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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man Overboard!, by F(rancis) Marion Crawford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man Overboard!
+
+Author: F(rancis) Marion Crawford
+
+Release Date: February 12, 2008 [EBook #24584]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN OVERBOARD! ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Roberta Staehlin, Grinnell
+College Library and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
+scanned images of public domain material from the Google
+Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    Man Overboard!
+    BY
+    F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+    AUTHOR OF "THE UPPER BERTH," "CECILIA,"
+    "THE WITCH OF PRAGUE," ETC.
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    New York
+    THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+    London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
+    1903
+
+    _All rights reserved_
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1903,
+    BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1903,
+    BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    Set up and electrotyped April, 1903.
+
+    Norwood Press
+    J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+    Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    Portrait of F. Marion Crawford           _Frontispiece_
+
+                                               FACING PAGE
+    "He let go of the knife, and the point
+    stuck into the deck"                               54
+
+    "One of his wet, shiny arms was round
+    Mamie's waist"                                     92
+
+
+
+
+MAN OVERBOARD
+
+
+Yes--I have heard "Man overboard!" a good many times since I was
+a boy, and once or twice I have seen the man go. There are more
+men lost in that way than passengers on ocean steamers ever learn
+of. I have stood looking over the rail on a dark night, when
+there was a step beside me, and something flew past my head like
+a big black bat--and then there was a splash! Stokers often go
+like that. They go mad with the heat, and they slip up on deck
+and are gone before anybody can stop them, often without being
+seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he
+generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason. I have seen a
+man empty his revolver into a crowd of emigrants forward, and
+then go over like a rocket. Of course, any officer who respects
+himself will do what he can to pick a man up, if the weather is
+not so heavy that he would have to risk his ship; but I don't
+think I remember seeing a man come back when he was once fairly
+gone more than two or three times in all my life, though we have
+often picked up the life-buoy, and sometimes the fellow's cap.
+Stokers and passengers jump over; I never knew a sailor to do
+that, drunk or sober. Yes, they say it has happened on hard
+ships, but I never knew a case myself. Once in a long time a man
+is fished out when it is just too late, and dies in the boat
+before you can get him aboard, and--well, I don't know that I
+ever told that story since it happened--I knew a fellow who went
+over, and came back dead. I didn't see him after he came back;
+only one of us did, but we all knew he was there.
+
+No, I am not giving you "sharks." There isn't a shark in this
+story, and I don't know that I would tell it at all if we weren't
+alone, just you and I. But you and I have seen things in various
+parts, and maybe you will understand. Anyhow, you know that I am
+telling what I know about, and nothing else; and it has been on
+my mind to tell you ever since it happened, only there hasn't
+been a chance.
+
+It's a long story, and it took some time to happen; and it began
+a good many years ago, in October, as well as I can remember. I
+was mate then; I passed the local Marine Board for master about
+three years later. She was the _Helen B. Jackson_, of New York,
+with lumber for the West Indies, four-masted schooner, Captain
+Hackstaff. She was an old-fashioned one, even then--no steam
+donkey, and all to do by hand. There were still sailors in the
+coasting trade in those days, you remember. She wasn't a hard
+ship, for the old man was better than most of them, though he
+kept to himself and had a face like a monkey-wrench. We were
+thirteen, all told, in the ship's company; and some of them
+afterwards thought that might have had something to do with it,
+but I had all that nonsense knocked out of me when I was a boy. I
+don't mean to say that I like to go to sea on a Friday, but I
+_have_ gone to sea on a Friday, and nothing has happened; and
+twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands
+didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened
+either--nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two, or a
+little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had sailed as
+cheerily as you please--no thirteens, no Fridays, no dead men in
+the hold. I believe it generally happens that way.
+
+I dare say you remember those two Benton boys that were so much
+alike? It is no wonder, for they were twin brothers. They shipped
+with us as boys on the old _Boston Belle_, when you were mate
+and I was before the mast. I never was quite sure which was which
+of those two, even then; and when they both had beards it was
+harder than ever to tell them apart. One was Jim, and the other
+was Jack; James Benton and John Benton. The only difference I
+ever could see was, that one seemed to be rather more cheerful
+and inclined to talk than the other; but one couldn't even be
+sure of that. Perhaps they had moods. Anyhow, there was one of
+them that used to whistle when he was alone. He only knew one
+tune, and that was "Nancy Lee," and the other didn't know any
+tune at all; but I may be mistaken about that, too. Perhaps they
+both knew it.
+
+Well, those two Benton boys turned up on board the _Helen B.
+Jackson_. They had been on half a dozen ships since the _Boston
+Belle_, and they had grown up and were good seamen. They had
+reddish beards and bright blue eyes and freckled faces; and they
+were quiet fellows, good workmen on rigging, pretty willing, and
+both good men at the wheel. They managed to be in the same
+watch--it was the port watch on the _Helen B._, and that was
+mine, and I had great confidence in them both. If there was any
+job aloft that needed two hands, they were always the first to
+jump into the rigging; but that doesn't often happen on a
+fore-and-aft schooner. If it breezed up, and the jibtopsail was
+to be taken in, they never minded a wetting, and they would be
+out at the bowsprit end before there was a hand at the downhaul.
+The men liked them for that, and because they didn't blow about
+what they could do. I remember one day in a reefing job, the
+downhaul parted and came down on deck from the peak of the
+spanker. When the weather moderated, and we shook the reefs out,
+the downhaul was forgotten until we happened to think we might
+soon need it again. There was some sea on, and the boom was off
+and the gaff was slamming. One of those Benton boys was at the
+wheel, and before I knew what he was doing, the other was out on
+the gaff with the end of the new downhaul, trying to reeve it
+through its block. The one who was steering watched him, and got
+as white as cheese. The other one was swinging about on the gaff
+end, and every time she rolled to leeward he brought up with a
+jerk that would have sent anything but a monkey flying into
+space. But he didn't leave it until he had rove the new rope, and
+he got back all right. I think it was Jack at the wheel; the one
+that seemed more cheerful, the one that whistled "Nancy Lee." He
+had rather have been doing the job himself than watch his brother
+do it, and he had a scared look; but he kept her as steady as he
+could in the swell, and he drew a long breath when Jim had worked
+his way back to the peak-halliard block, and had something to
+hold on to. I think it was Jim.
+
+They had good togs, too, and they were neat and clean men in the
+forecastle. I knew they had nobody belonging to them ashore,--no
+mother, no sisters, and no wives; but somehow they both looked as
+if a woman overhauled them now and then. I remember that they had
+one ditty bag between them, and they had a woman's thimble in it.
+One of the men said something about it to them, and they looked
+at each other; and one smiled, but the other didn't. Most of
+their clothes were alike, but they had one red guernsey between
+them. For some time I used to think it was always the same one
+that wore it, and I thought that might be a way to tell them
+apart. But then I heard one asking the other for it, and saying
+that the other had worn it last. So that was no sign either. The
+cook was a West Indiaman, called James Lawley; his father had
+been hanged for putting lights in cocoanut trees where they
+didn't belong. But he was a good cook, and knew his business; and
+it wasn't soup-and-bully and dog's-body every Sunday. That's
+what I meant to say. On Sunday the cook called both those boys
+Jim, and on week-days he called them Jack. He used to say he must
+be right sometimes if he did that, because even the hands on a
+painted clock point right twice a day.
+
+What started me to trying for some way of telling the Bentons
+apart was this. I heard them talking about a girl. It was at
+night, in our watch, and the wind had headed us off a little
+rather suddenly, and when we had flattened in the jibs, we clewed
+down the topsails, while the two Benton boys got the spanker
+sheet aft. One of them was at the helm. I coiled down the
+mizzen-topsail downhaul myself, and was going aft to see how she
+headed up, when I stopped to look at a light, and leaned against
+the deck-house. While I was standing there I heard the two boys
+talking. It sounded as if they had talked of the same thing
+before, and as far as I could tell, the voice I heard first
+belonged to the one who wasn't quite so cheerful as the
+other,--the one who was Jim when one knew which he was.
+
+"Does Mamie know?" Jim asked.
+
+"Not yet," Jack answered quietly. He was at the wheel. "I mean to
+tell her next time we get home."
+
+"All right."
+
+That was all I heard, because I didn't care to stand there
+listening while they were talking about their own affairs; so I
+went aft to look into the binnacle, and I told the one at the
+wheel to keep her so as long as she had way on her, for I thought
+the wind would back up again before long, and there was land to
+leeward. When he answered, his voice, somehow, didn't sound like
+the cheerful one. Perhaps his brother had relieved the wheel
+while they had been speaking, but what I had heard set me
+wondering which of them it was that had a girl at home. There's
+lots of time for wondering on a schooner in fair weather.
+
+After that I thought I noticed that the two brothers were more
+silent when they were together. Perhaps they guessed that I had
+overheard something that night, and kept quiet when I was about.
+Some men would have amused themselves by trying to chaff them
+separately about the girl at home, and I suppose whichever one it
+was would have let the cat out of the bag if I had done that.
+But, somehow, I didn't like to. Yes, I was thinking of getting
+married myself at that time, so I had a sort of fellow-feeling
+for whichever one it was, that made me not want to chaff him.
+
+They didn't talk much, it seemed to me; but in fair weather, when
+there was nothing to do at night, and one was steering, the other
+was everlastingly hanging round as if he were waiting to relieve
+the wheel, though he might have been enjoying a quiet nap for all
+I cared in such weather. Or else, when one was taking his turn at
+the lookout, the other would be sitting on an anchor beside him.
+One kept near the other, at night more than in the daytime. I
+noticed that. They were fond of sitting on that anchor, and they
+generally tucked away their pipes under it, for the _Helen B._
+was a dry boat in most weather, and like most fore-and-afters was
+better on a wind than going free. With a beam sea we sometimes
+shipped a little water aft. We were by the stern, anyhow, on that
+voyage, and that is one reason why we lost the man.
+
+We fell in with a southerly gale, south-east at first; and then
+the barometer began to fall while you could watch it, and a long
+swell began to come up from the south'ard. A couple of months
+earlier we might have been in for a cyclone, but it's "October
+all over" in those waters, as you know better than I. It was just
+going to blow, and then it was going to rain, that was all; and
+we had plenty of time to make everything snug before it breezed
+up much. It blew harder after sunset, and by the time it was
+quite dark it was a full gale. We had shortened sail for it, but
+as we were by the stern we were carrying the spanker close reefed
+instead of the storm trysail. She steered better so, as long as
+we didn't have to heave to. I had the first watch with the Benton
+boys, and we had not been on deck an hour when a child might have
+seen that the weather meant business.
+
+The old man came up on deck and looked round, and in less than a
+minute he told us to give her the trysail. That meant heaving to,
+and I was glad of it; for though the _Helen B._ was a good vessel
+enough, she wasn't a new ship by a long way, and it did her no
+good to drive her in that weather. I asked whether I should call
+all hands, but just then the cook came aft, and the old man said
+he thought we could manage the job without waking the sleepers,
+and the trysail was handy on deck already, for we hadn't been
+expecting anything better. We were all in oilskins, of course,
+and the night was as black as a coal mine, with only a ray of
+light from the slit in the binnacle shield, and you couldn't tell
+one man from another except by his voice. The old man took the
+wheel; we got the boom amidships, and he jammed her into the wind
+until she had hardly any way. It was blowing now, and it was all
+that I and two others could do to get in the slack of the
+downhaul, while the others lowered away at the peak and throat,
+and we had our hands full to get a couple of turns round the wet
+sail. It's all child's play on a fore-and-after compared with
+reefing topsails in anything like weather, but the gear of a
+schooner sometimes does unhandy things that you don't expect, and
+those everlasting long halliards get foul of everything if they
+get adrift. I remember thinking how unhandy that particular job
+was. Somebody unhooked the throat-halliard block, and thought he
+had hooked it into the head-cringle of the trysail, and sang out
+to hoist away, but he had missed it in the dark, and the heavy
+block went flying into the lee rigging, and nearly killed him
+when it swung back with the weather roll. Then the old man got
+her up in the wind until the jib was shaking like thunder; then
+he held her off, and she went off as soon as the head-sails
+filled, and he couldn't get her back again without the spanker.
+Then the _Helen B._ did her favourite trick, and before we had
+time to say much we had a sea over the quarter and were up to our
+waists, with the parrels of the trysail only half becketed round
+the mast, and the deck so full of gear that you couldn't put your
+foot on a plank, and the spanker beginning to get adrift again,
+being badly stopped, and the general confusion and hell's delight
+that you can only have on a fore-and-after when there's nothing
+really serious the matter. Of course, I don't mean to say that
+the old man couldn't have steered his trick as well as you or I
+or any other seaman; but I don't believe he had ever been on
+board the _Helen B._ before, or had his hand on her wheel till
+then; and he didn't know her ways. I don't mean to say that what
+happened was his fault. I don't know whose fault it was. Perhaps
+nobody was to blame. But I knew something happened somewhere on
+board when we shipped that sea, and you'll never get it out of my
+head. I hadn't any spare time myself, for I was becketing the
+rest of the trysail to the mast. We were on the starboard tack,
+and the throat-halliard came down to port as usual, and I suppose
+there were at least three men at it, hoisting away, while I was
+at the beckets.
+
+Now I am going to tell you something. You have known me, man and
+boy, several voyages; and you are older than I am; and you have
+always been a good friend to me. Now, do you think I am the sort
+of man to think I hear things where there isn't anything to hear,
+or to think I see things when there is nothing to see? No, you
+don't. Thank you. Well now, I had passed the last becket, and I
+sang out to the men to sway away, and I was standing on the jaws
+of the spanker-gaff, with my left hand on the bolt-rope of the
+trysail, so that I could feel when it was board-taut, and I
+wasn't thinking of anything except being glad the job was over,
+and that we were going to heave her to. It was as black as a
+coal-pocket, except that you could see the streaks on the seas as
+they went by, and abaft the deck-house I could see the ray of
+light from the binnacle on the captain's yellow oilskin as he
+stood at the wheel--or rather I might have seen it if I had
+looked round at that minute. But I didn't look round. I heard a
+man whistling. It was "Nancy Lee," and I could have sworn that
+the man was right over my head in the crosstrees. Only somehow I
+knew very well that if anybody could have been up there, and
+could have whistled a tune, there were no living ears sharp
+enough to hear it on deck then. I heard it distinctly, and at the
+same time I heard the real whistling of the wind in the weather
+rigging, sharp and clear as the steam-whistle on a Dago's
+peanut-cart in New York. That was all right, that was as it
+should be; but the other wasn't right; and I felt queer and
+stiff, as if I couldn't move, and my hair was curling against the
+flannel lining of my sou'wester, and I thought somebody had
+dropped a lump of ice down my back.
