“Mr. Greenleaf, I congratulate you, sir,” Daughtry said.  “And you have touched me, sir, touched me to the heart, coming all the way out here on such a night, and running such risks, just to say good-bye to poor Dag Daughtry, who always meant somewhat well but had bad luck.”

But while he talked so heartily, Daughtry saw, in a resplendent visioning, all the freedom of a schooner in the great South Seas, and felt his heart sink in realisation that remained for him only the pest-house, the sand-dunes, and the sad eucalyptus trees.

The Ancient Mariner sat stiffly upright.

“Sir, you have hurt me.  You have hurt me to the heart.”

“No offence, sir, no offence,” Daughtry stammered in apology, although he wondered in what way he could have hurt the old gentleman’s feelings.

“You are my friend, sir,” the other went on, gravely censorious.  “I am your friend, sir.  And you give me to understand that you think I have come out here to this hell-hole to say good-bye.  I came out here to get you, sir, and your nigger, sir.  The schooner is waiting for you.  All is arranged.  You are signed on the articles before the shipping commissioner.  Both of you.  Signed on yesterday by proxies I arranged for myself.  One was a Barbadoes nigger.  I got him and the white man out of a sailors’ boarding-house on Commercial Street and paid them five dollars each to appear before the Commissioner and sign on.”

“But, my God, Mr. Greenleaf, you don’t seem to grasp it that he and I are lepers.”

Almost with a galvanic spring, the Ancient Mariner was out of the chair and on his feet, the anger of age and of a generous soul in his face as he cried: 

“My God, sir, what you don’t seem to grasp is that you are my friend, and that I am your friend.”

Abruptly, still under the pressure of his wrath, he thrust out his hand.

“Steward, Daughtry.  Mr. Daughtry, friend, sir, or whatever I may name you, this is no fairy-story of the open boat, the cross-bearings unnamable, and the treasure a fathom under the sand.  This is real.  I have a heart.  That, sir”—­here he waved his extended hand under Daughtry’s nose—­“is my hand.  There is only one thing you may do, must do, right now.  You must take that hand in your hand, and shake it, with your heart in your hand as mine is in my hand.”

“But . . . but. . . " Daughtry faltered.

“If you don’t, then I shall not depart from this place.  I shall remain here, die here.  I know you are a leper.  You can’t tell me anything about that.  There’s my hand.  Are you going to take it?  My heart is there in the palm of it, in the pulse in every finger-end of it.  If you don’t take it, I warn you I’ll sit right down here in this chair and die.  I want you to understand I am a man, sir, a gentleman.  I am a friend, a comrade.  I am no poltroon of the flesh.  I live in my heart and in my head, sir—­not in this feeble carcass I cursorily inhabit.  Take that hand.  I want to talk with you afterward.”