e on board the
_Belle Fortune_. I had played straight into Colliver's hand.

He was in no hurry, but sat and watched me there with those
intolerably evil eyes. His left hand was thrust carelessly into his
pocket, and as he tilted back upon the stool and surveyed me, his
right was playing with the clasp upon the chest. As I painfully
turned my head a drop of blood came trickling down into my eyes from
a cut in my forehead; I saw, however, that the door was bolted.
An empty bottle and a plate of broken victuals lay carelessly thrust
in a corner, and a villainous smell from the lamp filled the whole
room and almost choked me; but the only sound in the dead stillness
of the place was the monotonous tick-tick of my watch as it lay upon
the chest.

How long I had lain there I could not guess, but I noticed that the
floor slanted much less than when I first scrambled on deck, so
guessed that the tide must have risen considerably. Then having
exhausted my wonder I looked again at Colliver, and began to
speculate how he would kill me and how long he would take about it.

I found his wolfish eyes still regarding me, and for a minute or two
we studied each other in silence. Then without removing his gaze he
tilted his stool forward, slowly drew a short heavy knife from his
waist-band, slipped it out of its sheath--still without taking his
left hand from his pocket--laid it on the table and leant back again.

"I suppose," he said at last and very deliberately as if chewing his
words, "you know that if you attempt to cry out or summon help, you
are a dead man that instant."

"Well, well," he continued, after waiting a moment for my reply,
"as long as you understand that, it does not matter. I confess I
should have preferred to talk with you and not merely to you.
However, before I kill you--and I suppose you guess that I am going
to kill you as soon as I've done with you--I wish to have just a
word, Master Jasper Trenoweth."

From the tone in which he said the words he might have been
congratulating me on some great good fortune. He paused awhile as if
to allow the full force of them to sink in, and then took up the
Golden Clasp. Holding the pieces together with the fore-finger and
thumb of his right hand, he advanced and thrust it right under my
sight--

"Do you see that? Can you read it?"

As I was still mute he walked back to the chest and laid the clasp
down again.

"Aha!" he exclaimed with a short laugh ho