+
+I said that the noise of the wind in the rigging was real, as if
+the other wasn't, for I felt that it wasn't, though I heard it.
+But it was, all the same; for the captain heard it, too. When I
+came to relieve the wheel, while the men were clearing up decks,
+he was swearing. He was a quiet man, and I hadn't heard him swear
+before, and I don't think I did again, though several queer
+things happened after that. Perhaps he said all he had to say
+then; I don't see how he could have said anything more. I used to
+think nobody could swear like a Dane, except a Neapolitan or a
+South American; but when I had heard the old man I changed my
+mind. There's nothing afloat or ashore that can beat one of your
+quiet American skippers, if he gets off on that tack. I didn't
+need to ask him what was the matter, for I knew he had heard
+"Nancy Lee," as I had, only it affected us differently.
+
+He did not give me the wheel, but told me to go forward and get
+the second bonnet off the staysail, so as to keep her up better.
+As we tailed on to the sheet when it was done, the man next me
+knocked his sou'wester off against my shoulder, and his face came
+so close to me that I could see it in the dark. It must have been
+very white for me to see it, but I only thought of that
+afterwards. I don't see how any light could have fallen upon it,
+but I knew it was one of the Benton boys. I don't know what made
+me speak to him. "Hullo, Jim! Is that you?" I asked. I don't know
+why I said Jim, rather than Jack.
+
+"I am Jack," he answered. We made all fast, and things were much
+quieter.
+
+"The old man heard you whistling 'Nancy Lee,' just now," I said,
+"and he didn't like it."
+
+It was as if there were a white light inside his face, and it was
+ghastly. I know his teeth chattered. But he didn't say anything,
+and the next minute he was somewhere in the dark trying to find
+his sou'wester at the foot of the mast.
+
+When all was quiet, and she was hove to, coming to and falling
+off her four points as regularly as a pendulum, and the helm
+lashed a little to the lee, the old man turned in again, and I
+managed to light a pipe in the lee of the deck-house, for there
+was nothing more to be done till the gale chose to moderate, and
+the ship was as easy as a baby in its cradle. Of course the cook
+had gone below, as he might have done an hour earlier; so there
+were supposed to be four of us in the watch. There was a man at
+the lookout, and there was a hand by the wheel, though there was
+no steering to be done, and I was having my pipe in the lee of
+the deck-house, and the fourth man was somewhere about decks,
+probably having a smoke too. I thought some skippers I had sailed
+with would have called the watch aft, and given them a drink
+after that job, but it wasn't cold, and I guessed that our old
+man wouldn't be particularly generous in that way. My hands and
+feet were red-hot, and it would be time enough to get into dry
+clothes when it was my watch below; so I stayed where I was, and
+smoked. But by and by, things being so quiet, I began to wonder
+why nobody moved on deck; just that sort of restless wanting to
+know where every man is that one sometimes feels in a gale of
+wind on a dark night. So when I had finished my pipe I began to
+move about. I went aft, and there was a man leaning over the
+wheel, with his legs apart and both hands hanging down in the
+light from the binnacle, and his sou'wester over his eyes. Then
+I went forward, and there was a man at the lookout, with his back
+against the foremast, getting what shelter he could from the
+staysail. I knew by his small height that he was not one of the
+Benton boys. Then I went round by the weather side, and poked
+about in the dark, for I began to wonder where the other man was.
+But I couldn't find him, though I searched the decks until I got
+right aft again. It was certainly one of the Benton boys that was
+missing, but it wasn't like either of them to go below to change
+his clothes in such warm weather. The man at the wheel was the
+other, of course. I spoke to him.
+
+"Jim, what's become of your brother?"
+
+"I am Jack, sir."
+
+"Well, then, Jack, where's Jim? He's not on deck."
+
+"I don't know, sir."
+
+When I had come up to him he had stood up from force of instinct,
+and had laid his hands on the spokes as if he were steering,
+though the wheel was lashed; but he still bent his face down, and
+it was half hidden by the edge of his sou'wester, while he seemed
+to be staring at the compass. He spoke in a very low voice, but
+that was natural, for the captain had left his door open when he
+turned in, as it was a warm night in spite of the storm, and
+there was no fear of shipping any more water now.
+
+"What put it into your head to whistle like that, Jack? You've
+been at sea long enough to know better."
+
+He said something, but I couldn't hear the words; it sounded as
+if he were denying the charge.
+
+"Somebody whistled," I said.
+
+He didn't answer, and then, I don't know why, perhaps because the
+old man hadn't given us a drink, I cut half an inch off the plug
+of tobacco I had in my oilskin pocket, and gave it to him. He
+knew my tobacco was good, and he shoved it into his mouth with a
+word of thanks. I was on the weather side of the wheel.
+
+"Go forward and see if you can find Jim," I said.
+
+He started a little, and then stepped back and passed behind me,
+and was going along the weather side. Maybe his silence about the
+whistling had irritated me, and his taking it for granted that
+because we were hove to and it was a dark night, he might go
+forward any way he pleased. Anyhow, I stopped him, though I spoke
+good-naturedly enough.
+
+"Pass to leeward, Jack," I said.
+
+He didn't answer, but crossed the deck between the binnacle and
+the deck-house to the lee side. She was only falling off and
+coming to, and riding the big seas as easily as possible, but the
+man was not steady on his feet and reeled against the corner of
+the deck-house and then against the lee rail. I was quite sure he
+couldn't have had anything to drink, for neither of the brothers
+were the kind to hide rum from their shipmates, if they had any,
+and the only spirits that were aboard were locked up in the
+captain's cabin. I wondered whether he had been hit by the
+throat-halliard block and was hurt.
+
+I left the wheel and went after him, but when I got to the corner
+of the deck-house I saw that he was on a full run forward, so I
+went back. I watched the compass for a while, to see how far she
+went off, and she must have come to again half a dozen times
+before I heard voices, more than three or four, forward; and then
+I heard the little West Indies cook's voice, high and shrill
+above the rest:--
+
+"Man overboard!"
+
+There wasn't anything to be done, with the ship hove-to and the
+wheel lashed. If there was a man overboard, he must be in the
+water right alongside. I couldn't imagine how it could have
+happened, but I ran forward instinctively. I came upon the cook
+first, half-dressed in his shirt and trousers, just as he had
+tumbled out of his bunk. He was jumping into the main rigging,
+evidently hoping to see the man, as if any one could have seen
+anything on such a night, except the foam-streaks on the black
+water, and now and then the curl of a breaking sea as it went
+away to leeward. Several of the men were peering over the rail
+into the dark. I caught the cook by the foot, and asked who was
+gone.
+
+"It's Jim Benton," he shouted down to me. "He's not aboard this
+ship!"
+
+There was no doubt about that. Jim Benton was gone; and I knew in
+a flash that he had been taken off by that sea when we were
+setting the storm trysail. It was nearly half an hour since then;
+she had run like wild for a few minutes until we got her hove-to,
+and no swimmer that ever swam could have lived as long as that in
+such a sea. The men knew it as well as I, but still they stared
+into the foam as if they had any chance of seeing the lost man. I
+let the cook get into the rigging and joined the men, and asked
+if they had made a thorough search on board, though I knew they
+had and that it could not take long, for he wasn't on deck, and
+there was only the forecastle below.
+
+"That sea took him over, sir, as sure as you're born," said one
+of the men close beside me.
+
+We had no boat that could have lived in that sea, of course, and
+we all knew it. I offered to put one over, and let her drift
+astern two or three cable's-lengths by a line, if the men thought
+they could haul me aboard again; but none of them would listen to
+that, and I should probably have been drowned if I had tried it,
+even with a life-belt; for it was a breaking sea. Besides, they
+all knew as well as I did that the man could not be right in our
+wake. I don't know why I spoke again. "Jack Benton, are you
+there? Will you go if I will?"
+
+"No, sir," answered a voice; and that was all.
+
+By that time the old man was on deck, and I felt his hand on my
+shoulder rather roughly, as if he meant to shake me.
+
+"I'd reckoned you had more sense, Mr. Torkeldsen," he said. "God
+knows I would risk my ship to look for him, if it were any use;
+but he must have gone half an hour ago."
+
+He was a quiet man, and the men knew he was right, and that they
+had seen the last of Jim Benton when they were bending the
+trysail--if anybody had seen him then. The captain went below
+again, and for some time the men stood around Jack, quite near
+him, without saying anything, as sailors do when they are sorry
+for a man and can't help him; and then the watch below turned in
+again, and we were three on deck.
+
+Nobody can understand that there can be much consolation in a
+funeral, unless he has felt that blank feeling there is when a
+man's gone overboard whom everybody likes. I suppose landsmen
+think it would be easier if they didn't have to bury their
+fathers and mothers and friends; but it wouldn't be. Somehow the
+funeral keeps up the idea of something beyond. You may believe in
+that something just the same; but a man who has gone in the dark,
+between two seas, without a cry, seems much more beyond reach
+than if he were still lying on his bed, and had only just stopped
+breathing. Perhaps Jim Benton knew that, and wanted to come back
+to us. I don't know, and I am only telling you what happened, and
+you may think what you like.
+
+Jack stuck by the wheel that night until the watch was over. I
+don't know whether he slept afterwards, but when I came on deck
+four hours later, there he was again, in his oilskins, with his
+sou'wester over his eyes, staring into the binnacle. We saw that
+he would rather stand there, and we left him alone. Perhaps it
+was some consolation to him to get that ray of light when
+everything was so dark. It began to rain, too, as it can when a
+southerly gale is going to break up, and we got every bucket and
+tub on board, and set them under the booms to catch the fresh
+water for washing our clothes. The rain made it very thick, and I
+went and stood under the lee of the staysail, looking out. I
+could tell that day was breaking, because the foam was whiter in
+the dark where the seas crested, and little by little the black
+rain grew grey and steamy, and I couldn't see the red glare of
+the port light on the water when she went off and rolled to
+leeward. The gale had moderated considerably, and in another hour
+we should be under way again. I was still standing there when
+Jack Benton came forward. He stood still a few minutes near me.
+The rain came down in a solid sheet, and I could see his wet
+beard and a corner of his cheek, too, grey in the dawn. Then he
+stooped down and began feeling under the anchor for his pipe. We
+had hardly shipped any water forward, and I suppose he had some
+way of tucking the pipe in, so that the rain hadn't floated it
+off. Presently he got on his legs again, and I saw that he had
+two pipes in his hand. One of them had belonged to his brother,
+and after looking at them a moment I suppose he recognised his
+own, for he put it in his mouth, dripping with water. Then he
+looked at the other fully a minute without moving. When he had
+made up his mind, I suppose, he quietly chucked it over the lee
+rail, without even looking round to see whether I was watching
+him. I thought it was a pity, for it was a good wooden pipe, with
+a nickel ferrule, and somebody would have been glad to have it.
+But I didn't like to make any remark, for he had a right to do
+what he pleased with what had belonged to his dead brother. He
+blew the water out of his own pipe, and dried it against his
+jacket, putting his hand inside his oilskin; he filled it,
+standing under the lee of the foremast, got a light after wasting
+two or three matches, and turned the pipe upside down in his
+teeth, to keep the rain out of the bowl. I don't know why I
+noticed everything he did, and remember it now; but somehow I
+felt sorry for him, and I kept wondering whether there was
+anything I could say that would make him feel better. But I
+didn't think of anything, and as it was broad daylight I went aft
+again, for I guessed that the old man would turn out before long
+and order the spanker set and the helm up. But he didn't turn out
+before seven bells, just as the clouds broke and showed blue sky
+to leeward--"the Frenchman's barometer," you used to call it.
+
+Some people don't seem to be so dead, when they are dead, as
+others are. Jim Benton was like that. He had been on my watch,
+and I couldn't get used to the idea that he wasn't about decks
+with me. I was always expecting to see him, and his brother was
+so exactly like him that I often felt as if I did see him and
+forgot he was dead, and made the mistake of calling Jack by his
+name; though I tried not to, because I knew it must hurt. If ever
+Jack had been the cheerful one of the two, as I had always
+supposed he had been, he had changed very much, for he grew to be
+more silent than Jim had ever been.
+
+One fine afternoon I was sitting on the main-hatch, overhauling
+the clock-work of the taffrail-log, which hadn't been registering
+very well of late, and I had got the cook to bring me a
+coffee-cup to hold the small screws as I took them out, and a
+saucer for the sperm-oil I was going to use. I noticed that he
+didn't go away, but hung round without exactly watching what I
+was doing, as if he wanted to say something to me. I thought if
+it were worth much he would say it anyhow, so I didn't ask him
+questions; and sure enough he began of his own accord before
+long. There was nobody on deck but the man at the wheel, and the
+other man away forward.
+
+"Mr. Torkeldsen," the cook began, and then stopped.
+
+I supposed he was going to ask me to let the watch break out a
+barrel of flour, or some salt horse.
+
+"Well, doctor?" I asked, as he didn't go on.
+
+"Well, Mr. Torkeldsen," he answered, "I somehow want to ask you
+whether you think I am giving satisfaction on this ship, or not?"
+
+"So far as I know, you are, doctor. I haven't heard any
+complaints from the forecastle, and the captain has said nothing,
+and I think you know your business, and the cabin-boy is bursting
+out of his clothes. That looks as if you are giving satisfaction.
+What makes you think you are not?"
+
+I am not good at giving you that West Indies talk, and sha'n't
+try; but the doctor beat about the bush awhile, and then he told
+me he thought the men were beginning to play tricks on him, and
+he didn't like it, and thought he hadn't deserved it, and would
+like his discharge at our next port. I told him he was a d----d
+fool, of course, to begin with; and that men were more apt to try
+a joke with a chap they liked than with anybody they wanted to
+get rid of; unless it was a bad joke, like flooding his bunk, or
+filling his boots with tar. But it wasn't that kind of practical
+joke. The doctor said that the men were trying to frighten him,
+and he didn't like it, and that they put things in his way that
+frightened him. So I told him he was a d----d fool to be
+frightened, anyway, and I wanted to know what things they put in
+his way. He gave me a queer answer. He said they were spoons and
+forks, and odd plates, and a cup now and then, and such things.
