must have been potent, for it brought a sudden water to his eyes.
"Well, so be it--if you've kept off it at your age. But at mine"--
he drank off the second glassful and wiped his mouth--"I've had
experiences, Brooks. When you've heard 'em, you wouldn't be
surprised, not if it took a dozen to steady me."

He filled again, and came close to me, holding the glass, yet so
tremulously that the rum spilled over his fingers.

"Ingots, lad--golden ingots! Bars and wedges of solid gold!
Gems, too, and cath-e-deral plate, with crucifixions and priests'
vestments stiff with pearls and rubies as if they was frozen.
I've seen 'em lyin' tossed in a heap like mullet in a ground-net.
Ay, and blazin' on the beach, with the gulls screamin' over 'em and
flappin', and the sea all around. I seen it with these eyes, boy" He
stood back and shivered. "And behind o' that, the Death! But it
comes equal to all, the Death. Not if a man had learned every trick
the devil can teach could he lay his course clear o' that. Could he,
now?"

His words, his uncouth gestures, which were almost spasms, and the
changes in his face--from cupidity to terror, and from terror again
to a kind of wistful hope--fairly frightened me, and I stammered
stupidly that death was the common lot, and there couldn't be a doubt
of it; that or something of the sort. But what I said does not
matter. He was not listening, and before I had done he drained and
set down the glass and gripped my arm again.

"I seen all that--ay, an' felt it!" He drew away and stretched out
both hands, crooking his fingers like talons. "Ay, an' I seen