Yet, in front of the table, there lay something on which my eyes could not but fasten, the long box, in which I did believe the stolen treasure was. And also by its side were three bags, or sacks, bulging out full of coin--I could see the impress made upon the canvas by the pieces within--and these I did guess had never come out of the wreck we had been fishing on. They were, I thought--and found afterwards that my thoughts were right--spoils from some others than us. The plunder of another foray! But at the time I could do nought but watch the great villain, the creature whom I could not deem aught but mad, or, at least, mad from the drink. His eyes glistening and rolling like a maniac's, he sat in the middle of the table, gibbering and grimacing to either side of him, as if the companions he had named were there; now shouting out a toast, then banging on the table with both his fists, then seizing a can or mug in each of them; next calling out in a deep voice "huzza, huzza," and then altering it to the shrill one of a woman doing the same thing. Next, he would seize the scooper of the liquor tub, and, with clumsy bows to the empty chairs or stools, for such indeed they were, would fill the glasses standing on the table in front of those chairs, though they being already full he did but pour liquor upon liquor until the whole table streamed with it. Then, for variety, he would tear with his fingers a piece of Boucan off, and with solemn gravity lay it on some tin plates near him, saying to the vacant space behind the plate: "Barbara, my sweet, 'tis the choicest piece of the haunch; I beseech of you to taste a little more"; or, "Coleman, my fat buck, take a bit more of your own kind," and so forth. Or he would crumble off a bit of his dirty, frowsy bread, and, with his filthy hands putting of it in his mouth, would say, "The turtles' eggs are at their best now. 'Tis the season. Ha! They are succulent!" Then he would drink a deep draught of the spirits by him, call a toast, and begin his bawlings and clappings again. To see the ruffian sitting there in the half-dim light--for his lamp was none of the best--grimacing and gibbering to vacancy, and addressing people who existed not, was to me a truly awful, nay, a blood-creeping sight! For now I knew what I had before me. I knew that this pirate, this man, whose hands still reeked with the blood of his comrade--one of those whom he had but recently called on them to drink a toast to--was mad with long-continued drinking and p'raps scarce any food since they left the reef; that, indeed, he had the horrors, called by the learned, the "Delirium." Still, all was not yet at its worst, as I found out and you shall see.