+
+I set down the taffrail-log on the bit of canvas I had put under
+it, and looked at the doctor. He was uneasy, and his eyes had a
+sort of hunted look, and his yellow face looked grey. He wasn't
+trying to make trouble. He was in trouble. So I asked him
+questions.
+
+He said he could count as well as anybody, and do sums without
+using his fingers, but that when he couldn't count any other way
+he did use his fingers, and it always came out the same. He said
+that when he and the cabin-boy cleared up after the men's meals
+there were more things to wash than he had given out. There'd be
+a fork more, or there'd be a spoon more, and sometimes there'd be
+a spoon and a fork, and there was always a plate more. It wasn't
+that he complained of that. Before poor Jim Benton was lost they
+had a man more to feed, and his gear to wash up after meals, and
+that was in the contract, the doctor said. It would have been if
+there were twenty in the ship's company; but he didn't think it
+was right for the men to play tricks like that. He kept his
+things in good order, and he counted them, and he was responsible
+for them, and it wasn't right that the men should take more
+things than they needed when his back was turned, and just soil
+them and mix them up with their own, so as to make him think--
+
+He stopped there, and looked at me, and I looked at him. I didn't
+know what he thought, but I began to guess. I wasn't going to
+humour any such nonsense as that, so I told him to speak to the
+men himself, and not come bothering me about such things.
+
+"Count the plates and forks and spoons before them when they sit
+down to table, and tell them that's all they'll get; and when
+they have finished, count the things again, and if the count
+isn't right, find out who did it. You know it must be one of
+them. You're not a green hand; you've been going to sea ten or
+eleven years, and don't want any lesson about how to behave if
+the boys play a trick on you."
+
+"If I could catch him," said the cook, "I'd have a knife into him
+before he could say his prayers."
+
+Those West India men are always talking about knives, especially
+when they are badly frightened. I knew what he meant, and didn't
+ask him, but went on cleaning the brass cogwheels of the patent
+log and oiling the bearings with a feather. "Wouldn't it be
+better to wash it out with boiling water, sir?" asked the cook,
+in an insinuating tone. He knew that he had made a fool of
+himself, and was anxious to make it right again.
+
+I heard no more about the odd platter and gear for two or three
+days, though I thought about his story a good deal. The doctor
+evidently believed that Jim Benton had come back, though he
+didn't quite like to say so. His story had sounded silly enough
+on a bright afternoon, in fair weather, when the sun was on the
+water, and every rag was drawing in the breeze, and the sea
+looked as pleasant and harmless as a cat that has just eaten a
+canary. But when it was toward the end of the first watch, and
+the waning moon had not risen yet, and the water was like still
+oil, and the jibs hung down flat and helpless like the wings of a
+dead bird--it wasn't the same then. More than once I have started
+then, and looked round when a fish jumped, expecting to see a
+face sticking up out of the water with its eyes shut. I think we
+all felt something like that at the time.
+
+One afternoon we were putting a fresh service on the
+jib-sheet-pennant. It wasn't my watch, but I was standing by
+looking on. Just then Jack Benton came up from below, and went to
+look for his pipe under the anchor. His face was hard and drawn,
+and his eyes were cold like steel balls. He hardly ever spoke
+now, but he did his duty as usual, and nobody had to complain of
+him, though we were all beginning to wonder how long his grief
+for his dead brother was going to last like that. I watched him
+as he crouched down, and ran his hand into the hiding-place for
+the pipe. When he stood up, he had two pipes in his hand.
+
+Now, I remembered very well seeing him throw one of those pipes
+away, early in the morning after the gale; and it came to me now,
+and I didn't suppose he kept a stock of them under the anchor. I
+caught sight of his face, and it was greenish white, like the
+foam on shallow water, and he stood a long time looking at the
+two pipes. He wasn't looking to see which was his, for I wasn't
+five yards from him as he stood, and one of those pipes had been
+smoked that day, and was shiny where his hand had rubbed it, and
+the bone mouthpiece was chafed white where his teeth had bitten
+it. The other was water-logged. It was swelled and cracking with
+wet, and it looked to me as if there were a little green weed on
+it.
+
+Jack Benton turned his head rather stealthily as I looked away,
+and then he hid the thing in his trousers pocket, and went aft on
+the lee side, out of sight. The men had got the sheet pennant on
+a stretch to serve it, but I ducked under it and stood where I
+could see what Jack did, just under the fore-staysail. He
+couldn't see me, and he was looking about for something. His hand
+shook as he picked up a bit of half-bent iron rod, about a foot
+long, that had been used for turning an eye-bolt, and had been
+left on the main-hatch. His hand shook as he got a piece of
+marline out of his pocket, and made the water-logged pipe fast to
+the iron. He didn't mean it to get adrift, either, for he took
+his turns carefully, and hove them taut and then rode them, so
+that they couldn't slip, and made the end fast with two
+half-hitches round the iron, and hitched it back on itself. Then
+he tried it with his hands, and looked up and down the deck
+furtively, and then quietly dropped the pipe and iron over the
+rail, so that I didn't even hear the splash. If anybody was
+playing tricks on board, they weren't meant for the cook.
+
+I asked some questions about Jack Benton, and one of the men told
+me that he was off his feed, and hardly ate anything, and
+swallowed all the coffee he could lay his hands on, and had used
+up all his own tobacco and had begun on what his brother had
+left.
+
+"The doctor says it ain't so, sir," said the man, looking at me
+shyly, as if he didn't expect to be believed; "the doctor says
+there's as much eaten from breakfast to breakfast as there was
+before Jim fell overboard, though there's a mouth less and
+another that eats nothing. I says it's the cabin-boy that gets
+it. He's bu'sting."
+
+I told him that if the cabin-boy ate more than his share, he must
+work more than his share, so as to balance things. But the man
+laughed queerly, and looked at me again.
+
+"I only said that, sir, just like that. We all know it ain't so."
+
+"Well, how is it?"
+
+"How is it?" asked the man, half-angry all at once. "I don't know
+how it is, but there's a hand on board that's getting his whack
+along with us as regular as the bells."
+
+"Does he use tobacco?" I asked, meaning to laugh it out of him,
+but as I spoke I remembered the water-logged pipe.
+
+"I guess he's using his own still," the man answered, in a queer,
+low voice. "Perhaps he'll take some one else's when his is all
+gone."
+
+It was about nine o'clock in the morning, I remember, for just
+then the captain called to me to stand by the chronometer while
+he took his fore observation. Captain Hackstaff wasn't one of
+those old skippers who do everything themselves with a pocket
+watch, and keep the key of the chronometer in their waistcoat
+pocket, and won't tell the mate how far the dead reckoning is
+out. He was rather the other way, and I was glad of it, for he
+generally let me work the sights he took, and just ran his eye
+over my figures afterwards. I am bound to say his eye was pretty
+good, for he would pick out a mistake in a logarithm, or tell me
+that I had worked the "Equation of Time" with the wrong sign,
+before it seemed to me that he could have got as far as "half the
+sum, minus the altitude." He was always right, too, and besides
+he knew a lot about iron ships and local deviation, and adjusting
+the compass, and all that sort of thing. I don't know how he came
+to be in command of a fore-and-aft schooner. He never talked
+about himself, and maybe he had just been mate on one of those
+big steel square-riggers, and something had put him back. Perhaps
+he had been captain, and had got his ship aground, through no
+particular fault of his, and had to begin over again. Sometimes
+he talked just like you and me, and sometimes he would speak more
+like books do, or some of those Boston people I have heard. I
+don't know. We have all been shipmates now and then with men who
+have seen better days. Perhaps he had been in the Navy, but what
+makes me think he couldn't have been, was that he was a thorough
+good seaman, a regular old wind-jammer, and understood sail,
+which those Navy chaps rarely do. Why, you and I have sailed with
+men before the mast who had their master's certificates in their
+pockets,--English Board of Trade certificates, too,--who could
+work a double altitude if you would lend them a sextant and give
+them a look at the chronometer, as well as many a man who
+commands a big square-rigger. Navigation ain't everything, nor
+seamanship, either. You've got to have it in you, if you mean to
+get there.
+
+I don't know how our captain heard that there was trouble
+forward. The cabin-boy may have told him, or the men may have
+talked outside his door when they relieved the wheel at night.
+Anyhow, he got wind of it, and when he had got his sight that
+morning he had all hands aft, and gave them a lecture. It was
+just the kind of talk you might have expected from him. He said
+he hadn't any complaint to make, and that so far as he knew
+everybody on board was doing his duty, and that he was given to
+understand that the men got their whack, and were satisfied. He
+said his ship was never a hard ship, and that he liked quiet, and
+that was the reason he didn't mean to have any nonsense, and the
+men might just as well understand that, too. We'd had a great
+misfortune, he said, and it was nobody's fault. We had lost a
+man we all liked and respected, and he felt that everybody in the
+ship ought to be sorry for the man's brother, who was left
+behind, and that it was rotten lubberly childishness, and unjust
+and unmanly and cowardly, to be playing schoolboy tricks with
+forks and spoons and pipes, and that sort of gear. He said it had
+got to stop right now, and that was all, and the men might go
+forward. And so they did.
+
+It got worse after that, and the men watched the cook, and the
+cook watched the men, as if they were trying to catch each other;
+but I think everybody felt that there was something else. One
+evening, at supper-time, I was on deck, and Jack came aft to
+relieve the wheel while the man who was steering got his supper.
+He hadn't got past the main-hatch on the lee side, when I heard a
+man running in slippers that slapped on the deck, and there was a
+sort of a yell and I saw the coloured cook going for Jack, with
+a carving-knife in his hand. I jumped to get between them, and
+Jack turned round short, and put out his hand. I was too far to
+reach them, and the cook jabbed out with his knife. But the blade
+didn't get anywhere near Benton. The cook seemed to be jabbing it
+into the air again and again, at least four feet short of the
+mark. Then he dropped his right hand, and I saw the whites of his
+eyes in the dusk, and he reeled up against the pin-rail, and
+caught hold of a belaying-pin with his left. I had reached him by
+that time, and grabbed hold of his knife-hand and the other too,
+for I thought he was going to use the pin; but Jack Benton was
+standing staring stupidly at him, as if he didn't understand. But
+instead, the cook was holding on because he couldn't stand, and
+his teeth were chattering, and he let go of the knife, and the
+point stuck into the deck.
+
+"He's crazy!" said Jack Benton, and that was all he said; and he
+went aft.
+
+[Illustration: HE LET GO OF THE KNIFE, AND THE POINT STUCK INTO
+THE DECK.]
+
+When he was gone, the cook began to come to, and he spoke quite
+low, near my ear.
+
+"There were two of them! So help me God, there were two of them!"
+
+I don't know why I didn't take him by the collar, and give him a
+good shaking; but I didn't. I just picked up the knife and gave
+it to him, and told him to go back to his galley, and not to make
+a fool of himself. You see, he hadn't struck at Jack, but at
+something he thought he saw, and I knew what it was, and I felt
+that same thing, like a lump of ice sliding down my back, that I
+felt that night when we were bending the trysail.
+
+When the men had seen him running aft, they jumped up after him,
+but they held off when they saw that I had caught him. By and by,
+the man who had spoken to me before told me what had happened. He
+was a stocky little chap, with a red head.
+
+"Well," he said, "there isn't much to tell. Jack Benton had been
+eating his supper with the rest of us. He always sits at the
+after corner of the table, on the port side. His brother used to
+sit at the end, next him. The doctor gave him a thundering big
+piece of pie to finish up with, and when he had finished he
+didn't stop for a smoke, but went off quick to relieve the wheel.
+Just as he had gone, the doctor came in from the galley, and when
+he saw Jack's empty plate he stood stock still staring at it; and
+we all wondered what was the matter, till we looked at the plate.
+There were two forks in it, sir, lying side by side. Then the
+doctor grabbed his knife, and flew up through the hatch like a
+rocket. The other fork was there all right, Mr. Torkeldsen, for
+we all saw it and handled it; and we all had our own. That's all
+I know."
+
+I didn't feel that I wanted to laugh when he told me that story;
+but I hoped the old man wouldn't hear it, for I knew he wouldn't
+believe it, and no captain that ever sailed likes to have
+stories like that going round about his ship. It gives her a bad
+name. But that was all anybody ever saw except the cook, and he
+isn't the first man who has thought he saw things without having
+any drink in him. I think, if the doctor had been weak in the
+head as he was afterwards, he might have done something foolish
+again, and there might have been serious trouble. But he didn't.
+Only, two or three times I saw him looking at Jack Benton in a
+queer, scared way, and once I heard him talking to himself.
+
+"There's two of them! So help me God, there's two of them!"
+
+He didn't say anything more about asking for his discharge, but I
+knew well enough that if he got ashore at the next port we should
+never see him again, if he had to leave his kit behind him, and
+his money, too. He was scared all through, for good and all; and
+he wouldn't be right again till he got another ship. It's no use
+to talk to a man when he gets like that, any more than it is to
+send a boy to the main truck when he has lost his nerve.
+
+Jack Benton never spoke of what happened that evening. I don't
+know whether he knew about the two forks, or not; or whether he
+understood what the trouble was. Whatever he knew from the other
+men, he was evidently living under a hard strain. He was quiet
+enough, and too quiet; but his face was set, and sometimes it
+twitched oddly when he was at the wheel, and he would turn his
+head round sharp to look behind him. A man doesn't do that
+naturally, unless there's a vessel that he thinks is creeping up
+on the quarter. When that happens, if the man at the wheel takes
+a pride in his ship, he will almost always keep glancing over his
+shoulder to see whether the other fellow is gaining. But Jack
+Benton used to look round when there was nothing there; and what
+is curious, the other men seemed to catch the trick when they
+were steering. One day the old man turned out just as the man at
+the wheel looked behind him.
+
+"What are you looking at?" asked the captain.
+
+"Nothing, sir," answered the man.
+
+"Then keep your eye on the mizzen-royal," said the old man, as if
+he were forgetting that we weren't a square-rigger.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said the man.
+
+The captain told me to go below and work up the latitude from the
+dead-reckoning, and he went forward of the deck-house and sat
+down to read, as he often did. When I came up, the man at the
+wheel was looking round again, and I stood beside him and just
+asked him quietly what everybody was looking at, for it was
+getting to be a general habit. He wouldn't say anything at first,
+but just answered that it was nothing. But when he saw that I
+didn't seem to care, and just stood there as if there were
+nothing more to be said, he naturally began to talk.
