Why should I have thought thus? Nothing whatever had happened to put fancies of this sort into my head. Was it not the being able to understand that thirty thousand of the thousands in the lazarette were to be mine that set me reflecting with a sudden dark anxiety, when the question arose: Suppose the crew should rise and take the brig? The needy traveler, serene and gay, Walks the wild heath, and sings his toil away. Does envy seize thee? Crush the unbraiding joy, Increase his riches, and his peace destroy: New fears in dire vicissitude invade, The rustling brake alarms, and quivering shade; Nor light nor darkness brings his pain relief, One shows the plunder, and one hides the thief. There was comfort, however, if not safety in this consideration: not a man forward, from Bol down to Jimmy, had any knowledge of navigation. What, then, would they be able to do with the brig if they seized her? They might spread a chart of the world and say: “Here we are _now_, and there is America, and there are the East Indies, and down there is New Holland, and up there is China, and if we steadily head in one direction, no matter at what point of the compass the bowsprit looks, we are bound to run something down, whether it be a continent or one of the poles.” Well, that is how sailors might talk in a book designed for the young. Before the seamen forward rose and seized this brig, that was now a very valuable bottom, as cargoes then went, they would ask of one another: “What are we going to do with the ship when we have her? Where are we going to carry her, and, having hit on a spot, how are we going to navigate her there?” This I chose to think, and, indeed, I had no doubt of it, and I drew comfort from the conclusion; but all the same, my spirits, having sunk, remained low throughout the rest of my watch. I was uneasy. I caught myself arresting my steps when my walk carried me toward the gangway, whenever I heard the sound of a man’s voice. O God, to think of what a hell of passions this tiny speck of brig was capable of holding! To think of the large and bloody tragedy this minim of the building yards could find a theater for! Never had I so utterly felt human insignificance at sea as I did this night, when I looked over the rail and searched the smoky void of the horizon for the smudge of the island, till, for the relief of my sight, I watched a star. “I’ll tell you what it is, William Fielding,” said I to myself, “your blood is over-heated, your spirits are over-excited. By this picking up to-day of a fortune--a noble fortune to you, my boy--of six thousand pounds, and by the sudden and novel companionship of a dark and splendid lady, the pulses of your body have been set a-hammering too fast. They must sleep, or excitement will make you sick.”