Doctor Castleton had produced from the recesses of a large medicine case
certain pills and powders, had given his directions, and was actually
about to leave without giving me an opportunity, or seeming to think
that I desired an opportunity, of speaking with Peters. I then appealed
for a moment more of time, and for consent to ask the patient a question
or two; and my appeal was granted. I stepped close to the bedside, and
looking down into the eyes that looked up into mine, asked the old man
if his name was Dirk Peters; to which he answered affirmatively. I then
asked him if he had in the year 1827 sailed from the port of Nantucket,
on the brig 'Grampus,' under Captain Bernard, in company, among others,
with a youth named A. Gordon Pym? And a moment later I wished that I had
been less abrupt in my questioning. Peters did manage quite coolly and
rationally to answer "Yes" to all my questions. But at the words "Pym,"
"Bernard," "Grampus," his eyes began, in appearance, to start from their
sockets; those awful teeth gleamed from that cavernous mouth, as he
uttered demoniac yell on yell, and raised himself to a sitting posture
in the bed. I thought his eyeballs must certainly burst, as he looked
off into nothingness wildly, as if a troop of fiends were rushing upon
him.

"Great God!" he screamed, "there, there--she's gone. Ah," quieting a
little; "ah; the old man with the eyes of a god, and the cubes of
crystal with the limpid liquid of heaven. Oh," his voice again raised to
piercing screams, "Oh, she's gone, and he loves her--and I love him. Now
man, they called you the human baboon--be more than man!--I loved the
boy--I tell you, I loved him from the first. I saved him once--aye, a
dozen times--but not like this--not from hell. Scale the chasms of salt,
and climb the lava cliffs, and--but the lake of fire at the bottom--the
old man--and the abyss, my God, the abyss! The snow-drift beard--the
godlike eyes"--his voice then quieting for a few words. "Ah, mother,