"I heard them from the boat, the other night, when I couldn't sleep--heard them as plain as you can hear a dog lapping water.
And it's my opinion there was two of them.

But I heard them as plain as I hear you." As Tom talked, I seemed to hear Ulysses telling of his meeting with Agamemnon in Hades, and those terrible ghosts drinking from the blood-filled trench, and I shuddered in spite of myself; for it is almost impossible entirely to refuse credence to beliefs held with such certitude of terror across so many centuries and by such different people.
"Well, Tom," I remarked, "you may be right, but of one thing I'm certain; if the ghost's going to get any one, it sha'n't be you." "We've both got one good chance against them--" Tom was beginning.
"Don't tell me again about that old sucking fish." "Mind you keep it safe, for all that," said Tom gravely.

"I wouldn't lose mine for a thousand pounds." "Well, all right, but let's forget the damned old ghosts for the present," and I broke out into the catch we had sung on so momentous an occasion-- _Some gave a nickel, some gave a dime; But I didn't give no red cent-- She was no girl of mine-- Delia's gone! Delia's gone!_ And it did one good to hear Tom's honest laughter resounding in that beautiful haunted wilderness, as the song brought back to both of us the memories of that morning which already seemed so long ago.
"I wonder what's become of our friend of 'the wonderful works of God,'" I queried.
"Wherever he is, he's up to no good, we may be sure of that," answered Tom.
At last we decided to try a plan that was really no plan at all; that is to say, to seek more or less at random, till we consumed all our stores except just enough to take us home.

Meanwhile, we would, each of us, every day, cut a sort of radiating swathe, working single-handed, from the cove entrance.

Thus we would prospect as much of the country as possible in a sort of fan, both of us keeping our eyes open for a compass carved on a rock.