"Depends on me?"
"Give me your hand, if you please." We fumbled until our hands
found one another, and he passed me a nail he had found loose
in a bulkhead.
We had time to conspire for an hour or so. Then the hatch flew open
and a gang of ruffians descended the stairs and took hold of me. These
sailors, I gathered, were particular friends to the quartermaster, so I took
pains to commit their visages to memory. They dragged me to the
captain's cabin, where the quartermaster awaited, threw me in, and shut
the door behind me. Wasting no words, he grabbed me by my hair, threw
me on the bunk, and set to work on me. For the plan to work, I had to bear
the ignominy, for a time, without resistance. Then, near the moment when
he reached his death Poetic, I became the agent of his true demise. I took
the nail from where it was hidden in my cheek, inserted its tip into his ear,
and drove it home with the heel of my hand. I took amusement that the sounds
he made upon the completion of this operation were exactly as those he had
begun to make before it. I rolled him off me and scuttled for the dagger on
the table. Since his hands were at his ears, I stabbed his kidney first;
then when he dropped his hands, I slit his throat. He lay before me jerking, eyes
rolling about, tongue hanging from his mouth.
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