We talked together for quite a while longer, our conversation
gradually drifting to the recounting of various sea adventures, and my
thoughts did not again recur to Sanchez until after I rested back once
more in my berth, endeavoring to fall asleep. Haley must have dropped
off immediately, for I could distinguish his heavy breathing among the
others; but my mind continued to wander, until it conjured up once
again this West India pirate. His name, and the story of his exploits,
had been familiar to me ever since I first went to sea. While only one
among many operating in those haunted waters, his resourcefulness,
daring and cruelty had won him an infamous reputation, a name of
horror. In those days, when the curse of piracy made the sea a
terror, no ordinary man could ever have succeeded in attaining such
supremacy in crime. No doubt much that had been reported was either
false, or exaggerated, yet there flashed across my memory numberless
tales of rapine, outrage and cold-blooded cruelty in which this demon
of the sea had figured, causing me to shudder at the recollection. To
my mind he had long been a fiend incarnate, his name a horror on the
lips. Black Sanchez--and Haley pictured him as a dandified, ordinary
appearing individual, with white and red complexion, a small
moustache, and flashing dark eyes--a mere Spanish gallant, without
special distinction. Why, that description, strangely enough, fitted
almost exactly this fellow on board, this other Sanchez. I leaned over
the edge of my bunk, and looked down on Haley, half resolved to ask if
he had ever noticed this lieutenant, but the man was already sound
asleep. The suspicion which had crept into my mind was so absurd, so
unspeakably silly and impossible, that I laughed at myself, and
dismissed the crazy thought. What, that fellow Black Sanchez! Bah, no!
He had been at sea, of course; there was no denying that fact, for he
knew ships, and spoke the lingo of blue water; but the very idea that
that blood-stained buccaneer, whose hated name was on the lips of