+
+He said that it wasn't that he saw anything, because there wasn't
+anything to see except the spanker sheet just straining a little, and
+working in the sheaves of the blocks as the schooner rose to the short
+seas. There wasn't anything to be seen, but it seemed to him that the
+sheet made a queer noise in the blocks. It was a new manilla sheet; and
+in dry weather it did make a little noise, something between a creak and
+a wheeze. I looked at it and looked at the man, and said nothing; and
+presently he went on. He asked me if I didn't notice anything peculiar
+about the noise. I listened awhile, and said I didn't notice anything.
+Then he looked rather sheepish, but said he didn't think it could be his
+own ears, because every man who steered his trick heard the same thing
+now and then,--sometimes once in a day, sometimes once in a night,
+sometimes it would go on a whole hour.
+
+"It sounds like sawing wood," I said, just like that.
+
+"To us it sounds a good deal more like a man whistling 'Nancy
+Lee.'" He started nervously as he spoke the last words. "There,
+sir, don't you hear it?" he asked suddenly.
+
+I heard nothing but the creaking of the manilla sheet. It
+was getting near noon, and fine, clear weather in southern
+waters,--just the sort of day and the time when you would least
+expect to feel creepy. But I remembered how I had heard that same
+tune overhead at night in a gale of wind a fortnight earlier,
+and I am not ashamed to say that the same sensation came over
+me now, and I wished myself well out of the _Helen B._, and
+aboard of any old cargo-dragger, with a windmill on deck, and an
+eighty-nine-forty-eighter for captain, and a fresh leak whenever
+it breezed up.
+
+Little by little during the next few days life on board that
+vessel came to be about as unbearable as you can imagine. It
+wasn't that there was much talk, for I think the men were shy
+even of speaking to each other freely about what they thought.
+The whole ship's company grew silent, until one hardly ever heard
+a voice, except giving an order and the answer. The men didn't
+sit over their meals when their watch was below, but either
+turned in at once or sat about on the forecastle smoking their
+pipes without saying a word. We were all thinking of the same
+thing. We all felt as if there were a hand on board, sometimes
+below, sometimes about decks, sometimes aloft, sometimes on the
+boom end; taking his full share of what the others got, but doing
+no work for it. We didn't only feel it, we knew it. He took up no
+room, he cast no shadow, and we never heard his footfall on deck;
+but he took his whack with the rest as regular as the bells,
+and--he whistled "Nancy Lee." It was like the worst sort of dream
+you can imagine; and I dare say a good many of us tried to
+believe it was nothing else sometimes, when we stood looking over
+the weather rail in fine weather with the breeze in our faces;
+but if we happened to turn round and look into each other's eyes,
+we knew it was something worse than any dream could be; and we
+would turn away from each other with a queer, sick feeling,
+wishing that we could just for once see somebody who didn't know
+what we knew.
+
+There's not much more to tell about the _Helen B. Jackson_ so far
+as I am concerned. We were more like a shipload of lunatics than
+anything else when we ran in under Morro Castle, and anchored in
+Havana. The cook had brain fever, and was raving mad in his
+delirium; and the rest of the men weren't far from the same
+state. The last three or four days had been awful, and we had
+been as near to having a mutiny on board as I ever want to be.
+The men didn't want to hurt anybody; but they wanted to get away
+out of that ship, if they had to swim for it; to get away from
+that whistling, from that dead shipmate who had come back, and
+who filled the ship with his unseen self. I know that if the old
+man and I hadn't kept a sharp lookout the men would have put a
+boat over quietly on one of those calm nights, and pulled away,
+leaving the captain and me and the mad cook to work the schooner
+into harbour. We should have done it somehow, of course, for we
+hadn't far to run if we could get a breeze; and once or twice I
+found myself wishing that the crew were really gone, for the
+awful state of fright in which they lived was beginning to work
+on me too. You see I partly believed and partly didn't; but
+anyhow I didn't mean to let the thing get the better of me,
+whatever it was. I turned crusty, too, and kept the men at work
+on all sorts of jobs, and drove them to it until they wished I
+was overboard, too. It wasn't that the old man and I were trying
+to drive them to desert without their pay, as I am sorry to say
+a good many skippers and mates do, even now. Captain Hackstaff
+was as straight as a string, and I didn't mean those poor fellows
+should be cheated out of a single cent; and I didn't blame them
+for wanting to leave the ship, but it seemed to me that the only
+chance to keep everybody sane through those last days was to work
+the men till they dropped. When they were dead tired they slept a
+little, and forgot the thing until they had to tumble up on deck
+and face it again. That was a good many years ago. Do you believe
+that I can't hear "Nancy Lee" now, without feeling cold down my
+back? For I heard it too, now and then, after the man had
+explained why he was always looking over his shoulder. Perhaps it
+was imagination. I don't know. When I look back it seems to me
+that I only remember a long fight against something I couldn't
+see, against an appalling presence, against something worse than
+cholera or Yellow Jack or the plague--and goodness knows the
+mildest of them is bad enough when it breaks out at sea. The men
+got as white as chalk, and wouldn't go about decks alone at
+night, no matter what I said to them. With the cook raving in
+his bunk the forecastle would have been a perfect hell, and
+there wasn't a spare cabin on board. There never is on a
+fore-and-after. So I put him into mine, and he was more quiet
+there, and at last fell into a sort of stupor as if he were going
+to die. I don't know what became of him, for we put him ashore
+alive and left him in the hospital.
+
+The men came aft in a body, quiet enough, and asked the captain
+if he wouldn't pay them off, and let them go ashore. Some men
+wouldn't have done it, for they had shipped for the voyage, and
+had signed articles. But the captain knew that when sailors get
+an idea into their heads they're no better than children; and if
+he forced them to stay aboard he wouldn't get much work out of
+them, and couldn't rely on them in a difficulty. So he paid them
+off, and let them go. When they had gone forward to get their
+kits, he asked me whether I wanted to go too, and for a minute I
+had a sort of weak feeling that I might just as well. But I
+didn't, and he was a good friend to me afterwards. Perhaps he was
+grateful to me for sticking to him.
+
+When the men went off he didn't come on deck; but it was my duty
+to stand by while they left the ship. They owed me a grudge for
+making them work during the last few days, and most of them
+dropped into the boat without so much as a word or a look, as
+sailors will. Jack Benton was the last to go over the side, and
+he stood still a minute and looked at me, and his white face
+twitched. I thought he wanted to say something.
+
+"Take care of yourself, Jack," said I. "So long!"
+
+It seemed as if he couldn't speak for two or three seconds; then
+his words came thick.
+
+"It wasn't my fault, Mr. Torkeldsen. I swear it wasn't my fault!"
+
+That was all; and he dropped over the side, leaving me to wonder
+what he meant.
+
+The captain and I stayed on board, and the ship-chandler got a
+West India boy to cook for us.
+
+That evening, before turning in, we were standing by the rail
+having a quiet smoke, watching the lights of the city, a quarter
+of a mile off, reflected in the still water. There was music of
+some sort ashore, in a sailors' dance-house, I dare say; and I
+had no doubt that most of the men who had left the ship were
+there, and already full of jiggy-jiggy. The music played a lot of
+sailors' tunes that ran into each other, and we could hear the
+men's voices in the chorus now and then. One followed another,
+and then it was "Nancy Lee," loud and clear, and the men singing
+"Yo-ho, heave-ho!"
+
+"I have no ear for music," said Captain Hackstaff, "but it
+appears to me that's the tune that man was whistling the night we
+lost the man overboard. I don't know why it has stuck in my head,
+and of course it's all nonsense; but it seems to me that I have
+heard it all the rest of the trip."
+
+I didn't say anything to that, but I wondered just how much the
+old man had understood. Then we turned in, and I slept ten hours
+without opening my eyes.
+
+I stuck to the _Helen B. Jackson_ after that as long as I could
+stand a fore-and-after; but that night when we lay in Havana was
+the last time I ever heard "Nancy Lee" on board of her. The spare
+hand had gone ashore with the rest, and he never came back, and
+he took his tune with him; but all those things are just as clear
+in my memory as if they had happened yesterday.
+
+After that I was in deep water for a year or more, and after I
+came home I got my certificate, and what with having friends and
+having saved a little money, and having had a small legacy from
+an uncle in Norway, I got the command of a coastwise vessel, with
+a small share in her. I was at home three weeks before going to
+sea, and Jack Benton saw my name in the local papers, and wrote
+to me.
+
+He said that he had left the sea, and was trying farming, and he
+was going to be married, and he asked if I wouldn't come over for
+that, for it wasn't more than forty minutes by train; and he and
+Mamie would be proud to have me at the wedding. I remembered how
+I had heard one brother ask the other whether Mamie knew. That
+meant, whether she knew he wanted to marry her, I suppose. She
+had taken her time about it, for it was pretty nearly three years
+then since we had lost Jim Benton overboard.
+
+I had nothing particular to do while we were getting ready for
+sea; nothing to prevent me from going over for a day, I mean;
+and I thought I'd like to see Jack Benton, and have a look at the
+girl he was going to marry. I wondered whether he had grown
+cheerful again, and had got rid of that drawn look he had when he
+told me it wasn't his fault. How could it have been his fault,
+anyhow? So I wrote to Jack that I would come down and see him
+married; and when the day came I took the train, and got there
+about ten o'clock in the morning. I wish I hadn't. Jack met me at
+the station, and he told me that the wedding was to be late in
+the afternoon, and that they weren't going off on any silly
+wedding trip, he and Mamie, but were just going to walk home from
+her mother's house to his cottage. That was good enough for him,
+he said. I looked at him hard for a minute after we met. When we
+had parted I had a sort of idea that he might take to drink, but
+he hadn't. He looked very respectable and well-to-do in his black
+coat and high city collar; but he was thinner and bonier than
+when I had known him, and there were lines in his face, and I
+thought his eyes had a queer look in them, half shifty, half
+scared. He needn't have been afraid of me, for I didn't mean to
+talk to his bride about the _Helen B. Jackson_.
+
+He took me to his cottage first, and I could see that he was
+proud of it. It wasn't above a cable's-length from high-water
+mark, but the tide was running out, and there was already a broad
+stretch of hard wet sand on the other side of the beach road.
+Jack's bit of land ran back behind the cottage about a quarter of
+a mile, and he said that some of the trees we saw were his. The
+fences were neat and well kept, and there was a fair-sized barn a
+little way from the cottage, and I saw some nice-looking cattle
+in the meadows; but it didn't look to me to be much of a farm,
+and I thought that before long Jack would have to leave his wife
+to take care of it, and go to sea again. But I said it was a nice
+farm, so as to seem pleasant, and as I don't know much about
+these things I dare say it was, all the same. I never saw it but
+that once. Jack told me that he and his brother had been born in
+the cottage, and that when their father and mother died they
+leased the land to Mamie's father, but had kept the cottage to
+live in when they came home from sea for a spell. It was as neat
+a little place as you would care to see: the floors as clean as
+the decks of a yacht, and the paint as fresh as a man-o'-war.
+Jack always was a good painter. There was a nice parlour on the
+ground floor, and Jack had papered it and had hung the walls with
+photographs of ships and foreign ports, and with things he had
+brought home from his voyages: a boomerang, a South Sea club,
+Japanese straw hats and a Gibraltar fan with a bull-fight on it,
+and all that sort of gear. It looked to me as if Miss Mamie had
+taken a hand in arranging it. There was a bran-new polished iron
+Franklin stove set into the old fireplace, and a red table-cloth
+from Alexandria, embroidered with those outlandish Egyptian
+letters. It was all as bright and homelike as possible, and he
+showed me everything, and was proud of everything, and I liked
+him the better for it. But I wished that his voice would sound
+more cheerful, as it did when we first sailed in the _Helen B._,
+and that the drawn look would go out of his face for a minute.
+Jack showed me everything, and took me upstairs, and it was all
+the same: bright and fresh and ready for the bride. But on the
+upper landing there was a door that Jack didn't open. When we
+came out of the bedroom I noticed that it was ajar, and Jack shut
+it quickly and turned the key.
+
+"That lock's no good," he said, half to himself. "The door is
+always open."
+
+I didn't pay much attention to what he said, but as we went down
+the short stairs, freshly painted and varnished so that I was
+almost afraid to step on them, he spoke again.
+
+"That was his room, sir. I have made a sort of store-room of it."
+
+"You may be wanting it in a year or so," I said, wishing to be
+pleasant.
+
+"I guess we won't use his room for that," Jack answered in a low
+voice.
+
+Then he offered me a cigar from a fresh box in the parlour, and
+he took one, and we lit them, and went out; and as we opened the
+front door there was Mamie Brewster standing in the path as if
+she were waiting for us. She was a fine-looking girl, and I
+didn't wonder that Jack had been willing to wait three years for
+her. I could see that she hadn't been brought up on steam-heat
+and cold storage, but had grown into a woman by the sea-shore.
+She had brown eyes, and fine brown hair, and a good figure.
+
+"This is Captain Torkeldsen," said Jack. "This is Miss Brewster,
+captain; and she is glad to see you."
+
+"Well, I am," said Miss Mamie, "for Jack has often talked to us
+about you, captain."
+
+She put out her hand, and took mine and shook it heartily, and I
+suppose I said something, but I know I didn't say much.
+
+The front door of the cottage looked toward the sea, and there
+was a straight path leading to the gate on the beach road. There
+was another path from the steps of the cottage that turned to the
+right, broad enough for two people to walk easily, and it led
+straight across the fields through gates to a larger house about
+a quarter of a mile away. That was where Mamie's mother lived,
+and the wedding was to be there. Jack asked me whether I would
+like to look round the farm before dinner, but I told him I
+didn't know much about farms. Then he said he just wanted to look
+round himself a bit, as he mightn't have much more chance that
+day; and he smiled, and Mamie laughed.
+
+"Show the captain the way to the house, Mamie," he said. "I'll
+be along in a minute."
+
+So Mamie and I began to walk along the path, and Jack went up
+toward the barn.
+
+"It was sweet of you to come, captain," Miss Mamie began, "for I
+have always wanted to see you."
+
+"Yes," I said, expecting something more.
+
+"You see, I always knew them both," she went on. "They used to
+take me out in a dory to catch codfish when I was a little girl,
+and I liked them both," she added thoughtfully. "Jack doesn't
+care to talk about his brother now. That's natural. But you won't
+mind telling me how it happened, will you? I should so much like
+to know."
