Her'll
burn for a million years or better--all along o' free-traadin'.
Free-traadin'! curse 'em--why doan't they call it smugglin' an' have done?"
Joe Noy had fallen back. He forgot to breathe, then Nature performed the
necessary act, and in a moment of the madman's silence his listener sucked
a long loud breath.
"Oh, my gracious Powers, what's fallen 'pon en?" he groaned aloud.
"God's strong, but the devil's stronger, you mind. Us must pray to the pit
now. 'Our devil which art in hell'--Ha! ha! ha! He hears fast enough, an'
pokes up the black horns of en at the first smell o' prayer. Not but what
my Tom's aloft, in the main-top o' paradise. I seed en pass 'pon a black
wave wi' a gray foamin' crest. An' the white sawl o' my bwoy went mountin'
and mountin' in shape o' a seabird. Men dies hard in salt water, you mind.
It plays wi' 'em like a cat wi' a mouse. But 'tis all wan: 'The Lard is
King an' sitteth 'tween the cherubims,' though the airth's twitchin', same
as a crab bein' boiled alive, all the time."
Noy looked round him wildly and was about to leave the cottage. Then it
struck him that the man's wife and daughter could not be far off. What
blasting catastrophe had robbed him of his mind the sailor knew not; but
once assured of the fact that Michael Tregenza was hopelessly insane, Noy
lent no credit to any of his utterances, and of course failed to dimly
guess at those facts upon which his ravings were based.
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