and that?--die, and go to your
own place, like the man in the Bible. Come, now, make an effort. I'll
help you to your bed for once."

Between us, with much trouble, we managed to hoist him up-stairs, and
laid him on his bed, where his head fell back on the pillow, as if he
were almost fainting.

"Now, mind you," said the doctor, "I clear my conscience--the name of rum
for you is death."

And with that he went off to see my father, taking me with him by the
arm.

"This is nothing," he said, as soon as he had closed the door. "I have
drawn blood enough to keep him quiet a while; he should lie for a week
where he is--that is the best thing for him and you; but another stroke
would settle him."

CHAPTER III

THE BLACK SPOT

About noon I stopped at the captain's door with some cooling drinks and
medicines. He was lying very much as we had left him, only a little
higher, and he seemed both weak and excited.

"Jim," he said, "you're the only one here that's worth anything; and you
know I've been always good to you. Never a month but I've given you a
silver fourpenny for yourself. And now you see, mate, I'm pretty low, and
deserted by all; and, Jim, you'll bring me one noggin of rum, now, won't
you, matey?"

"The doctor----" I began.

But he broke in cursing the doctor, in a feeble voice, but heartily.
"Doctors is all swabs," he said; "and that doctor there, why, what do he
know about seafaring men? I been in places hot as pitch, and mates
dropping round with Yellow Jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like the
sea with earthquakes--what do the doctor know of lands like that?--and I
lived on rum, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to
me; and if I'm not to have my rum now I'm a poor old hulk on a lee-shore,
my blood'll be on you, Jim, and that doctor swab;" and he ran on again
for a while with curses. "Look, Jim, how my fingers fidges," he
continued, in the pleading tone. "I can't keep 'em still, not I. I
haven't had a drop this blessed day. That doctor's a fool, I tell you. If
I don't have a drain o' rum, Jim, I'll have the horrors; I seen some on
'em already. I seen old Flint in the corner there, behind you; as plain
as print, I seen him; and if I get the horrors, I'm a man that has lived
rough, and I'll raise Cain. Your doctor hisself said one glass wouldn't
hurt me. I'll give you a golden guinea for a noggin, Jim."

He was growing more and more excited, and this alarmed me for