+
+Well, I told her about the voyage and what happened that night
+when we fell in with a gale of wind, and that it hadn't been
+anybody's fault, for I wasn't going to admit that it was my old
+captain's, if it was. But I didn't tell her anything about what
+happened afterwards. As she didn't speak, I just went on talking
+about the two brothers, and how like they had been, and how when
+poor Jim was drowned and Jack was left, I took Jack for him. I
+told her that none of us had ever been sure which was which.
+
+"I wasn't always sure myself," she said, "unless they were
+together. Leastways, not for a day or two after they came home
+from sea. And now it seems to me that Jack is more like poor Jim,
+as I remember him, than he ever was, for Jim was always more
+quiet, as if he were thinking."
+
+I told her I thought so, too. We passed the gate and went into
+the next field, walking side by side. Then she turned her head to
+look for Jack, but he wasn't in sight. I sha'n't forget what she
+said next.
+
+"Are you sure now?" she asked.
+
+I stood stock-still, and she went on a step, and then turned and
+looked at me. We must have looked at each other while you could
+count five or six.
+
+"I know it's silly," she went on, "it's silly, and it's awful,
+too, and I have got no right to think it, but sometimes I can't
+help it. You see it was always Jack I meant to marry."
+
+"Yes," I said stupidly, "I suppose so."
+
+She waited a minute, and began walking on slowly before she went
+on again.
+
+"I am talking to you as if you were an old friend, captain, and I
+have only known you five minutes. It was Jack I meant to marry,
+but now he is so like the other one."
+
+When a woman gets a wrong idea into her head, there is only one
+way to make her tired of it, and that is to agree with her.
+That's what I did, and she went on talking the same way for a
+little while, and I kept on agreeing and agreeing until she
+turned round on me.
+
+"You know you don't believe what you say," she said, and
+laughed. "You know that Jack is Jack, right enough; and it's Jack
+I am going to marry."
+
+Of course I said so, for I didn't care whether she thought me a
+weak creature or not. I wasn't going to say a word that could
+interfere with her happiness, and I didn't intend to go back on
+Jack Benton; but I remembered what he had said when he left the
+ship in Havana: that it wasn't his fault.
+
+"All the same," Miss Mamie went on, as a woman will, without
+realising what she was saying, "all the same, I wish I had seen
+it happen. Then I should know."
+
+Next minute she knew that she didn't mean that, and was afraid
+that I would think her heartless, and began to explain that she
+would really rather have died herself than have seen poor Jim go
+overboard. Women haven't got much sense, anyhow. All the same, I
+wondered how she could marry Jack if she had a doubt that he
+might be Jim after all. I suppose she had really got used to him
+since he had given up the sea and had stayed ashore, and she
+cared for him.
+
+Before long we heard Jack coming up behind us, for we had walked
+very slowly to wait for him.
+
+"Promise not to tell anybody what I said, captain," said Mamie,
+as girls do as soon as they have told their secrets.
+
+Anyhow, I know I never did tell any one but you. This is the
+first time I have talked of all that, the first time since I took
+the train from that place. I am not going to tell you all about
+the day. Miss Mamie introduced me to her mother, who was a quiet,
+hard-faced old New England farmer's widow, and to her cousins and
+relations; and there were plenty of them too at dinner, and there
+was the parson besides. He was what they call a Hard-shell
+Baptist in those parts, with a long, shaven upper lip and a
+whacking appetite, and a sort of superior look, as if he didn't
+expect to see many of us hereafter--the way a New York pilot
+looks round, and orders things about when he boards an Italian
+cargo-dragger, as if the ship weren't up to much anyway, though
+it was his business to see that she didn't get aground. That's
+the way a good many parsons look, I think. He said grace as if he
+were ordering the men to sheet home the topgallant-sail and get
+the helm up. After dinner we went out on the piazza, for it was
+warm autumn weather; and the young folks went off in pairs along
+the beach road, and the tide had turned and was beginning to come
+in. The morning had been clear and fine, but by four o'clock it
+began to look like a fog, and the damp came up out of the sea and
+settled on everything. Jack said he'd go down to his cottage and
+have a last look, for the wedding was to be at five o'clock, or
+soon after, and he wanted to light the lights, so as to have
+things look cheerful.
+
+"I will just take a last look," he said again, as we reached the
+house. We went in, and he offered me another cigar, and I lit it
+and sat down in the parlour. I could hear him moving about, first
+in the kitchen and then upstairs, and then I heard him in the
+kitchen again; and then before I knew anything I heard somebody
+moving upstairs again. I knew he couldn't have got up those
+stairs as quick as that. He came into the parlour, and he took a
+cigar himself, and while he was lighting it I heard those steps
+again overhead. His hand shook, and he dropped the match.
+
+"Have you got in somebody to help?" I asked.
+
+"No," Jack answered sharply, and struck another match.
+
+"There's somebody upstairs, Jack," I said. "Don't you hear
+footsteps?"
+
+"It's the wind, captain," Jack answered; but I could see he was
+trembling.
+
+"That isn't any wind, Jack," I said; "it's still and foggy. I'm
+sure there's somebody upstairs."
+
+"If you are so sure of it, you'd better go and see for yourself,
+captain," Jack answered, almost angrily.
+
+He was angry because he was frightened. I left him before the
+fireplace, and went upstairs. There was no power on earth that
+could make me believe I hadn't heard a man's footsteps overhead.
+I knew there was somebody there. But there wasn't. I went into
+the bedroom, and it was all quiet, and the evening light was
+streaming in, reddish through the foggy air; and I went out on
+the landing and looked in the little back room that was meant for
+a servant girl or a child. And as I came back again I saw that
+the door of the other room was wide open, though I knew Jack had
+locked it. He had said the lock was no good. I looked in. It was
+a room as big as the bedroom, but almost dark, for it had
+shutters, and they were closed. There was a musty smell, as of
+old gear, and I could make out that the floor was littered with
+sea chests, and that there were oilskins and stuff piled on the
+bed. But I still believed that there was somebody upstairs, and I
+went in and struck a match and looked round. I could see the four
+walls and the shabby old paper, an iron bed and a cracked
+looking-glass, and the stuff on the floor. But there was nobody
+there. So I put out the match, and came out and shut the door and
+turned the key. Now, what I am telling you is the truth. When I
+had turned the key, I heard footsteps walking away from the door
+inside the room. Then I felt queer for a minute, and when I went
+downstairs I looked behind me, as the men at the wheel used to
+look behind them on board the _Helen B._
+
+Jack was already outside on the steps, smoking. I have an idea
+that he didn't like to stay inside alone.
+
+"Well?" he asked, trying to seem careless.
+
+"I didn't find anybody," I answered, "but I heard somebody moving
+about." "I told you it was the wind," said Jack, contemptuously.
+"I ought to know, for I live here, and I hear it often."
+
+There was nothing to be said to that, so we began to walk down
+toward the beach. Jack said there wasn't any hurry, as it would
+take Miss Mamie some time to dress for the wedding. So we
+strolled along, and the sun was setting through the fog, and the
+tide was coming in. I knew the moon was full, and that when she
+rose the fog would roll away from the land, as it does sometimes.
+I felt that Jack didn't like my having heard that noise, so I
+talked of other things, and asked him about his prospects, and
+before long we were chatting as pleasantly as possible.
+
+I haven't been at many weddings in my life, and I don't suppose
+you have, but that one seemed to me to be all right until it was
+pretty near over; and then, I don't know whether it was part of
+the ceremony or not, but Jack put out his hand and took Mamie's
+and held it a minute, and looked at her, while the parson was
+still speaking.
+
+Mamie turned as white as a sheet and screamed. It wasn't a loud
+scream, but just a sort of stifled little shriek, as if she were
+half frightened to death; and the parson stopped, and asked her
+what was the matter, and the family gathered round.
+
+"Your hand's like ice," said Mamie to Jack, "and it's all wet!"
+
+She kept looking at it, as she got hold of herself again.
+
+"It don't feel cold to me," said Jack, and he held the back of
+his hand against his cheek. "Try it again."
+
+Mamie held out hers, and touched the back of his hand, timidly at
+first, and then took hold of it.
+
+"Why, that's funny," she said.
+
+"She's been as nervous as a witch all day," said Mrs. Brewster,
+severely.
+
+"It is natural," said the parson, "that young Mrs. Benton should
+experience a little agitation at such a moment."
+
+Most of the bride's relations lived at a distance, and were busy
+people, so it had been arranged that the dinner we'd had in the
+middle of the day was to take the place of a dinner afterwards,
+and that we should just have a bite after the wedding was over,
+and then that everybody should go home, and the young couple
+would walk down to the cottage by themselves. When I looked out I
+could see the light burning brightly in Jack's cottage, a quarter
+of a mile away. I said I didn't think I could get any train to
+take me back before half-past nine, but Mrs. Brewster begged me
+to stay until it was time, as she said her daughter would want to
+take off her wedding dress before she went home; for she had put
+on something white with a wreath, that was very pretty, and she
+couldn't walk home like that, could she?
+
+So when we had all had a little supper the party began to break
+up, and when they were all gone Mrs. Brewster and Mamie went
+upstairs, and Jack and I went out on the piazza, to have a
+smoke, as the old lady didn't like tobacco in the house.
+
+The full moon had risen now, and it was behind me as I looked
+down toward Jack's cottage, so that everything was clear and
+white, and there was only the light burning in the window. The
+fog had rolled down to the water's edge, and a little beyond, for
+the tide was high, or nearly, and was lapping up over the last
+reach of sand, within fifty feet of the beach road.
+
+Jack didn't say much as we sat smoking, but he thanked me for
+coming to his wedding, and I told him I hoped he would be happy;
+and so I did. I dare say both of us were thinking of those
+footsteps upstairs, just then, and that the house wouldn't seem
+so lonely with a woman in it. By and by we heard Mamie's voice
+talking to her mother on the stairs, and in a minute she was
+ready to go. She had put on again the dress she had worn in the
+morning, and it looked black at night, almost as black as Jack's
+coat.
+
+Well, they were ready to go now. It was all very quiet after the
+day's excitement, and I knew they would like to walk down that
+path alone now that they were man and wife at last. I bade them
+good-night, although Jack made a show of pressing me to go with
+them by the path as far as the cottage, instead of going to the
+station by the beach road. It was all very quiet, and it seemed
+to me a sensible way of getting married; and when Mamie kissed
+her mother good-night I just looked the other way, and knocked my
+ashes over the rail of the piazza. So they started down the
+straight path to Jack's cottage, and I waited a minute with Mrs.
+Brewster, looking after them, before taking my hat to go. They
+walked side by side, a little shyly at first, and then I saw Jack
+put his arm round her waist. As I looked he was on her left, and
+I saw the outline of the two figures very distinctly against the
+moonlight on the path; and the shadow on Mamie's right was broad
+and black as ink, and it moved along, lengthening and shortening
+with the unevenness of the ground beside the path.
+
+I thanked Mrs. Brewster, and bade her good-night; and though she
+was a hard New England woman her voice trembled a little as she
+answered, but being a sensible person she went in and shut the
+door behind her as I stepped out on the path. I looked after the
+couple in the distance a last time, meaning to go down to the
+road, so as not to overtake them; but when I had made a few steps
+I stopped and looked again, for I knew I had seen something
+queer, though I had only realised it afterwards. I looked again,
+and it was plain enough now; and I stood stock-still, staring at
+what I saw. Mamie was walking between two men. The second man was
+just the same height as Jack, both being about a half a head
+taller than she; Jack on her left in his black tail-coat and
+round hat, and the other man on her right--well, he was a
+sailor-man in wet oilskins. I could see the moonlight shining on
+the water that ran down him, and on the little puddle that had
+settled where the flap of his sou'wester was turned up behind:
+and one of his wet, shiny arms was round Mamie's waist, just
+above Jack's. I was fast to the spot where I stood, and for a
+minute I thought I was crazy. We'd had nothing but some cider for
+dinner, and tea in the evening, otherwise I'd have thought
+something had got into my head, though I was never drunk in my
+life. It was more like a bad dream after that.
+
+I was glad Mrs. Brewster had gone in. As for me, I couldn't help
+following the three, in a sort of wonder to see what would
+happen, to see whether the sailor-man in his wet togs would just
+melt away into the moonshine. But he didn't.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF HIS WET, SHINY ARMS WAS ROUND MAMIE'S WAIST.]
+
+I moved slowly, and I remembered afterwards that I walked on the
+grass, instead of on the path, as if I were afraid they might
+hear me coming. I suppose it all happened in less than five
+minutes after that, but it seemed as if it must have taken an
+hour. Neither Jack nor Mamie seemed to notice the sailor. She
+didn't seem to know that his wet arm was round her, and little by
+little they got near the cottage, and I wasn't a hundred yards
+from them when they reached the door. Something made me stand
+still then. Perhaps it was fright, for I saw everything that
+happened just as I see you now.
+
+Mamie set her foot on the step to go up, and as she went forward
+I saw the sailor slowly lock his arm in Jack's, and Jack didn't
+move to go up. Then Mamie turned round on the step, and they all
+three stood that way for a second or two. She cried out then,--I
+heard a man cry like that once, when his arm was taken off by a
+steam-crane,--and she fell back in a heap on the little piazza.
+
+I tried to jump forward, but I couldn't move, and I felt my hair
+rising under my hat. The sailor turned slowly where he stood, and
+swung Jack round by the arm steadily and easily, and began to
+walk him down the pathway from the house. He walked him straight
+down that path, as steadily as Fate; and all the time I saw the
+moonlight shining on his wet oilskins. He walked him through the
+gate, and across the beach road, and out upon the wet sand, where
+the tide was high. Then I got my breath with a gulp, and ran for
+them across the grass, and vaulted over the fence, and stumbled
+across the road. But when I felt the sand under my feet, the two
+were at the water's edge; and when I reached the water they were
+far out, and up to their waists; and I saw that Jack Benton's
+head had fallen forward on his breast, and his free arm hung limp
+beside him, while his dead brother steadily marched him to his
+death. The moonlight was on the dark water, but the fog-bank was
+white beyond, and I saw them against it; and they went slowly and
+steadily down. The water was up to their armpits, and then up to
+their shoulders, and then I saw it rise up to the black rim of
+Jack's hat. But they never wavered; and the two heads went
+straight on, straight on, till they were under, and there was
+just a ripple in the moonlight where Jack had been.
