"Copper nails, I tell you. Nothing but the best'll do for your friend Coffin." He leaned back, still eyeing me, and tapped me twice on the chest. "You heard me say that? 'Your friend' was my words." "Thank you, sir." "But you made me jump, you did--me being that way given when off the liquor." He hesitated a moment, with a glance over his shoulder at the tulip-painted cupboard. "Brooks," he went on earnestly, "you and me being met on a matter of business, and the same needin' steadiness--head and hand, my boy, if ever business did--what d'ye say to a tot of rum apiece?" Without waiting for my answer, he hobbled off to the cupboard, and had set two glasses on the table and brimmed them with neat spirit before I had finished protesting. The bottle-neck trembled on the rims of the glasses and struck out a sort of chime as he paused. "You won't?" he asked, gulping down his own portion; and the liquor must have been potent, for it brought a sudden water to his eyes. "Well, so be it--if you've kept off it at your age. But at mine"-- he drank off the second glassful and wiped his mouth--"I've had experiences, Brooks. When you've heard 'em, you wouldn't be surprised, not if it took a dozen to steady me." He filled again, and came close to me, holding the glass, yet so tremulously that the rum spilled over his fingers. "Ingots, lad--golden ingots! Bars and wedges of solid gold! Gems, too, and cath-e-deral plate, with crucifixions and priests' vestments stiff with pearls and rubies as if they was frozen. I've seen 'em lyin' tossed in a heap like mullet in a ground-net. Ay, and blazin' on the beach, with the gulls screamin' over 'em and flappin', and the sea all around. I seen it with these eyes, boy" He stood back and shivered. "And behind o' that, the Death! But it comes equal to all, the Death. Not if a man had learned every trick the devil can teach could he lay his course clear o' that. Could he, now?" His words, his uncouth gestures, which were almost spasms, and the changes in his face--from cupidity to terror, and from terror again to a kind of wistful hope--fairly frightened me, and I stammered stupidly that death was the common lot, and there couldn't be a doubt of it; that or something of the sort. But what I said does not matter. He was not listening, and before I had done he drained and set down the glass and gripped my arm again. "I seen all that--ay, an' felt it!" He drew away and stretched out both hands, crooking his fingers like talons. "Ay, an' I seen _him!_" "Him?" I echoed. "But you were talking of Death, sir." "You may call him that. There's men lyin' around in the sand-- Did ever you hear, boy, of a poison that kills a man and keeps him fresh as paint?" "No, sir."