As I looked up to answer I saw the returned prisoner give a start,
turn slowly about, and peer at us. He seemed to be badly scared,
too, for an instant; for I heard a sudden, sharp click in his
throat--

"E-e-eh? Coffin, is it? Danny Coffin? Oh, good Lord!"

He came towards our corner, still peering, and, as he peered,
crouching to that he spread his palms on his knees.

"Coffin? Danny Coffin?" he repeated, in a voice that, as it lost its
wondering quaver, grew tense and wicked and wheedling.

Captain Coffin's face twitched, and it seemed to me that his eyes,
though rigid, expanded a little. But they stared into the stranger's
face without seeing him.

The fellow crouched a bit lower, and still lower, as he drew close
and thrust his face gradually within a yard of the old man's.

"Shipmate Danny--messmate Danny--tip us a stave! The old stave,
Danny!--

"'And alongst the Keys o' Mortallone!'"

As his voice lifted to it in a hoarse melancholy minor (times and
again since that moment the tune has put me in mind of sea-birds
crying over a waste shore), I saw the shiver run across Captain
Coffin's face and neck, and with that his sight came back to him, and