+
+It has been on my mind to tell you that story, whenever I got a
+chance. You have known me, man and boy, a good many years; and I
+thought I would like to hear your opinion. Yes, that's what I
+always thought. It wasn't Jim that went overboard; it was Jack,
+and Jim just let him go when he might have saved him; and then
+Jim passed himself off for Jack with us, and with the girl. If
+that's what happened, he got what he deserved. People said the
+next day that Mamie found it out as they reached the house, and
+that her husband just walked out into the sea, and drowned
+himself; and they would have blamed me for not stopping him if
+they'd known that I was there. But I never told what I had seen,
+for they wouldn't have believed me. I just let them think I had
+come too late.
+
+When I reached the cottage and lifted Mamie up, she was raving
+mad. She got better afterwards, but she was never right in her
+head again.
+
+Oh, you want to know if they found Jack's body? I don't know
+whether it was his, but I read in a paper at a Southern port
+where I was with my new ship that two dead bodies had come ashore
+in a gale down East, in pretty bad shape. They were locked
+together, and one was a skeleton in oilskins.
+
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+   Francis Marion Crawford, the youngest of the four
+   children of the well-known sculptor Thomas Crawford,
+   was born in Rome, educated by a French governess;
+   then at St Paul's School, Concord, N.H.; in the
+   quiet country village of Hatfield Regis, under an
+   English tutor; at Trinity College, Cambridge, where
+   they thought him a mathematician in those days; at
+   Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, and at the University of
+   Rome, where a special interest in Oriental languages
+   sent him to India with the idea of preparing for a
+   professorship.
+
+   At one time in India hard times nearly forced him
+   into enlistment in the British army, but a chance
+   opening sent him as editor of the _Indian Herald_ to
+   Allahabad. It was during the next eighteen months
+   that he met at Simla the hero of his first novel,
+   "Mr. Isaacs." "If it had not been for him," Mr.
+   Crawford has been known to say, "I might at this
+   moment be a professor of Sanskrit in some American
+   college;" for that idea persisted after his return
+   to the United States, where he entered Harvard for
+   special study of the subject.
+
+   But from the May evening when the story of the
+   interesting man at Simla was first told in a club
+   smoking-room overlooking Madison Square, Mr. Crawford's
+   life has been one of hard literary work. He returned to
+   Italy in 1883, spent most of the next year in
+   Constantinople, where he was married to a daughter
+   of General Berdan. From 1885 he has made his home in
+   Sorrento, Italy, visiting America at intervals.
+
+   "Mr. Isaacs," published in 1882, was followed almost
+   at once by "Dr. Claudius." Then _The Atlantic
+   Monthly_ claimed a serial, "A Roman Singer," in
+   1883. Since that time the list of his novels has
+   been increased to thirty-two, besides the historical
+   and descriptive works entitled "Ave Roma Immortalis"
+   and "The Rulers of the South."
+
+   To Mr. Crawford, the development of a story and of
+   the character which suggested it, is the preëminent
+   thing. As the critics say:--
+
+     "He is an artist, a born story-teller and
+     colourist, imaginative and dramatic, virile and
+     vivid."
+
+   His wide range as a traveller has contributed doubtless
+   to another characteristic quality:--
+
+     "... his strength in unexcelled portraits of odd
+     characters and his magical skill in seeming to make
+     his readers witnesses of the spectacles."
+
+   His intimate knowledge of many countries has resulted in
+   an unequalled series of brilliant romances, including
+   varied characters from the old families of Rome, the
+   glassblowers of Venice, the silversmiths of Rome, the
+   cigarette makers of Munich, the court of old Madrid, the
+   Turks of Stamboul and the Bosphorus, simple sailors on the
+   coast of Spain, Americans of modern New York and Bar Harbor,
+   to Crusaders of the twelfth century. But whether the scene
+   be in modern India, rural England, the Black Forest, or the
+   palaces of Babylon, the story seizes on the imagination and
+   fascinates the reader.
+
+     "The romantic reader will find here a tale of love
+     passionate and pure; the student of character, the
+     subtle analysis and deft portrayal he loves; the
+     historian will approve its conscientious historic
+     accuracy; the lover of adventure will find his
+     blood stir and pulses quicken as he reads."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+    THE NOVELS OF
+    F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+    NEW UNIFORM EDITION
+
+    Dr. Claudius
+        A Roman Singer
+            Zoroaster
+                Don Orsino
+                    Marion Darche
+    A Cigarette Maker's Romance and Khaled
+        Taquisara
+            Via Crucis
+                Sant' Ilario
+                    The Ralstons
+    Adam Johnstone's Son and A Rose of Yesterday
+        Mr. Isaacs
+            A Tale of a Lonely Parish
+                Saracinesca
+                    Paul Patoff
+    The Witch of Prague
+        Pietro Ghisleri
+            Corleone
+                Children of the King
+                    Katherine Lauderdale
+                        To Leeward
+
+    Each, bound in cloth, green and gold, $1.80
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    _In preparation in the Uniform Edition_
+
+    An American Politician
+        Marzio's Crucifix
+            With the Immortals
+                Greifenstein
+                    The Three Fates
+                        Casa Braccio. 2 vols.
+                            Love in Idleness
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    F. MARION CRAWFORD'S
+    MOST RECENT NOVELS
+
+    CECILIA: A Story of Modern Rome
+    _Cloth_, $1.50
+    "The reincarnation of a great love
+    is the real story, and that is well worth
+    reading."--_San Francisco Chronicle._
+
+    MARIETTA: A Maid of Venice
+    _Cloth_, $1.50
+
+    IN THE PALACE OF THE KING
+    A Love Story of Old Madrid
+    _Illustrated, Cloth_, $1.50
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    HANDSOMELY ILLUSTRATED DESCRIPTIVE BOOKS
+
+    AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS
+    Studies from the Chronicles of Rome
+    _New edition. Revised. _x_ + 613 pp. 8vo. $3.00, net._
+
+    RULERS OF THE SOUTH
+    Sicily, Calabria, Malta
+    _In two volumes. Crown 8vo. $6.00, net._
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    The Macmillan Little Novels
+    BY FAVOURITE AUTHORS
+
+    Handsomely Bound in Decorated Cloth
+    16mo. 50 cents each
+
+    PHILOSOPHY FOUR
+    A STORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
+    By Owen Wister
+    Author of "The Virginian" etc.
+
+    MAN OVERBOARD
+    By F. Marion Crawford
+    Author of "Cecilia," "Marietta," etc.
+
+    MR. KEEGAN'S ELOPEMENT
+    By Winston Churchill
+    Author of "The Crisis," "Richard Carvel," etc.
+
+    MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND
+    By Gertrude Atherton
+    Author of "The Conqueror," "The Splendid Idle
+    Forties," etc.
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 Fifth Avenue, New York
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Man Overboard!, by F(rancis) Marion Crawford
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Man Overboard!, by F. Marion Crawford.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man Overboard!, by F(rancis) Marion Crawford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man Overboard!
+
+Author: F(rancis) Marion Crawford
+
+Release Date: February 12, 2008 [EBook #24584]
+[Last updated: September 18, 2015]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN OVERBOARD! ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Roberta Staehlin, Grinnell
+College Library and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
+scanned images of public domain material from the Google
+Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<h4>LITTLE NOVELS BY</h4>
+<h4>FAVOURITE AUTHORS</h4>
+
+<h1>Man Overboard!</h1>
+
+<h4>F. MARION CRAWFORD</h4>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/image005.png" width="150" height="57" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<hr class='dashed' />
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 185px;">
+<a name="linktoimage006" id="linktoimage006"></a><img src="images/image006.png" width="185" height="300" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 258px;">
+<img src="images/image003.png" width="258" height="73" alt="F. Marion Crawford" title="" />
+<span class="caption">F. Marion Crawford</span>
+</div>
+<hr class='dashed' />
+
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; text-align:center; margin-top:2em;'>Man Overboard!</p>
+<p style=' font-size:1.0em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:2em;'>BY</p>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:2em;'>F. MARION CRAWFORD</p>
+<p style=' font-size:1.0em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'>AUTHOR OF "THE UPPER BERTH," "CECILIA,"</p>
+<p style=' font-size:1.0em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'>"THE WITCH OF PRAGUE," ETC.</p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/image004.png" width="100" height="100" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center; margin-top:2em;'>New York</p>
+<p style=' font-size:1.0em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'><span class="smcap">London: Macmillan &amp; Co., Ltd.</span></p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'>1903</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.6em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'><i>All rights reserved</i></p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.6em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1903, <span class="smcap">By F. MARION CRAWFORD.</span></p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.6em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1903, <span class="smcap">By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.</span></p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.6em; text-align:center; margin-top:2em;'>Set up and electrotyped April, 1903.</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'>Norwood Press</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'>J. S. Cushing &amp; Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith Co.</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center; margin-bottom:1em;'>Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<h2 class='toc'>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+<table border='0' width='500' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Illustrations' style='margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto'>
+<col style='width:85%;' />
+<col style='width:15%;' />
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>Portrait of F. Marion Crawford</td>
+  <td class='tdright'><a href='#linktoimage006'><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='right' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:small'>FACING PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>"He let go of the knife, and the point stuck into the deck"</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#linktoimage001'>54</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'>"One of his wet, shiny arms was round Mamie's waist"</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#linktoimage002'>92</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1><a name="MAN_OVERBOARD" id="MAN_OVERBOARD"></a>MAN OVERBOARD</h1>
+
+
+<p>Yes&mdash;I have heard "Man overboard!" a good many times since I
+was a boy, and once or twice I have seen the man go. There are
+more men lost in that way than passengers on ocean steamers ever
+learn of. I have stood looking over the rail on a dark night,
+when there was a step beside me, and something flew past my head
+like a big black bat&mdash;and then there was a splash! Stokers
+often go like that. They go mad with the heat, and they slip up
+on deck and are gone before anybody can stop them, often without
+being seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason. I have
+seen a man empty his revolver into a crowd of emigrants forward,
+and then go over like a rocket. Of course, any officer who
+respects himself will do what he can to pick a man up, if the
+weather is not so heavy that he would have to risk his ship; but
+I don't think I remember seeing a man come back when he was once
+fairly gone more than two or three times in all my life, though
+we have often picked up the life-buoy, and sometimes the fellow's
+cap. Stokers and passengers jump over; I never knew a sailor to
+do that, drunk or sober. Yes, they say it has happened on hard
+ships, but I never knew a case myself. Once in a long time a man
+is fished out when it is just too late, and dies in the boat
+before you can get him aboard, and&mdash;well, I don't know that
+I ever told that story since it happened&mdash;I knew a fellow
+who went over, and came back dead. I didn't see him after he came
+back; <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>only one of us did, but we all knew he was there.</p>
+
+<p>No, I am not giving you "sharks." There isn't a shark in this
+story, and I don't know that I would tell it at all if we weren't
+alone, just you and I. But you and I have seen things in various
+parts, and maybe you will understand. Anyhow, you know that I am
+telling what I know about, and nothing else; and it has been on
+my mind to tell you ever since it happened, only there hasn't
+been a chance.</p>
+
+<p>It's a long story, and it took some time to happen; and it began
+a good many years ago, in October, as well as I can remember. I
+was mate then; I passed the local Marine Board for master about
+three years later. She was the <i>Helen B. Jackson</i>, of New York,
+with lumber for the West Indies, four-masted schooner, Captain
+Hackstaff. She was an old-fashioned one, even then&mdash;no steam
+donkey, and all to do by hand. There were still sailors in the
+coasting trade in those days, you remember. She wasn't a hard
+ship, for the old man was better<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> than most of them,
+though he kept to himself and had a face like a monkey-wrench. We
+were thirteen, all told, in the ship's company; and some of them
+afterwards thought that might have had something to do with it,
+but I had all that nonsense knocked out of me when I was a boy. I
+don't mean to say that I like to go to sea on a Friday, but I
+<i>have</i> gone to sea on a Friday, and nothing has happened; and
+twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands
+didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened
+either&mdash;nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two,
+or a little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had sailed
+as cheerily as you please&mdash;no thirteens, no Fridays, no dead
+men in the hold. I believe it generally happens that way.</p>
+
+<p>I dare say you remember those two Benton boys that were so much
+alike? It is no wonder, for they were twin brothers. They shipped
+with us as boys on the old <i>Boston Belle</i>, when you were<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> mate and I was before the
+mast. I never was quite sure which was which of those two, even
+then; and when they both had beards it was harder than ever to
+tell them apart. One was Jim, and the other was Jack; James
+Benton and John Benton. The only difference I ever could see was,
+that one seemed to be rather more cheerful and inclined to talk
+than the other; but one couldn't even be sure of that. Perhaps
+they had moods. Anyhow, there was one of them that used to
+whistle when he was alone. He only knew one tune, and that was
+"Nancy Lee," and the other didn't know any tune at all; but I may
+be mistaken about that, too. Perhaps they both knew it.</p>
+
+<p>Well, those two Benton boys turned up on board the <i>Helen B.
+Jackson</i>. They had been on half a dozen ships since the <i>Boston
+Belle</i>, and they had grown up and were good seamen. They had
+reddish beards and bright blue eyes and freckled faces; and they
+were quiet fellows,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> good workmen on rigging, pretty
+willing, and both good men at the wheel. They managed to be in
+the same watch&mdash;it was the port watch on the <i>Helen B.</i>, and
+that was mine, and I had great confidence in them both. If there
+was any job aloft that needed two hands, they were always the
+first to jump into the rigging; but that doesn't often happen on
+a fore-and-aft schooner. If it breezed up, and the jibtopsail was
+to be taken in, they never minded a wetting, and they would be
+out at the bowsprit end before there was a hand at the downhaul.
