Gold in my hand and gold in my brain, McTee!" The Scotchman began to feel more and more that old age or his monomania had shaken White Henshaw's reason, but he said bitterly: "And I suppose, if that voice never fails you and if these South Seas natives can read the future, that you are bound to burn at sea ?" "Damn you!" said Henshaw, terribly moved.

"What devil keeps putting that in your brain?
Isn't it in mine all the day and all the night?
Don't I see hellfire in the dark?
Don't I see the same flames, blue and thin, dancing in the light of the sun at midday?
Is the thing ever out of my mind?
Were you put on this ship to keep dinning the idea into my ears?
If there's something more than the life on earth, then there must be a hell--and if there's a hell, then it's real hellfire that I see!" He paused and pointed a gaunt, trembling arm at McTee: "D'you understand?
The men I've killed before they died--they send their spirits here to walk beside me.

They wait in the dark--and they whisper in my ear!" McTee swallowed hard and commenced to edge toward the door.
"Farley is always hanging around--Farley, as I saw him on the beach that last time in his loincloth, with his pig eyes; sometimes he seems to be begging me to take pity on him; sometimes he seems to be laughing at me.

And he's always got his hand outstretched.

And Collins comes stroking his beard in the way he had, and he keeps his hand stretched out to me.