From this time, during the days I am now dealing with, he continued obstinately silent, a sullen, scowling figure of a man as Bates pictured him, losing flesh as though he fasted, asking for nothing but fresh water to mix his rum with; for nothing but that. The brig had a few books; the mate placed two or three in Rotch’s berth; they were never touched. Thus it was with Captain Samuel Rotch, whom I never once set eyes on after the day when he had been ordered into his berth and locked up by Tom. He was perfectly quiet; I’d sometimes fancy I heard a noise like a muttering, and I’d creep to his door to listen, hoping to hear him babble about Tom in a fit of delirium or out of the liquor which Bates told us he swallowed in quantities. But it was always imagination on my part; his berth was for ever as silent as a coffin. As for Nodder--Mr. Bates waited upon that man for the reason that he waited upon Rotch. Tom distrusted his own temper, and was advised by me and Bates never to go into the forecastle. It was the mate’s own wish to attend upon Nodder; he told me he was gaining a sort of influence over the fellow, who was miserably ill and suffering fearfully from some internal trouble, and who, attempting once at Bates’s suggestion to quit his bunk and come on deck for fresh air, was in such agony when he stood that he fell down in a swoon, and Bates had to put his head through the scuttle and bawl to Will to help him pick the man up and put him into his bunk again. I never can forget Mr. Bates’s kindness at this time. The tears stand in my eyes, and I find myself loving his memory as that of a dear friend when I recall his unwearied anxiety and efforts to get the truth from the two villains. He was a person of a religious cast of mind, and in that, I think, strange as it may seem, lay his influence over Nodder, who seemed fully sensible that he was a dying man, and found a sort of consolation in conversing with the mate. It luckily happened that there were one or two points of sympathy between them. For example, Bates’s mother had been a native of Nodder’s birthplace; he knew the seaport well, and mentioned names, street’s, shops, and the like, with which the man of course was well acquainted. Then the mate had sailed with a man who commanded a ship in which Nodder had made a voyage, and this man was the only person for whom Nodder had a good word. This and much more the mate would tell Tom and me on his return from his forecastle visits. But all the while the villain answered no questions as to my sweetheart’s guilt or innocence. He was too wary to say a word about Rotch, though Bates directly challenged him on one occasion about that point in Collins’s statement, when during the drunken quarrel Nodder had asked the other what had become of the fifty pounds he had promised him.