He'm theer, I doubt, wi'
seaweed round en an' sea-maids a cryin' awver his lil white faace an'
keepin' the crabs away. Hell take crabs--they'd a ate Christ 'isself if so
be He'd falled in the water. Pearls--pearls--pearls is on Tom, an' the sea
creatures gives what they can, 'cause they knaw as he'd a grawed to be a
man an' theer master. God bless 'em, they gives the best they can, 'cause
they knawed how us loved en. 'The awnly son o' his mother.' Well, well,
sleep's better'n medicine; but no sleepin' this weather if us wants to make
home again. Steady! 'Tis freshenin' fast!"
He was busy about some matter and she heard him breathing in the darkness
and stirring himself. Thomasin, her heart near standing still before this
awful discovery, hesitated between stopping and flying from the room before
he should discover her. But she felt no fear of the man himself, and
bracing her nerves, struck a light. It showed Gray Michael sitting up and
evidently under the impression he was at sea. He grasped the bed-head as a
tiller and peered anxiously ahead.
"Theer's light shawin' forrard!" he cried. Then he laughed, and Thomasin
saw his face was but the caricature of what it had been, with all the iron
lines blotted out and a strange, feeble expression about eyes and mouth. He
nodded his head, looked up at the ceiling from time to time, and presently
began to sing.
It was the old rhyme he had been trying to recollect, and it now came,
tossed uppermost in the mind-quake which had shattered his intellect,
buried matters of moment, and flung to the surface long hidden events and
words of his youth.
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