heavily befooled and bled,
caught and bound these men in fellowship. They had both met with
some queer ones in their travels, and they compared notes: but they
always came back to this superlative old fraud. After long wise and
disconnected talk about the set of the wind, or the rates of pay on
various lines, or stowage, or freights, or rigs, or currents, or the
characters of various skippers and mates, or the liveliness or
sulkiness or homeliness or fickleness of this or that kind of cargo,
they would revert extra-professionally to Uncle Tibe: of whom the old
stories would be repeated over and over, with long pauses, chuckles,
slow appreciations--'Ay, Tibe! . . . He was a none-such, if you
like!'

"Will you believe me that, in the end, these two honest fellows
murdered each other over this more-than-half-mythical Tibe? No, you
can't guess what it's like, towards the finish. They sat side by
side on the mid-thwart, fishing over either gunwale--or leaning over,
pretending. They were almost too weak to haul in a fish over four
pounds had they caught one, and for two days their throats had been
parched so that speech came with difficulty. Of a sudden Jarvis let
out 'Tibe!' with a sort of ghostly cackle, and Prout cackled 'Tibe!'
in an echo even thinner. . . . And, with that Jarvis stood up and
started raving of what he would do when the money came to him, as he
allowed it would, after all. Mighty queer ways of spending wealth he
mentioned, too, before Prout was up and, yelling at him for a thief
and supplanter, drove at his throat with a knife. He missed: but the
next instant, these two fond friends, whose friendship had fenced us
others off almost as strangers, were wallowing and knifing one
another on the bottom-boards,--all over the visionary legacy of a
Jew, thousands of miles away, whose picking of their pockets had been
their common reminiscence and their standing joke through days of
horror! And political economists used to tell us that money is a
medium and symbol of exchange!"

"Well, after that we were three in the boat, and I was the only one
strong enough to heft the bodies overboard. If they could only have
held on to their wits for another twenty-four hours, or even for
twelve!

"When I had done this work, and redded up the boat, I looked rather
anxiously at Santa, who had been watching me: for I feared the effect
this scene of shambles might have upon her. She sat, with Farrell's
head rest