+The men liked them for that, and because they didn't blow about
+what they could do. I remember one day in a reefing job, the
+downhaul parted and came down on deck from the peak of the
+spanker. When the weather moderated, and we shook the reefs out,
+the downhaul was forgotten until we happened to think we might
+soon need it again. There was some sea on, and the boom was off
+and the gaff was slamming. One of those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> Benton boys was
+at the wheel, and before I knew what he was doing, the other was
+out on the gaff with the end of the new downhaul, trying to reeve
+it through its block. The one who was steering watched him, and
+got as white as cheese. The other one was swinging about on the
+gaff end, and every time she rolled to leeward he brought up with
+a jerk that would have sent anything but a monkey flying into
+space. But he didn't leave it until he had rove the new rope, and
+he got back all right. I think it was Jack at the wheel; the one
+that seemed more cheerful, the one that whistled "Nancy Lee." He
+had rather have been doing the job himself than watch his brother
+do it, and he had a scared look; but he kept her as steady as he
+could in the swell, and he drew a long breath when Jim had worked
+his way back to the peak-halliard block, and had something to
+hold on to. I think it was Jim.</p>
+
+<p>They had good togs, too, and they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> were neat and clean men
+in the forecastle. I knew they had nobody belonging to them
+ashore,&mdash;no mother, no sisters, and no wives; but somehow
+they both looked as if a woman overhauled them now and then. I
+remember that they had one ditty bag between them, and they had a
+woman's thimble in it. One of the men said something about it to
+them, and they looked at each other; and one smiled, but the
+other didn't. Most of their clothes were alike, but they had one
+red guernsey between them. For some time I used to think it was
+always the same one that wore it, and I thought that might be a
+way to tell them apart. But then I heard one asking the other for
+it, and saying that the other had worn it last. So that was no
+sign either. The cook was a West Indiaman, called James Lawley;
+his father had been hanged for putting lights in cocoanut trees
+where they didn't belong. But he was a good cook, and knew his
+business; and it wasn't soup-and-bully<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> and dog's-body
+every Sunday. That's what I meant to say. On Sunday the cook
+called both those boys Jim, and on week-days he called them Jack.
+He used to say he must be right sometimes if he did that, because
+even the hands on a painted clock point right twice a day.</p>
+
+<p>What started me to trying for some way of telling the Bentons
+apart was this. I heard them talking about a girl. It was at
+night, in our watch, and the wind had headed us off a little
+rather suddenly, and when we had flattened in the jibs, we clewed
+down the topsails, while the two Benton boys got the spanker
+sheet aft. One of them was at the helm. I coiled down the
+mizzen-topsail downhaul myself, and was going aft to see how she
+headed up, when I stopped to look at a light, and leaned against
+the deck-house. While I was standing there I heard the two boys
+talking. It sounded as if they had talked of the same thing
+before, and as far as I could tell, the voice I heard first<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> belonged to the one who
+wasn't quite so cheerful as the other,&mdash;the one who was Jim
+when one knew which he was.</p>
+
+<p>"Does Mamie know?" Jim asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," Jack answered quietly. He was at the wheel. "I mean to
+tell her next time we get home."</p>
+
+<p>"All right."</p>
+
+<p>That was all I heard, because I didn't care to stand there
+listening while they were talking about their own affairs; so I
+went aft to look into the binnacle, and I told the one at the
+wheel to keep her so as long as she had way on her, for I thought
+the wind would back up again before long, and there was land to
+leeward. When he answered, his voice, somehow, didn't sound like
+the cheerful one. Perhaps his brother had relieved the wheel
+while they had been speaking, but what I had heard set me
+wondering which of them it was that had a girl at home. There's
+lots of time for wondering on a schooner in fair weather.</p>
+
+<p>After that I thought I noticed that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> the two brothers were
+more silent when they were together. Perhaps they guessed that I
+had overheard something that night, and kept quiet when I was
+about. Some men would have amused themselves by trying to chaff
+them separately about the girl at home, and I suppose whichever
+one it was would have let the cat out of the bag if I had done
+that. But, somehow, I didn't like to. Yes, I was thinking of
+getting married myself at that time, so I had a sort of
+fellow-feeling for whichever one it was, that made me not want to
+chaff him.</p>
+
+<p>They didn't talk much, it seemed to me; but in fair weather, when
+there was nothing to do at night, and one was steering, the other
+was everlastingly hanging round as if he were waiting to relieve
+the wheel, though he might have been enjoying a quiet nap for all
+I cared in such weather. Or else, when one was taking his turn at
+the lookout, the other would be sitting on an anchor beside him.
+One kept near the other, at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> night more than in the
+daytime. I noticed that. They were fond of sitting on that
+anchor, and they generally tucked away their pipes under it, for
+the <i>Helen B.</i> was a dry boat in most weather, and like most
+fore-and-afters was better on a wind than going free. With a beam
+sea we sometimes shipped a little water aft. We were by the
+stern, anyhow, on that voyage, and that is one reason why we lost
+the man.</p>
+
+<p>We fell in with a southerly gale, south-east at first; and then
+the barometer began to fall while you could watch it, and a long
+swell began to come up from the south'ard. A couple of months
+earlier we might have been in for a cyclone, but it's "October
+all over" in those waters, as you know better than I. It was just
+going to blow, and then it was going to rain, that was all; and
+we had plenty of time to make everything snug before it breezed
+up much. It blew harder after sunset, and by the time it was
+quite dark it was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> full gale. We had shortened sail for
+it, but as we were by the stern we were carrying the spanker
+close reefed instead of the storm trysail. She steered better so,
+as long as we didn't have to heave to. I had the first watch with
+the Benton boys, and we had not been on deck an hour when a child
+might have seen that the weather meant business.</p>
+
+<p>The old man came up on deck and looked round, and in less than a
+minute he told us to give her the trysail. That meant heaving to,
+and I was glad of it; for though the <i>Helen B.</i> was a good vessel
+enough, she wasn't a new ship by a long way, and it did her no
+good to drive her in that weather. I asked whether I should call
+all hands, but just then the cook came aft, and the old man said
+he thought we could manage the job without waking the sleepers,
+and the trysail was handy on deck already, for we hadn't been
+expecting anything better. We were all in oilskins, of course,
+and the night was as black as a coal mine,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> with only a
+ray of light from the slit in the binnacle shield, and you
+couldn't tell one man from another except by his voice. The old
+man took the wheel; we got the boom amidships, and he jammed her
+into the wind until she had hardly any way. It was blowing now,
+and it was all that I and two others could do to get in the slack
+of the downhaul, while the others lowered away at the peak and
+throat, and we had our hands full to get a couple of turns round
+the wet sail. It's all child's play on a fore-and-after compared
+with reefing topsails in anything like weather, but the gear of a
+schooner sometimes does unhandy things that you don't expect, and
+those everlasting long halliards get foul of everything if they
+get adrift. I remember thinking how unhandy that particular job
+was. Somebody unhooked the throat-halliard block, and thought he
+had hooked it into the head-cringle of the trysail, and sang
+out to hoist away, but he had missed it in the dark, and<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> the heavy block went flying
+into the lee rigging, and nearly killed him when it swung back
+with the weather roll. Then the old man got her up in the wind
+until the jib was shaking like thunder; then he held her off, and
+she went off as soon as the head-sails filled, and he couldn't
+get her back again without the spanker. Then the <i>Helen B.</i> did
+her favourite trick, and before we had time to say much we had a
+sea over the quarter and were up to our waists, with the parrels
+of the trysail only half becketed round the mast, and the deck so
+full of gear that you couldn't put your foot on a plank, and the
+spanker beginning to get adrift again, being badly stopped, and
+the general confusion and hell's delight that you can only have
+on a fore-and-after when there's nothing really serious the
+matter. Of course, I don't mean to say that the old man couldn't
+have steered his trick as well as you or I or any other seaman;
+but I don't believe he had ever been on board the <i>Helen B.</i>
+before, or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> had his hand on her wheel till then; and he
+didn't know her ways. I don't mean to say that what happened was
+his fault. I don't know whose fault it was. Perhaps nobody was to
+blame. But I knew something happened somewhere on board when we
+shipped that sea, and you'll never get it out of my head. I
+hadn't any spare time myself, for I was becketing the rest of the
+trysail to the mast. We were on the starboard tack, and the
+throat-halliard came down to port as usual, and I suppose there
+were at least three men at it, hoisting away, while I was at the
+beckets.</p>
+
+<p>Now I am going to tell you something. You have known me, man and
+boy, several voyages; and you are older than I am; and you have
+always been a good friend to me. Now, do you think I am the sort
+of man to think I hear things where there isn't anything to hear,
+or to think I see things when there is nothing to see? No, you
+don't. Thank you. Well now, I had passed the last<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> becket, and I sang out to the
+men to sway away, and I was standing on the jaws of the
+spanker-gaff, with my left hand on the bolt-rope of the trysail,
+so that I could feel when it was board-taut, and I wasn't
+thinking of anything except being glad the job was over, and that
+we were going to heave her to. It was as black as a coal-pocket,
+except that you could see the streaks on the seas as they went
+by, and abaft the deck-house I could see the ray of light from
+the binnacle on the captain's yellow oilskin as he stood at the
+wheel&mdash;or rather I might have seen it if I had looked round
+at that minute. But I didn't look round. I heard a man whistling.
+It was "Nancy Lee," and I could have sworn that the man was right
+over my head in the crosstrees. Only somehow I knew very well
+that if anybody could have been up there, and could have whistled
+a tune, there were no living ears sharp enough to hear it on deck
+then. I heard it distinctly, and at the same time I<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> heard the real whistling of
+the wind in the weather rigging, sharp and clear as the
+steam-whistle on a Dago's peanut-cart in New York. That was all
+right, that was as it should be; but the other wasn't right; and
+I felt queer and stiff, as if I couldn't move, and my hair was
+curling against the flannel lining of my sou'wester, and I
+thought somebody had dropped a lump of ice down my back.</p>
+
+<p>I said that the noise of the wind in the rigging was real, as if
+the other wasn't, for I felt that it wasn't, though I heard it.
+But it was, all the same; for the captain heard it, too. When I
+came to relieve the wheel, while the men were clearing up decks,
+he was swearing. He was a quiet man, and I hadn't heard him swear
+before, and I don't think I did again, though several queer
+things happened after that. Perhaps he said all he had to say
+then; I don't see how he could have said anything more. I used to
+think nobody could swear like a Dane, except a Neapolitan or a
+South<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> American; but when I had heard the old man I
+changed my mind. There's nothing afloat or ashore that can beat
+one of your quiet American skippers, if he gets off on that tack.
+I didn't need to ask him what was the matter, for I knew he had
+heard "Nancy Lee," as I had, only it affected us differently.</p>
+
+<p>He did not give me the wheel, but told me to go forward and get
+the second bonnet off the staysail, so as to keep her up better.
+As we tailed on to the sheet when it was done, the man next me
+knocked his sou'wester off against my shoulder, and his face came
+so close to me that I could see it in the dark. It must have been
+very white for me to see it, but I only thought of that
+afterwards. I don't see how any light could have fallen upon it,
+but I knew it was one of the Benton boys. I don't know what made
+me speak to him. "Hullo, Jim! Is that you?" I asked. I don't know
+why I said Jim, rather than Jack.</p>
+
+<p>"I am Jack," he answered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> We made all fast, and things
+were much quieter.</p>
+
+<p>"The old man heard you whistling 'Nancy Lee,' just now," I said,
+"and he didn't like it."</p>
+
+<p>It was as if there were a white light inside his face, and it was
+ghastly. I know his teeth chattered. But he didn't say anything,
+and the next minute he was somewhere in the dark trying to find
+his sou'wester at the foot of the mast.</p>
+
+<p>When all was quiet, and she was hove to, coming to and falling
+off her four points as regularly as a pendulum, and the helm
+lashed a little to the lee, the old man turned in again, and I
+managed to light a pipe in the lee of the deck-house, for there
+was nothing more to be done till the gale chose to moderate, and
+the ship was as easy as a baby in its cradle. Of course the cook
+had gone below, as he might have done an hour earlier; so there
+were supposed to be four of us in the watch. There was a man at
+the lookout, and there was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> hand by the wheel, though
+there was no steering to be done, and I was having my pipe in the
+lee of the deck-house, and the fourth man was somewhere about
+decks, probably having a smoke too. I thought some skippers I had
+sailed with would have called the watch aft, and given them a
+drink after that job, but it wasn't cold, and I guessed that our
+old man wouldn't be particularly generous in that way. My hands
+and feet were red-hot, and it would be time enough to get into
+dry clothes when it was my watch below; so I stayed where I was,
+and smoked. But by and by, things being so quiet, I began to
+wonder why nobody moved on deck; just that sort of restless
+wanting to know where every man is that one sometimes feels in a
+gale of wind on a dark night. So when I had finished my pipe I
+began to move about. I went aft, and there was a man leaning over
+the wheel, with his legs apart and both hands hanging down in the
+light<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> from the binnacle, and his sou'wester over his
+eyes. Then I went forward, and there was a man at the lookout,
+with his back against the foremast, getting what shelter he could
+from the staysail. I knew by his small height that he was not one
+of the Benton boys. Then I went round by the weather side, and
+poked about in the dark, for I began to wonder where the other
+man was. But I couldn't find him, though I searched the decks
+until I got right aft again. It was certainly one of the Benton
+boys that was missing, but it wasn't like either of them to go
+below to change his clothes in such warm weather. The man at the
+wheel was the other, of course. I spoke to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Jim, what's become of your brother?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am Jack, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, Jack, where's Jim? He's not on deck."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, sir."</p>
+
+<p>When I had come up to him he had stood up from force of instinct,
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> had laid his hands on the spokes as if he were
+steering, though the wheel was lashed; but he still bent his face
+down, and it was half hidden by the edge of his sou'wester, while
+he seemed to be staring at the compass. He spoke in a very low
+voice, but that was natural, for the captain had left his door
+open when he turned in, as it was a warm night in spite of the
+storm, and there was no fear of shipping any more water now.</p>
+
+<p>"What put it into your head to whistle like that, Jack? You've
+been at sea long enough to know better."</p>
+
+<p>He said something, but I couldn't hear the words; it sounded as
+if he were denying the charge.</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody whistled," I said.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't answer, and then, I don't know why, perhaps because the
+old man hadn't given us a drink, I cut half an inch off the plug
+of tobacco I had in my oilskin pocket, and gave it to him. He
+knew my tobacco was good, and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> shoved it into his mouth
+with a word of thanks. I was on the weather side of the wheel.</p>
+
+<p>"Go forward and see if you can find Jim," I said.</p>
+
+<p>He started a little, and then stepped back and passed behind me,
+and was going along the weather side. Maybe his silence about the
+whistling had irritated me, and his taking it for granted that
+because we were hove to and it was a dark night, he might go
+forward any way he pleased. Anyhow, I stopped him, though I spoke
+good-naturedly enough.</p>
+
+<p>"Pass to leeward, Jack," I said.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't answer, but crossed the deck between the binnacle and
+the deck-house to the lee side. She was only falling off and
+coming to, and riding the big seas as easily as possible, but the
+man was not steady on his feet and reeled against the corner of
+the deck-house and then against the lee rail. I was quite sure he
+couldn't have had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> anything to drink, for neither of the
+brothers were the kind to hide rum from their shipmates, if they
+had any, and the only spirits that were aboard were locked up in
+the captain's cabin. I wondered whether he had been hit by the
+throat-halliard block and was hurt.</p>
+
+<p>I left the wheel and went after him, but when I got to the corner
+of the deck-house I saw that he was on a full run forward, so I
+went back. I watched the compass for a while, to see how far she
+went off, and she must have come to again half a dozen times
+before I heard voices, more than three or four, forward; and then
+I heard the little West Indies cook's voice, high and shrill
+above the rest:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Man overboard!"</p>
+
+<p>There wasn't anything to be done, with the ship hove-to and the
+wheel lashed. If there was a man overboard, he must be in the
+water right alongside. I couldn't imagine how it<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> could have happened, but I
+ran forward instinctively. I came upon the cook first,
+half-dressed in his shirt and trousers, just as he had tumbled
+out of his bunk. He was jumping into the main rigging, evidently
+hoping to see the man, as if any one could have seen anything on
+such a night, except the foam-streaks on the black water, and now
+and then the curl of a breaking sea as it went away to leeward.
