He dropped, and slipped knee-deep into the water as he cried, as if to verify his threat, insane one as he knew it to be. The sea was near quiet as a mill-pond, and Rampick had only to pull a couple of indifferent strokes to increase the distance between us by some fathoms. I thought he was going to abandon us altogether and at once, and in an agony hailed him on my own account-- “Mr. Rampick! why don’t you come back? You aren’t going to leave us to drown here!” He leaned forward, always watchful of us, and, groping under the thwarts, fetched up a black bottle, which he uncorked and put to his lips--a rejoicing swill. It gave him nerve and voice. He sagged down, between maudlin and triumphant, and answered, with a hoarse defiant laugh-- “I am, though!” “Mr. Rampick!” I cried, “what have we done to you?” He drank again. Every addition of this fuel made the devil roar in him. “Done!” he yelled. “See _how_ you done--_fur_ yourselves, my hearties! You’d let him out, would you! You’d make the dead walk _to_ testify agen me! I know you. You’ve plotted and schemed agen me from the first, you parson’s whelps--and here’s what it come to. I was on the way to salvation--_till_ you crossed me--once too often. The sands ’ll keep my secret _and_ yourn. Let him out to walk, you will; but not to swim--my God, I had you there--old Jole had you there, my bucks!” He poured down more fire, and howled and drummed his feet in a gloating frenzy. “Had you there!” he shrieked. “You may quicken him out of fire--_out_ of rocks and fire; but you _fur_got as water squenches fire. Thought old Jole crazy, did you--poor old Jole, whose fortunes went out in the spark as him there lighted. And all the time he lay low _to_ get even with you. _Has_ he done it? _Did_ he choose his time crafty? _Did_ any one see us? When your drownded corpses comes in with the tide, who’ll know the truth? Jole--and Jole can keep a secret, once all prying apes is laid _from_ forcing his hand.” He shook to the roaring of his own voice. The reverberating fire in his brain deafened him to any reason, reassurance, protest. We cried to him in our distraction to listen, only to calm himself and listen. Our appeals could not penetrate the pandemonium in that maniac soul. In the midst Joshua, all amazed and at sea as he was, rose to add his entreaties to ours. The effect was disastrous. At the vision of him, strung as if to fly, his coat-tails spread, the madman gripped his oars convulsively. “Lie down!” he screamed. “What’s death to you! I ain’t going to stop! I never could abide the sight of it!” And with the word he was pulling furiously away. We still shrieked to him vainly. We ran up and down the sand. For the moment I felt quite blind and delirious. All was of no avail. Yard by yard the boat drew away into the thickening mist; grew dim and dimmer, a phantom of itself; and, while still the thump of its rowlocks drummed thickly into our ears, vanished and was gone.