Hands lay as I had left him, all fallen together in a bundle and with his eyelids lowered as though he were too weak to bear the light.  He looked up, however, at my coming, knocked the neck off the bottle like a man who had done the same thing often, and took a good swig, with his favourite toast of “Here’s luck!” Then he lay quiet for a little, and then, pulling out a stick of tobacco, begged me to cut him a quid.

“Cut me a junk o’ that,” says he, “for I haven’t no knife and hardly strength enough, so be as I had.  Ah, Jim, Jim, I reckon I’ve missed stays!  Cut me a quid, as’ll likely be the last, lad, for I’m for my long home, and no mistake.”

“Well,” said I, “I’ll cut you some tobacco, but if I was you and thought myself so badly, I would go to my prayers like a Christian man.”

“Why?” said he.  “Now, you tell me why.”

“Why?” I cried.  “You were asking me just now about the dead.  You’ve broken your trust; you’ve lived in sin and lies and blood; there’s a man you killed lying at your feet this moment, and you ask me why!  For God’s mercy, Mr. Hands, that’s why.”

I spoke with a little heat, thinking of the bloody dirk he had hidden in his pocket and designed, in his ill thoughts, to end me with.  He, for his part, took a great draught of the wine and spoke with the most unusual solemnity.

“For thirty years,” he said, “I’ve sailed the seas and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not.  Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o’ goodness yet.  Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don’t bite; them’s my views—­amen, so be it.  And now, you look here,” he added, suddenly changing his tone, “we’ve had about enough of this foolery.  The tide’s made good enough by now.  You just take my orders, Cap’n Hawkins, and we’ll sail slap in and be done with it.”

All told, we had scarce two miles to run; but the navigation was delicate, the entrance to this northern anchorage was not only narrow and shoal, but lay east and west, so that the schooner must be nicely handled to be got in.  I think I was a good, prompt subaltern, and I am very sure that Hands was an excellent pilot, for we went about and about and dodged in, shaving the banks, with a certainty and a neatness that were a pleasure to behold.

Scarcely had we passed the heads before the land closed around us.  The shores of North Inlet were as thickly wooded as those of the southern anchorage, but the space was longer and narrower and more like, what in truth it was, the estuary of a river.  Right before us, at the southern end, we saw the wreck of a ship in the last stages of dilapidation.  It had been a great vessel of three masts but had lain so long exposed to the injuries of the weather that it was hung about with great webs of dripping seaweed, and on the deck of it shore bushes had taken root and now flourished thick with flowers.  It was a sad sight, but it showed us that the anchorage was calm.