I had not, till that moment, noticed the quarter-master of the watch, a fine old weather-beaten seaman, who stood close to my side, and was, like myself, attentively watching the movements of the strange demon-like merman, who continued to follow the ship within a few fathoms of the lee quarter-gallery, with a continual bowing or nodding motion of the head, which caused his plumes of livid flame to flash and corruscate, so that, to my eyes, they appeared to assume various forms of terror, as of 'fiery flying serpents,' entwining his temples and thence shooting upward, hissing and protruding their forked tongues, and lashing the air with their wings and tails of flame; and then, again, they subsided as before into the form of gracefully-curling ostrich plumes; meanwhile he kept opening his terrific jaws, from which issued a thin blue luminous vapor, as if in act to speak, but uttered no audible sound, except that every now and then he would wring his huge hands, which appeared to be webbed to the second joint of the fingers, like the feet of a water fowl, and furnished with long, crooked nails like an eagle's claws, and utter a wailing shriek so like the cry of a drowning man, that it nearly drove me mad to hear it, and seemed to freeze my very blood in my veins. Whether old Bitts, the quarter-master, had really heard me quote the words of _Trinculo_, or whether, as all things seem to work by supernatural influences in dreams, he had divined my question by intuition, I know not, but he answered me at once. "'No, sir; believe an old sailor, that 'ere critter is neither man nor fish; it is somebody far more terrible-like, and one that few living sailors have ever set eyes on, though, mayhap, I may have seen him before; mayhap, d'ye see, I can't tell when nor where, nor whether it were sleeping or waking; howsomedever, be that as it will, I knows him well enough, for sure that 'ere's old Davy himself--old Davy Jones--he's come for some poor fellow's soul on board this here ship; and if you wants to get rid of him, you'd better go down at once, and call the captain up, that he may tell him to take what he wants and be off; for, till that's done, he'll keep alongside the ship, and if he's kept too long waiting, there's no saying but he may send a hurricane which may sweep the _Old Lucifer_ and all her officers and crew, away down into his locker.' "This hint was no sooner given, than I thought I went down into the captain's cabin, where I found Captain Dure seated at the cabin-table, just under the swinging lamp, as pale as death, and trembling from head to foot like an aspen-leaf. "'Please, sir,' I said, touching my hat, as in duty bound, 'Davy Jones has come alongside, and is waiting for somebody's soul; will you please to come on deck, and tell him to take what he wants?' "'I know it,' said the captain, who seemed utterly unnerved with terror, while the presence of the unearthly visitant seemed to