I was too weary to pay much heed to his rattling talk. I know that the fire as it blazed up more strongly and brightly, triumphing over the soaked twigs and branches which my father had scrambled together, thawed my limbs deliciously. And soon I was in a glow of steamy warmth, and nodded sleepily, while my father, still chatting in his restless way, prepared some soup. The hot savoury stuff was the last touch necessary to complete comfort, and forgetting with the ease of childhood the dreary tramp through the storm I gave myself up unresistingly to the luxury of sleep. But my sleep wasn't completely unbroken. It seemed to surge over me like great waves, and whenever I floated up to the surface I became aware of my father's voice still droning out the story of our flight. He must have been talking to prevent himself from sleeping, for once I seem to remember hearing him muttering, "I must keep awake, I must keep awake," and sometimes when I awoke from my doze he was pacing the hut, or turning the clothes before the fire.

I had one longer spell of wakefulness while it was still dark. The wind had dropped, and my father had ceased to prattle. The complete silence, together with the cutting pressure of cold air against my cheek, had probably aroused me more alertly than usual, for of a sudden I felt wide-awake. I looked round for my father, but he wasn't in the hut. The lantern was no longer alight, and the fire was smouldering low. The door stood open, and the utter blackness of the woodland seemed banked up against it like a barricade. For a moment the fear of loneliness was upon me, and I would have cried out, but just then my father returned with a bundle of faggots, which he tossed on to the failing fire. There was a smother of smoke and steam and a loud hissing, before the red flames broke through again.

"What! Awake, Tommy?" said my father, seeing me rub my eyes, which were smarting from the fumes.

"Awake, daddy," I said, blinking up at him with a smile.

He shut the door, and carefully secured it with a stout piece of timber. I noticed too that he had hung his cloak, now dry, over the little solitary pane of glass which was all the hut possessed in the way of a window.

"Time to dress, Tommy," he said, helping me pull on my stockings, which were almost toasted by the fire and felt comfortingly warm. I reached for my shirt and breeches, and slowly drew them on, my eyes half shut, for I would willingly have lain down again for a further spell of sleep. I pushed my arms into my jacket, and looking round for my cloak saw it hanging on the wall opposite the door. I was rising to get it when my father said, "Ah, not that just yet. We won't start till morning, but best be ready." He added, "There's a big hole there, Tommy. Keeping out the wind; the cold wind, Tommy, with the sharp white teeth. It's there behind your cloak, all ready to bite."

He snapped his teeth and shuddered, while I threw my head on his arm as he sat beside me, and chuckled delightedly. For it was always in this way that he spoke of the simplest things; never to frighten, but to give just that touch of dramatic and imaginative charm which childhood thirsts for. And it was this magic spell which he cast over our life of hard wanderings and sudden flights that changed a bitter reality into a wonderful game.

He was off again with some story or other, and though I tried to keep awake so as not to miss the precious recital, yet sleep was still heavy in my eyes, and my head nodded. I must have been tired indeed, for my father could tell a story with such thrill and vigour, his expression changing with every phase and mood, that the thing became a living picture. At least it was so to me, and bed had no attraction while I was away with my father seeking treasure on far-away seas. But this night I missed the better part of the story. I only heard a word here and there. I remember there was a cave, and a conspiracy, and a terrible crime, but how the story went I couldn't follow. And then in a more wakeful moment I heard my father saying, "This is how he looked at me." I blinked a sleepy eye up at him, and suddenly started into complete consciousness, for used as I was to his extraordinary facial contortions when dramatizing his incidents, I had never seen him wear such a look of frightfulness as he wore now. His hair was standing up stupidly, with one lank lock pulled slantwise across his forehead, almost hiding one eye. His lips, usually so full of laughter, had slipped to a loose and slobbering imbecility. His cheeks were drawn in haggard lines, pulling down the flesh beneath his eyes, which contrasted raw and red with the staring whites. The whole expression was one of blank idiocy, except for a tell-tale glitter of devilish cunning which lurked in the corners of his upturned eyes.

I stared at him in horror. In all his many disguises I had seen him in nothing that had suggested that his face could be distorted to such a hideous caricature of itself. And yet it was hardly a caricature, for it was all but unrecognizable. I believe that no other eyes but mine could have penetrated that mask. It was only his even voice repeating, "This is how he looked at me," that reassured me somewhat.

"But who?" I asked, clutching him.

"Who? The Mad Captain. I was telling you, Tommy."

"Yes, yes," I said eagerly, hoping to pick up the thread of the story as he continued.

My father's face gradually righted itself as he proceeded:

"You see, Tommy, he had left them alone there to die; and that was a terrible thing." His voice was hushed and tense in a way I can't describe, but which held me in a spell of expectation. "And he knew they could never get away. And they had no food, and they would starve. And that's a horrible slow death, Tommy. And if they cried out, no one would hear them. Their voices would be like whispers from the stars."

"Ah," I said, "the treasure," trying to link on to the lost fragment without my father's needing to repeat it, for I knew he hated to return upon his narrative when once well under way. I can see now how necessary it was for him to live in his incident, and repetition spoilt his dramatic flow.

So there we sat together, gazing into the red flames, with the night outside very hushed and secret, far away from the world, with somewhere behind us our baffled pursuer scenting along a false track, and my father in his tense and vivid voice telling an old story of crime and madness and remorse.

"Yes, treasure, Tommy," he answered me. "They were there with the gold and the rubies and the diamonds, trapped in the cave, with twenty tons of rock at its mouth, and with nothing to eat, and hunger gnawing like wolves inside them, and no one to hear them crying day after day; and their voices growing weaker and dryer, just like croaking birds, Tommy, till one by one they dropped down to die. It must have been terrible all alone there, Tommy. Can't you see them, with bruised torn hands, beating at the rock, tugging and beating? And the gold lying quiet there, how it must have said to them, 'Fools! Fools! Fools!' And the last man, Tommy, when the rest were all dead! I think he must have gone mad. Can you see him, groping from body to body, and crying pitifully because they wouldn't move or speak to him; all lying so sad and still and saying not a word? And how he must have sprung away from them and hammered at that rock, and fallen down faint and beaten, and wrung his battered hands, laughing like a madman, pulling at his hair. The last man, all alone, with the treasure and the secret and the dead men; till he grew thin and faint and tired, and lay down with the rest."

"And the Mad Captain?" I asked, thirsting for details.

"Ah, he!"--and my father's face, which had softened, became rightful again, till for very face I crept closer to him, and gripped him convulsively. He went on in his hushed, tense voice: "It was like this he looked at me when he told me the story. For you see, Tommy, he could hear the voices calling to him; and if he shut his ears against them, there were terrible curses screaming inside his head, for he knew he had left them there to die. And in the night he saw them there, growing thinner and whiter and all wasted with hunger. And he counted the days, and said, 'Now they must be dead!' But still he heard them crying to him; most terrible and piteous it was. And he knew they were dead and were following him, and he couldn't hide from them anywhere. And sometimes they screamed at him, and sometimes they laughed; a hollow wicked laughter, he told me, and wondered I couldn't hear it. And then he knew he could never rest again, but must up and away day after day and night after night, with the dead men chasing him and crying to him and mocking his madness. And so he was whipped on from place to place, never resting. For the terrible voices broke into his sleep like a cry of hounds, and the dead faces peered horribly at him through the dark, and the room was always full of moaning and knocking and a shuffling of feet."