“Fielding,” he cried, as I stood viewing him from the bottom of the companion ladder, “I can’t read prayers to the men. The devil’s right. He’s put it into my head that I’m too wicked, that I’ve been too great a sinner in the past, and am still altogether too vile to read prayers.” “Do not attempt to do so then,” said I. “I might be struck dead for profanity,” said he. “There’s a feeling here”--he laid his hand upon his heart--“that warns me I shall drop if I open my lips in the recital of a prayer to the men. Look how nervous I am!” he exclaimed, with a wild, hard smile; and approaching me close he extended his hands, which trembled violently, and then, turning up the palms, he disclosed the channels or lines in them wet with perspiration. “Tell the men,” said he, “that I am too ill to read prayers. Next Sunday, perhaps----” He threw himself upon a locker, and hid his face upon the table. I watched him for a few minutes, then, going on deck, beckoned to Bol and told him there would be no prayers that morning. The Dutchman threw a suspicious look at the skylight and walked forward. After this incident anxiety increased upon me until it became indescribably great. I had supposed that the hurt Greaves had done himself, through the connection which exists between the liver and the brain, affected his mind; but now, when he was growing worse, I reckoned he had struck his head as well as his side. Be this as it will, his intellect was giving way, his health every day decaying, and I say that when I grew sensible of this, when I understood that unless he took a turn and mended apace he must die, anxiety made my days bitter. My old fear of the crew revived. That fear had been hushed somewhat by the behavior of the men, but it grew clamorous when I thought of Greaves as dead and buried in the sea, of the treasure of half a million of dollars in the lazarette, of myself as standing alone in the brig, with no man in authority to support me, without even the moral backing of good-will I might have got from the men had I shipped at Amsterdam and formed one of the Tulp party.