I now heard a voice. “Give me the glass, Jim.” The man whose head had before appeared showed his face again over the edge of the hammock. “Drink this,” said he, holding up a glass of brandy-and-water. I eagerly made to seize the glass, but could not lift my head, nor even advance my hands the required distance. “Go and bring me the low stool out of my cabin, and bear a hand,” said the man, and a minute later he rose till his head was stooping under the upper deck. He was now able to command the hammock in which I lay, and lifting my head with his arm he put the tumbler to my lips, and I drank with feverish greediness. He then put a plate of sandwiches formed of white loaf bread and thin slices of beef upon the blankets and bade me eat. This I contrived to do unaided. While I ate he dismounted from the stool, gave certain instructions which I did not catch to his companion who, as he did not reach to the height at which the hammock swung, I was unable to see, and then came to the edge of the hammock, and stood viewing me while I slowly munched. I gazed at him intently and sometimes I thought I had seen his face before, and sometimes I believed that he was a perfect stranger to me. He had dark eyes and dark shaggy eyebrows, was smooth shaven and looked about thirty-four years of age, but his fur cap was concealing wear; the hair of it mingled with his own hair and fringed his brow, contracting what had else been visible of the forehead, and it was only when the hammock swung to a heavier roll than usual that I caught a sight of the whole of his face. The brandy-and-water did me a great deal of good. It made me feel as if I could talk. “You’re beginning to look somewhat lifelike now,” said he; “Can you bear being questioned?” “Ay, and to ask questions.” These words I pronounced with some strength of voice. “Well, you’ll forgive me for beginning?” said he, gazing at me fixedly and very gravely. “I want to know what sort of a man I’ve picked up. Were you ever hanged?” The sandwich which I was about to bring to my mouth was arrested midway, as though my arm had been withered. “Half-hanged call it,” said he, continuing to eye me sternly, and yet with a singular expression of curiosity too. “Gibbeted, I mean--triced up--cut down, and then suffered to cut stick on its being discovered that you weren’t choked?” Weak as I was I turned of a deep red; I felt the blood hot and tingling in my cheeks. “You’ll not ask me that question when I have my strength,” said I. “You have been delirious, and nearly all your intelligible talk has been about a gibbet and hanging in chains.” “Ha!” said I. “I had learnt off Margate that a man had been hanged at Deal.” I said “Yes,” and went on eating the sandwich I held.