* * * * *

I woke in the morning greatly refreshed for all the closeness of the air, and, the memory of the night’s events returning, was much concerned as to the future.  I could not be fighting with Muckle John all the time, and I made no doubt that once his limbs were freed he would try to kill me.  The others were still asleep while I tiptoed over to his corner.  At first sight I got a fearsome shock, for I thought he was dead of suffocation.  He had worked the gag out of his mouth, and lay as still as a corpse.  But soon I saw that he was sleeping quietly, and in his slumbers the madness had died out of his face.  He looked like any other sailorman, a trifle ill-favoured of countenance, and dirty beyond the ordinary of sea-folk.

When the gaoler came with food, we all wakened up, and Gib asked very peaceably to be released.  The gaoler laughed at his predicament, and inquired the tale of it; and when he heard the truth, called for a vote as to what he should do.  I was satisfied, from the look of Muckle John, that his dangerous fit was over, so I gave my voice for release.  Gib shook himself like a great dog, and fell to his breakfast without a word.  I found the thin brose provided more palatable than the soup of the evening before, and managed to consume a pannikin of it.  As I finished, I perceived that Gib had squatted by my side.  There was clearly some change in the man, for he gave the woman Isobel some very ill words when she started ranting.

Up in the little square of window one could see a patch of clear sky, with white clouds crossing it, and a gust of the clean air of morning was blown into our cell.  Gib sat looking at it with his eyes abstracted, so that I feared a renewal of his daftness.

“Can ye whistle ‘Jenny Nettles,’ sir?” he asked me civilly.

It was surely a queer request in that place and from such a fellow.  But I complied, and to the best of my skill rendered the air.

He listened greedily.  “Ay, you’ve got it,” he said, humming it after me.  “I aye love the way of it.  Yon’s the tune I used to whistle mysel’ on shipboard when the weather was clear.”

He had the seaman’s trick of thinking of the weather first thing in the morning, and this little thing wrought a change in my view of him.  His madness was seemingly like that of an epileptic, and when it passed he was a simple creature with a longing for familiar things.

“The wind’s to the east,” he said.  “I could wish I were beating down the Forth in the Loupin’ Jean. She was a trim bit boat for him that could handle her.”

“Man,” I said, “what made you leave a clean job for the ravings of yesterday?”

“I’m in the Lord’s hands,” he said humbly.  “I’m but a penny whistle for His breath to blow on.”  This he said with such solemnity that the meaning of a fanatic was suddenly revealed to me.  One or two distorted notions, a wild imagination, and fierce passions, and there you have the ingredients ready.  But moments of sense must come, when the better nature of the man revives.  I had a thought that the clout he got on the stone floor had done much to clear his wits.