“Well, Capt’n, it means, first and foremost, just the off-scourings of creation, the very dust and sweepings of the shop,” answered Bludger, who had somehow regained his confidence.  To have a fellow-sufferer, and to see the pallor which, doubtless, overspread my features, was a source of comfort to this hardened man.  At the same time I confess that, if William Bludger alone had been destined to suffer, I could have contemplated the decree with Christian resignation.

“I speak the beggars’ patter pretty well now,” Bludger went on; “and I see Catharmata means more than just mere dirt.  It means two unlucky devils.”

“William?” I exclaimed.

“It means, saving your presence, two poor coves, as has no luck, like you and me, and that can be got rid of once a year, at an entertainment they call the Thargeelyah, I dunno why, a kind o’ friendly lead.  They choose fellows as either behaves ill, or has no friends to make a fuss about them, and they gives them three dozen, or more, and takes them down to the beach, and burns them alive over a slow fire.  And then they toss the ashes out to sea, and think all the bad luck goes away with the tide.  Oh, I never was in such a hole as this!”

Bludger’s words made me shudder.  I had never forgotten the hideous sacrifice, doubtless the Thargeelyah, as they called it, that greeted me when I was first cast ashore on the island.  To think that I had only been saved that I might figure as a victim of some of their heathen gods!

Oh, now the thought came back to me with a bitter repentance, that if I had only converted all the islanders, they would never have dreamed of sacrificing me in honour of a mere idol!  Why had I been so lukewarm, why had I backslidden, why had I endeavoured to make myself agreeable by joining in promiscuous dances, when I should have been thundering against Pagan idolatry, holy water, idols, sacrifices and the whole abominable system of life on the island?  True, I might have goaded them into slaying me; I might have suffered as a martyr; but, at the least, I would have deserved the martyr’s crown.  And now I was to perish at the stake, without even the precious consolation of being a real martyr, and was to be flogged into the bargain.

I gave a hollow groan as these reflections passed through my mind, and this appeared to afford William Bludger some consolation.

“You don’t seem to like it yourself, Capt’n; what’s your advice?  We’re both in the same boat; leastways I wish we were in a boat; anyhow we’re both in the same hole.”

There was no denying this, and it was high time to mature some plan of escape.  Already I must have been missed by my attendants, my gaolers rather, who would have returned from their festival, and would be looking for me everywhere.

I bitterly turned over in my mind the facts of our situation; “ours,” for, as a just punishment of my remissness, I was in the same quandary as a drunken, dissipated sailor before the mast.