gone
before, though on the whole I managed to collect what he meant. I was
sure he had not power enough of vision to observe me in the dim reddish
light of the cook-room, and this being so, he could not know I was
present, more particularly as he could not hear me, yet he persisted in
his poor babble, which was a behaviour in him that, more than even the
matter of his speech, persuaded me of his imbecility.

He made no reference to our situation, and in solemn truth I believe his
memory retained no more than a few odds and ends of the evil story of
his life, like bits of tarnished lace and a rusty button or two lying in
the bottom of a dark chest that has long been emptied of the clothes it
once held.

But my condition made such heavy demands upon my thoughts that I had
very much less attention to give to this surprising phenomenon of
senility than its uncommon merits deserved. It has puzzled every member
of the faculty that I have mentioned it to, the supposition being that,
given the case of suspended animation, there is no waste, and the person
would quit his stupor with the same powers and aspect as he possessed
when he entered it, though it lasted a thousand years. But granting
there is no waste, Time is always present waiting to settle accounts
when the sleeper lifts his head. There may be an artificial interval,
during which the victim might show as my pirate did, but the poised load
of years is severed on a sudden by the scythe and becomes
superincumbent, and with the weight comes the transformation; and this
theory, as the only eye-witness of the marvellous thing, I will hold and
maintain whilst I have breath in my body to support it.

I left him gabbling to himself, sometimes grinning as if greatly
diverted, sometimes lifting a trembling hand to help his ghostly recital
by an equally ghostly dumb-show, and went on deck, satisfied that he was
too weak to get to the fire and meddle with it, but sufficiently
invigorated by his long night's rest to sit up without tumbling off the
bench.

This time I carried with me an old perspective glass I had noticed in
the chest in my cabin--the chest in which were the nautical instruments,
charts, and papers--and levelled it along the coast of the island, but
it was a poor glass, and I found I could manage nearly as well wit