‘It was enough to drive his honour clean mad, sir,’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, though there’s little I believes in outside what my senses tells me of, I allow I should feel like jumping overboard if so be on putting out the light I found a piece of adwice wrote upon the dark in letters of fire. But I’ll work his old iron up for that job. There’s something leagues out of the ordinary in that there slush made cove, sir. ’Taint that I hobjects to a man who never looks me in the eye. But there’s something in the appearance of that there Muffin which makes me think that if he could pull his heart out of his breast he’d find it like a piece of rotten ship’s bread, full of weevils and holes.’ ‘The man is pining for the shore,’ said I. ‘The fellow thought to work upon the weak side of my cousin’s intellect. He meant no more, I believe, than to frighten Sir Wilfrid into returning. He remains a very good valet all the same, though we must have him out of this. He will not be the only servant in the world who has procured his or her ends by working on the master’s or mistress’s fears.’ ‘Well, I suppose not, sir,’ said Finn; ‘taking men-servants all round they’re a bad lot. I never yet see one, specially if he wore big calves and had got white hair, but that I felt a longing to have him at sea for a month. By the way, sir, talking of this here Muffin’s mystifying of his honour, what d’ye think, Mr. Monson, sir? Blowed if old Crimp, who I shouldn’t ha’ credited with a single idea outside the tar bucket, hain’t gone and fallen superstitious! When I relieved him at midnight he up and spins a long twister about you and him having heard a woice holloing a curse upon this yacht away out on the starboard quarter somewhere.’ He broke into a low, deep sea laugh, which he endeavoured to check by clapping his hand to his mouth. ‘We heard something,’ said I, ‘that sounded like a voice, and we made out the noise to signify the same thing. It may have been a bird, or some mysterious fish come up to breathe, or some singular sound produced by the yacht herself. No matter what--I have dismissed it from my mind.’