black spot, captain?" I asked.

"That's a summons, mate. I'll tell you if they get that. But you keep
your weather-eye open, Jim, and I'll share with you equals, upon my
honour."

He wandered a little longer, his voice growing weaker; but soon after I
had given him his medicine, which he took like a child, with the remark,
"If ever a seaman wanted drugs, it's me," he fell at last into a heavy,
swoon-like sleep, in which I left him. What I should have done had all
gone well I do not know. Probably I should have told the whole story to
the doctor; for I was in mortal fear lest the captain should repent of
his confessions and make an end of me. But as things fell out, my poor
father died quite suddenly that evening, which put all other matters on
one side. Our natural distress, the visits of the neighbours, the
arranging of the funeral, and all the work of the inn to be carried on in
the meanwhile, kept me so busy that I had scarcely time to think of the
captain, far less to be afraid of him.

He got down-stairs next morning, to be sure, and had his meals as usual,
though he ate little, and had more, I am afraid, than his usual supply of
rum, for he helped himself out of the bar, scowling and blowing through
his nose, and no one dared to cross him. On the night before the funeral
he was as drunk as ever; and it was shocking, in that house of mourning,
to hear him singing away at his ugly old sea-song; but, weak as he was,
we were all in fear of death for him, and the doctor was suddenly taken
up with a case many miles away, and was never near the house after my
father's death. I have said the captain was weak; and indeed he seemed
rather to grow weaker than regain his strength. He clambered up- and
down-stairs, and went from the parlour to the bar and back again, and
sometimes put his nose out of doors to smell the sea, holding on to the
walls as he went for support, and breathing hard and fast like a man on a
steep mountain. He never particularly addressed me, and it is my belief
he had as good as forgotten his confidences; but his temper was more
flighty, and, allowing for his bodily weakness, more violent than ever.
He had an alarming way now when he was drunk of drawing his cutlass and
laying it bare before him on the table. But, with all that, he minded
people less, and seemed shut up in his own thoughts and rather wandering.
Once, for instance, to our extreme wonder, he piped up to a different
air, a kind of countr