“After all, we are kinsmen. I dare say you would give me a bed,” I went on. The second mate was quite close to us then. Carlos looked at me with an expression of affection that a little shamed my lightness of tone: “I love you much more than a kinsman, Juan,” he said. “I wish you could come with me. I try to arrange it. Later, perhaps, I may be dead. I am very ill.” He was undoubtedly ill. Campaigning in Spain, exposure in England in a rainy time, and then the ducking when we came on board, had done him no good. He looked moodily at the sea. “I wish you could come. I will try------” The mate had paused, and was listening quite unaffectedly, behind Carlos’ back. A moment after Carlos half turned and regarded him with a haughty stare. He whistled and walked away. Carlos muttered something that I did not catch about “spies of that pestilent Irishman.” Then: “I will not selfishly take you into any more dangers,” he said. “But life on a sugar plantation is not fit for you.” I felt glad and flattered that a personage so romantic should deem me a fit companion for himself. He went forward as if with some purpose. Some days afterwards the second mate sent for me to his cabin. He had been on the sick list, and he was lying in his bunk, stripped to the waist, one arm and one leg touching the floor. He raised himself slowly when I came in, and spat. He had in a pronounced degree the Nova Scotian peculiarities and accent, and after he had shaved, his face shone like polished leather. “Hallo!” he said. “See heeyur, young Kemp, does your neck just _itch_ to be stretched?” I looked at him with mouth and eyes agape. He spat again, and waved a claw towards the forward bulkhead. “They’ll do it for yeh,” he said. “You’re such a green goose, it makes me sick a bit. You hevn’t reckoned out the chances, not quite. It’s a kind of dead reckoning yeh hevn’t had call to make. Eh?” “What do you mean?” I asked, bewildered. He looked at me, grinning, half naked, with amused contempt, for quite a long time, and at last offered sardonically to open my eyes for me. I said nothing. “Do you know what will happen to you,” he asked, “ef yeh don’t get quit of that Carlos of yours?” I was surprised into muttering that I didn’t know. “I can tell yeh,” he continued. “Yeh will get hanged.” By that time I was too amazed to get angry. I simply suspected the Blue Nose of being drunk. But he glared at me so soberly that next moment I felt frightened. “Hanged by the neck,” he repeated; and then added, “Young fellow, you scoot. Take a fool’s advice, and _scoot_. That Castro is a blame fool, anyhow. Yeh want men for that job. Men, I tell you.” He slapped his bony breast. I had no idea that he could look so ferocious. His eyes fascinated me, and he opened his cavernous mouth as if to swallow me. His lantern jaws snapped without a sound. He seemed to change his mind.