“What was Dick Carpenter’s dream?” asked the Captain, seated, sword in hand and hat on head, before a deputation from the forecastle.

The speaker fidgeted, then out came the clumsy taunt, the carpenter’s dream.  “Why, sir, he dreamed he saw the women of the islands, sitting by the shores, a-sifting gold-dust and a-weighing of pearls;—­and then he dreamed that he looked along the sea-floor, leagues and leagues to the south’ard, until he saw the very roots of the mainland, and the great fish swimming in and out.  And a many and a many dead men were there, drawn into ranks, very strange to see, for their swollen flesh yet hung to their bones, and they beckoned and laughed; and Captain Robert Baldry, that was once, on a Guinea voyage, Dick Carpenter’s Captain, he laughed the loudest and beckoned the fastest.  And, Sir Mortimer Ferne, an it please you, we’ve no longing to follow that beckoning.”

“Thou dog!” said the Captain, with no change of mien.  “Presently Dick Carpenter and thou shall have food for dreams—­bad dreams, bad dreams, man!  Thou fool, have I set thee quaking who, forsooth, would mutiny!  Begone, the whole of ye, and sail the whole of ye wheresoever I list to go!”

Seeing that the Sea Wraith obeyed him still, her crew believed yet more devoutly that a secret voice spoke in his ear and a dark hand gave him aid.  It was later, when he began to feed them gold, that they who owned caps threw them up for him, and they whose brains had only nature’s thatching shouted for him as for a demigod.  A Spanish squadron bound for The Havannah was met by a hurricane, several of its ships lost, and the remainder widely separated.  The hurricane past, forth from an island harbor stole the Sea Wraith that so many storms had beleaguered.  Gray as with eld, lonely as the ark, a haggard ship manned by outcasts, she spread her vampire wings and flitted from her enshadowed anchorage.  An hour later, like a vampire still, she hooked herself to a gay galleon and sucked from it life that was cheap and gold that was dear; then descrying other sails, she left that ruined hulk for a long and fierce struggle with a Portuguese carrack.  The battle waxed so fell that the carrack also might have been worked by men who had all to win and naught to lose, and captained by one who bared his brow to the thunder-stone.

Like harpies they fought, but when night came there was only the Sea Wraith scudding to the south, and that pied crew of hers knocking at the stars with the knowledge that ever and always their judgment (even though he asked it not) jumped with the Captain’s, and that before them lay the gilded cities and the chances of Pizarro.  It was of his subtlety that the Captain never used to them fair promises, spake not once a sennight of gold, never bragged to them of what must be.  Oh! a subtle captain, whose very strangeness was his best lieutenant upon that eldritch, nine-lived ship, through days and days of