Concerning The Dead Man Humphrey and How I Saw a Vision in the Moonlight

And behind all these horrors was a haunting knowledge that I was going mad, that this man Humphrey was waiting for me out beyond the surf beckoning to me with flapping arms, and had cast on me a spell whereby, as my brain shrivelled to madness, my body was shrivelling and changing into that of Black Bartlemy. Always I knew that Humphrey waited me beyond the reef, watchful for my coming and growing ever more querulous and eager as the spell wrought on me so that he began to call to me in strange, sobbing voice, hailing me by my new name: "Bartlemy, ahoy! Black Bartlemy--Bartlemy ho! Come your ways to Humphrey, that being dead can die no more and, knowing all, doth know you for Bartlemy crept back from hell. So come, Bartlemy, come and be as I am. And there's others here, proper lads as wants ye too, dead men all--by the rope, by the knife, by the bullet--oho!

There be two at the fore, At the main be three more, Dead men that swing all of a row; Here's fine, dainty meat For the fishes to eat: Black Bartlemy--Bartlemy ho!

There's a fine Spanish dame, Joanna's her name, Must follow wherever ye go; Till your black heart shall feel Your own cursed steel: Black Bartlemy--Bartlemy ho!"

And I, hearkening to this awful sobbing voice, sweating and shivering in the dark, knew that, since I was indeed Black Bartlemy, sooner or later I must go.