I tell you it was an odd, intoxicating mixture of the picturesque, the heroic, the romantic for a plain young sailor man like me to put his lips to and drain down. To be sure the influence of the Spanish lady upon me was no more than the influence of bright eyes, of white teeth, of a fine person, of a head of magnificent hair. And what sort of influence would that be, pray? Why, heart alive! Oh! what but a mingling of light with thought, an aroma to haunt all fancy of other things, giving a sparkle to the commonplace, putting foam and sweetness into cups of flatness. Do you who are reading this know how deep, know by the experience of months of weevils, corned horse, and the curses of constipated sailors, how deep is the deep monotony of life on shipboard? If the depth of this monotony be known to you, then will you understand why it should be that the presence, yea, the presence _merely_ of a handsome woman, her glances, the flash of her white teeth, the eloquent hinting by movement and posture at a hidden shape of beauty, should mingle a few threads of gold with the coarse gray, brine-drenched worsted of the sailor’s daily life--of such a daily life as mine; should touch with luster his mechanic habits and trains of thought as the wake of his ship in the night of the tropic ocean is beautified with the fiery seeds and radiant foam-bells of the sea glow. And now I have intelligently and poetically explained why it was that I walked out some time of the remainder of my watch on deck, with my blood in a dance and my spirits singing clearly. But as I paced I grew grave under the shadow of a fancy--not yet to call it fear. Suppose the crew should rise and seize the brig? This was a _notion_ that was fixedly present to Greaves during the outward passage, because he had _known_ when I doubted, that the half million of dollars were in the ship in the cave, and upon that conviction he could base acute realization of what _might_ happen when the money was transhipped. I, on the other hand, had never seriously considered the possibility of piracy. The money must be in the brig before I could solemnly compass all the responsibility its possession implied. But the money was now on board, and six thousand pounds of it were mine, and my spirits fell as I paced the quarter-deck looking around the wide gloom and saying to myself: “Suppose this treasure of half a million of dollars should presently start the men into a determination to seize the brig! There were but two of us--Greaves and I--at our end of the ship. Could we count upon Jimmy? At the other end was now an addition of two Spaniards--cut-throats at heart for all one knew--with knives as thirsty for blood as an English sailor’s throat for rum.”