“Does the owner never come out, then?”

“Well, he can get out, I expect, when he wants to,” replied the wrinkled humorist, with a weather-beaten grin.  “They do say he whips off on a broomstick about once a month and steers for Bos-ton!” His fashion of utterance was a leisurely sing-song, like the roll of a vessel anchored in a ground-swell.

“Why does he go there?” demanded Prince Balder, with the air of finding nothing extravagant or improbable in the sailor’s yarn.  The latter (a little doubting whether his interlocutor were a simpleton or a “deep one”) answered, after a moment’s pause,—­to replenish his imagination perhaps,—­

“Well, in course, I knows nothing what he does; but they do say he coasts around to all the ho-tels and overhauls the log.  He’s been laying for some one this twenty year.  My idea, it’s about time he hailed him!”

“What does he want with him?”

“Well, yer see, what folks say is, this chap had played some game or other off on Davy; so Davy he puts a rod in pickle and vows he’d be even with the chap, yet.

“Yer see,—­I’ll tell yer,” continued Charon, leaning forward on his knee and speaking confidentially; “just as this chap was putting off,—­with some of Davy’s belongings, likely,—­Davy up and cuts a slice of flesh and blood off him.  Well, he takes this slice and fixes it up one way or another, and makes a witch out of it,—­handsome as she can be,—­enough to draw a chap’s heart right out through his jacket.  Now, being as she’s his own flesh and blood, d’ yer see, this chap I’m telling yer on’s bound to come back after her afore he dies.  Well, soon as Davy gets hold on him, he ups with him to the place yonder and outs with the witch.  ‘Here yer are, my dear friend!’ says he (as civil as may be), ’here’s yer own flesh and blood a-waiting for yer!’ Well, the chap grabs for her, and once he touches her there ain’t no letting go no more.  Off she starts on her broomstick, he along behind, till they gets over Hell gate—­” Charon checked himself, made an ominous downward gesture with his right forefinger, and emphasized it by spitting solemnly to leeward.

“Did you ever meet him,—­this man?” asked Helwyse, rousing himself from a brown study and looking Charon in the eyes.

“Well, now, I couldn’t tell for certain as I ever met him,” replied the other, returning the look with an odd wrinkling of the features.  “But it’s nigh on twenty year that I fetched a man across this very spot, and back again in the evening, that might have been him.  Leastways, he was the last caller ever I took over to that house.”

“I am the first since he—­eh?”

“Well, yer are; and, Captain,—­no offence to you,—­but allowing for a lot of hair he had, he was like enough to you to be yer twin brother!”

“Or even myself!  So Davy Jones goes by the name of Doctor Glyphic in these parts, does he?” said Balder, with a sudden, incisive smile, which almost cut through the old ferryman’s self-possession.  The boat at the same moment glided into a little cove, and the passenger jumped ashore.  Charon stood deferentially touching his weather-stained hat, too much mystified to speak.  But the fare which Helwyse handed him restored his voice.