“I prayed and pleaded with them for the pair to be buried together.  But they were a hard, cold, New England lot, his cousins and his aunts, and they presented Isthar to the museum, and me they gave a week to be quit of the house.  I left in an hour, and they searched my small baggage before they would let me depart.

“I went to New York.  It was the same game there, only that I had more money and could play it properly.  It was the same in New Orleans, in Galveston.  I came to California.  This is my fifth voyage.  I had a hard time getting these three interested, and spent all my little store of money before they signed the agreement.  They were very mean.  Advance any money to me!  The very idea of it was preposterous.  Though I bided my time, ran up a comfortable hotel bill, and, at the very last, ordered my own generous assortment of liquors and cigars and charged the bill to the schooner.  Such a to-do!  All three of them raged and all but tore their hair . . . and mime.  They said it could not be.  I fell promptly sick.  I told them they got on my nerves and made me sick.  The more they raged, the sicker I got.  Then they gave in.  As promptly I grew better.  And here we are, out of water and heading soon most likely for the Marquesas to fill our barrels.  Then they will return and try for it again!”

“You think so, sir?”

“I shall remember even more important data, steward,” the Ancient Mariner smiled.  “Without doubt they will return.  Oh, I know them well.  They are meagre, narrow, grasping fools.”

“Fools! all fools! a ship of fools!” Dag Daughtry exulted; repeating what he had expressed in the hold, as he bored the last barrel, listened to the good water gurgling away into the bilge, and chuckled over his discovery of the Ancient Mariner on the same lay as his own.

CHAPTER XIV

Early next morning, the morning watch of sailors, whose custom was to fetch the day’s supply of water for the galley and cabin, discovered that the barrels were empty.  Mr. Jackson was so alarmed that he immediately called Captain Doane, and not many minutes elapsed ere Captain Doane had routed out Grimshaw and Nishikanta to tell them the disaster.

Breakfast was an excitement shared in peculiarly by the Ancient Mariner and Dag Daughtry, while the trio of partners raged and bewailed.  Captain Doane particularly wailed.  Simon Nishikanta was fiendish in his descriptions of whatever miscreant had done the deed and of how he should be made to suffer for it, while Grimshaw clenched and repeatedly clenched his great hands as if throttling some throat.

“I remember, it was in forty-seven—­nay, forty-six—­yes, forty-six,” the Ancient Mariner chattered.  “It was a similar and worse predicament.  It was in the longboat, sixteen of us.  We ran on Glister Reef.  So named it was after our pretty little craft discovered it one dark night and left her bones upon it.  The reef is on the Admiralty charts.  Captain Doane will verify me . . . "