"Ralph, my good Ralph," said he, after he had seated himself; weeping all the while bitterly, "we will take leave of each other now. We are true brothers in sorrow--our afflictions are the same--you have lost your identity, and I mine. Ever since that cursed night at Aniana, John Reud's soul was loosened from his body; I have the greatest trouble to keep it fixed to my corporeal frame; it goes away, in spite of me, at times, and some other soul gets into this withered carcass, and plays me sad tricks--sad tricks, Rattlin--sad tricks. My identity is gone, and so, poor youth, is yours. We will part friends. These tears are not all for you--they are for myself; too. I do not mind crying before you now, for it is not the true John Reud that is now weeping. You think that I have been a tyrant to you--but, I tell you, Rattlin, there is a tyrant in the ship greater than I--it is that horrible Dr Thompson. He is plotting to take away my commission, and to get me into a madhouse!-- oh, my God!--my God! remove from me this agony. Hath Thine awful storm no thunderbolt--Thy wave no tomb! Must I die on the straw, like a beast of burden worn to death by loathsome toil?--and so many swords to have flashed harmlessly over my head, so many balls to have whistled idly past my body! But, God's will be done! Bear yourself, my dear body, carefully in the presence of all medical men. They have the eye of the fanged adder. You know that your identity also has been questioned; but your fate is happier than mine, for you can hear, see, touch, your double; but mine always eludes me, when I come home, after an excursion, to my own temple. But, if I were you, when I got hold of the thing that says it is, and is _not_, yourself, I would grind it, I would crush it, I would destroy it!" "I will, so may Heaven help me at my utmost need!" "Well said, my boy, well said--because he has no right to get himself flogged, and thus give a wretched world an opportunity of saying that Ralph Rattlin had been brought to the gangway. But do not let this cast you down. You will do well yet--while I--Oh, that I had a son!--I might then escape. God bless you!--I must pray for strength of mind--strength of mind--mark me, strength of mind. Go, my good boy; if misfortunes should overtake you, and they leave me anything better than a dark cell and clanking chains, come and share it with me. Now go (and he wrung my hands bitterly), and tell Doctor Thompson I wish to speak with him, and just hint to him how rationally and pleasantly we have been discoursing together--and remember my parting words--deport yourself warily before the doctors, carefully preserve your identity, and sometimes think on your poor captain." This last interview with Captain Reud, for it was my last, would have made me wretched, had it not been swallowed up by a deeper wretchedness of my own.