“Silver,” said the other man⁠—and I observed he was not only red in the face, but spoke as hoarse as a crow, and his voice shook, too, like a taut rope⁠—“Silver,” says he, “you’re old, and you’re honest, or has the name for it; and you’ve money, too, which lots of poor sailors hasn’t; and you’re brave, or I’m mistook. And will you tell me you’ll let yourself be led away with that kind of a mess of swabs? Not you! As sure as God sees me, I’d sooner lose my hand. If I turn agin my dooty⁠—”

And then all of a sudden he was interrupted by a noise. I had found one of the honest hands⁠—well, here, at that same moment, came news of another. Far away out in the marsh there arose, all of a sudden, a sound like the cry of anger, then another on the back of it, and then one horrid, long-drawn scream. The rocks of the Spy-glass reechoed it a score of times; the whole troop of marsh-birds rose again, darkening heaven with a simultaneous whir; and long after that death-yell was still ringing in my brain, silence had reestablished its empire, and only the rustle of the redescending birds and the boom of the distant surges disturbed the languor of the afternoon.