+Several of the men were peering over the rail into the dark. I
+caught the cook by the foot, and asked who was gone.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Jim Benton," he shouted down to me. "He's not aboard this
+ship!"</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt about that. Jim Benton was gone; and I knew in
+a flash that he had been taken off by that sea when we were
+setting the storm trysail. It was nearly half an hour since then;
+she had run like wild for a few minutes until we got her hove-to,
+and no swimmer that ever swam could have lived as long as that in
+such a sea. The men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> knew it as well as I, but still they
+stared into the foam as if they had any chance of seeing the lost
+man. I let the cook get into the rigging and joined the men, and
+asked if they had made a thorough search on board, though I knew
+they had and that it could not take long, for he wasn't on deck,
+and there was only the forecastle below.</p>
+
+<p>"That sea took him over, sir, as sure as you're born," said one
+of the men close beside me.</p>
+
+<p>We had no boat that could have lived in that sea, of course, and
+we all knew it. I offered to put one over, and let her drift
+astern two or three cable's-lengths by a line, if the men thought
+they could haul me aboard again; but none of them would listen to
+that, and I should probably have been drowned if I had tried it,
+even with a life-belt; for it was a breaking sea. Besides, they
+all knew as well as I did that the man could not be right in our
+wake. I don't know why I spoke again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> "Jack Benton, are
+you there? Will you go if I will?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir," answered a voice; and that was all.</p>
+
+<p>By that time the old man was on deck, and I felt his hand on my
+shoulder rather roughly, as if he meant to shake me.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd reckoned you had more sense, Mr. Torkeldsen," he said. "God
+knows I would risk my ship to look for him, if it were any use;
+but he must have gone half an hour ago."</p>
+
+<p>He was a quiet man, and the men knew he was right, and that they
+had seen the last of Jim Benton when they were bending the
+trysail&mdash;if anybody had seen him then. The captain went
+below again, and for some time the men stood around Jack, quite
+near him, without saying anything, as sailors do when they are
+sorry for a man and can't help him; and then the watch below
+turned in again, and we were three on deck.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody can understand that there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> can be much consolation
+in a funeral, unless he has felt that blank feeling there is when
+a man's gone overboard whom everybody likes. I suppose landsmen
+think it would be easier if they didn't have to bury their
+fathers and mothers and friends; but it wouldn't be. Somehow the
+funeral keeps up the idea of something beyond. You may believe in
+that something just the same; but a man who has gone in the dark,
+between two seas, without a cry, seems much more beyond reach
+than if he were still lying on his bed, and had only just stopped
+breathing. Perhaps Jim Benton knew that, and wanted to come back
+to us. I don't know, and I am only telling you what happened, and
+you may think what you like.</p>
+
+<p>Jack stuck by the wheel that night until the watch was over. I
+don't know whether he slept afterwards, but when I came on deck
+four hours later, there he was again, in his oilskins, with his
+sou'wester over his eyes, staring into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> the binnacle. We
+saw that he would rather stand there, and we left him alone.
+Perhaps it was some consolation to him to get that ray of light
+when everything was so dark. It began to rain, too, as it can
+when a southerly gale is going to break up, and we got every
+bucket and tub on board, and set them under the booms to catch
+the fresh water for washing our clothes. The rain made it very
+thick, and I went and stood under the lee of the staysail,
+looking out. I could tell that day was breaking, because the foam
+was whiter in the dark where the seas crested, and little by
+little the black rain grew grey and steamy, and I couldn't see
+the red glare of the port light on the water when she went off
+and rolled to leeward. The gale had moderated considerably, and
+in another hour we should be under way again. I was still
+standing there when Jack Benton came forward. He stood still a
+few minutes near me. The rain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> came down in a solid sheet,
+and I could see his wet beard and a corner of his cheek, too,
+grey in the dawn. Then he stooped down and began feeling under
+the anchor for his pipe. We had hardly shipped any water forward,
+and I suppose he had some way of tucking the pipe in, so that the
+rain hadn't floated it off. Presently he got on his legs again,
+and I saw that he had two pipes in his hand. One of them had
+belonged to his brother, and after looking at them a moment I
+suppose he recognised his own, for he put it in his mouth,
+dripping with water. Then he looked at the other fully a minute
+without moving. When he had made up his mind, I suppose, he
+quietly chucked it over the lee rail, without even looking round
+to see whether I was watching him. I thought it was a pity, for
+it was a good wooden pipe, with a nickel ferrule, and somebody
+would have been glad to have it. But I didn't like to make any
+remark, for he had a right to do what he pleased<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> with what had belonged to his
+dead brother. He blew the water out of his own pipe, and dried it
+against his jacket, putting his hand inside his oilskin; he
+filled it, standing under the lee of the foremast, got a light
+after wasting two or three matches, and turned the pipe upside
+down in his teeth, to keep the rain out of the bowl. I don't know
+why I noticed everything he did, and remember it now; but somehow
+I felt sorry for him, and I kept wondering whether there was
+anything I could say that would make him feel better. But I
+didn't think of anything, and as it was broad daylight I went aft
+again, for I guessed that the old man would turn out before long
+and order the spanker set and the helm up. But he didn't turn out
+before seven bells, just as the clouds broke and showed blue sky
+to leeward&mdash;"the Frenchman's barometer," you used to call
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Some people don't seem to be so dead,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> when they are dead,
+as others are. Jim Benton was like that. He had been on my watch,
+and I couldn't get used to the idea that he wasn't about decks
+with me. I was always expecting to see him, and his brother was
+so exactly like him that I often felt as if I did see him and
+forgot he was dead, and made the mistake of calling Jack by his
+name; though I tried not to, because I knew it must hurt. If ever
+Jack had been the cheerful one of the two, as I had always
+supposed he had been, he had changed very much, for he grew to be
+more silent than Jim had ever been.</p>
+
+<p>One fine afternoon I was sitting on the main-hatch, overhauling
+the clock-work of the taffrail-log, which hadn't been registering
+very well of late, and I had got the cook to bring me a
+coffee-cup to hold the small screws as I took them out, and a
+saucer for the sperm-oil I was going to use. I noticed that he
+didn't go away, but hung round without exactly watching what I
+was doing, as if<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> he wanted to say something to me. I
+thought if it were worth much he would say it anyhow, so I didn't
+ask him questions; and sure enough he began of his own accord
+before long. There was nobody on deck but the man at the wheel,
+and the other man away forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Torkeldsen," the cook began, and then stopped.</p>
+
+<p>I supposed he was going to ask me to let the watch break out a
+barrel of flour, or some salt horse.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, doctor?" I asked, as he didn't go on.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Torkeldsen," he answered, "I somehow want to ask you
+whether you think I am giving satisfaction on this ship, or not?"</p>
+
+<p>"So far as I know, you are, doctor. I haven't heard any
+complaints from the forecastle, and the captain has said nothing,
+and I think you know your business, and the cabin-boy is bursting
+out of his clothes. That looks as if you are giving<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> satisfaction. What makes you
+think you are not?"</p>
+
+<p>I am not good at giving you that West Indies talk, and sha'n't
+try; but the doctor beat about the bush awhile, and then he told
+me he thought the men were beginning to play tricks on him, and
+he didn't like it, and thought he hadn't deserved it, and would
+like his discharge at our next port. I told him he was a
+d&mdash;&mdash;d fool, of course, to begin with; and that men
+were more apt to try a joke with a chap they liked than with
+anybody they wanted to get rid of; unless it was a bad joke, like
+flooding his bunk, or filling his boots with tar. But it wasn't
+that kind of practical joke. The doctor said that the men were
+trying to frighten him, and he didn't like it, and that they put
+things in his way that frightened him. So I told him he was a
+d&mdash;&mdash;d fool to be frightened, anyway, and I wanted to
+know what things they put in his way. He gave me a queer answer.
+He said they were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> spoons and forks, and odd plates, and a
+cup now and then, and such things.</p>
+
+<p>I set down the taffrail-log on the bit of canvas I had put under
+it, and looked at the doctor. He was uneasy, and his eyes had a
+sort of hunted look, and his yellow face looked grey. He wasn't
+trying to make trouble. He was in trouble. So I asked him
+questions.</p>
+
+<p>He said he could count as well as anybody, and do sums without
+using his fingers, but that when he couldn't count any other way
+he did use his fingers, and it always came out the same. He said
+that when he and the cabin-boy cleared up after the men's meals
+there were more things to wash than he had given out. There'd be
+a fork more, or there'd be a spoon more, and sometimes there'd be
+a spoon and a fork, and there was always a plate more. It wasn't
+that he complained of that. Before poor Jim Benton was lost they
+had a man more to feed, and his gear to wash up after meals, and
+that was in the contract,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> the doctor said. It would have
+been if there were twenty in the ship's company; but he didn't
+think it was right for the men to play tricks like that. He kept
+his things in good order, and he counted them, and he was
+responsible for them, and it wasn't right that the men should
+take more things than they needed when his back was turned, and
+just soil them and mix them up with their own, so as to make him
+think&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped there, and looked at me, and I looked at him. I didn't
+know what he thought, but I began to guess. I wasn't going to
+humour any such nonsense as that, so I told him to speak to the
+men himself, and not come bothering me about such things.</p>
+
+<p>"Count the plates and forks and spoons before them when they sit
+down to table, and tell them that's all they'll get; and when
+they have finished, count the things again, and if the count
+isn't right, find out who did it. You know it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> must be one
+of them. You're not a green hand; you've been going to sea ten or
+eleven years, and don't want any lesson about how to behave if
+the boys play a trick on you."</p>
+
+<p>"If I could catch him," said the cook, "I'd have a knife into him
+before he could say his prayers."</p>
+
+<p>Those West India men are always talking about knives, especially
+when they are badly frightened. I knew what he meant, and didn't
+ask him, but went on cleaning the brass cogwheels of the patent
+log and oiling the bearings with a feather. "Wouldn't it be
+better to wash it out with boiling water, sir?" asked the cook,
+in an insinuating tone. He knew that he had made a fool of
+himself, and was anxious to make it right again.</p>
+
+<p>I heard no more about the odd platter and gear for two or three
+days, though I thought about his story a good deal. The doctor
+evidently believed that Jim Benton had come back, though he
+didn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> quite like to say so. His story had sounded silly
+enough on a bright afternoon, in fair weather, when the sun was
+on the water, and every rag was drawing in the breeze, and the
+sea looked as pleasant and harmless as a cat that has just eaten
+a canary. But when it was toward the end of the first watch, and
+the waning moon had not risen yet, and the water was like still
+oil, and the jibs hung down flat and helpless like the wings of a
+dead bird&mdash;it wasn't the same then. More than once I have
+started then, and looked round when a fish jumped, expecting to
+see a face sticking up out of the water with its eyes shut. I
+think we all felt something like that at the time.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon we were putting a fresh service on the
+jib-sheet-pennant. It wasn't my watch, but I was standing by
+looking on. Just then Jack Benton came up from below, and went to
+look for his pipe under the anchor. His face was hard and drawn,
+and his eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> were cold like steel balls. He hardly ever
+spoke now, but he did his duty as usual, and nobody had to
+complain of him, though we were all beginning to wonder how long
+his grief for his dead brother was going to last like that. I
+watched him as he crouched down, and ran his hand into the
+hiding-place for the pipe. When he stood up, he had two pipes in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Now, I remembered very well seeing him throw one of those pipes
+away, early in the morning after the gale; and it came to me now,
+and I didn't suppose he kept a stock of them under the anchor. I
+caught sight of his face, and it was greenish white, like the
+foam on shallow water, and he stood a long time looking at the
+two pipes. He wasn't looking to see which was his, for I wasn't
+five yards from him as he stood, and one of those pipes had been
+smoked that day, and was shiny where his hand had rubbed it, and
+the bone mouthpiece was chafed white<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> where his teeth had
+bitten it. The other was water-logged. It was swelled and
+cracking with wet, and it looked to me as if there were a little
+green weed on it.</p>
+
+<p>Jack Benton turned his head rather stealthily as I looked away,
+and then he hid the thing in his trousers pocket, and went aft on
+the lee side, out of sight. The men had got the sheet pennant on
+a stretch to serve it, but I ducked under it and stood where I
+could see what Jack did, just under the fore-staysail. He
+couldn't see me, and he was looking about for something. His hand
+shook as he picked up a bit of half-bent iron rod, about a foot
+long, that had been used for turning an eye-bolt, and had been
+left on the main-hatch. His hand shook as he got a piece of
+marline out of his pocket, and made the water-logged pipe fast to
+the iron. He didn't mean it to get adrift, either, for he took
+his turns carefully, and hove them taut and then rode<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> them, so that they couldn't
+slip, and made the end fast with two half-hitches round the iron,
+and hitched it back on itself. Then he tried it with his hands,
+and looked up and down the deck furtively, and then quietly
+dropped the pipe and iron over the rail, so that I didn't even
+hear the splash. If anybody was playing tricks on board, they
+weren't meant for the cook.</p>
+
+<p>I asked some questions about Jack Benton, and one of the men told
+me that he was off his feed, and hardly ate anything, and
+swallowed all the coffee he could lay his hands on, and had used
+up all his own tobacco and had begun on what his brother had
+left.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctor says it ain't so, sir," said the man, looking at me
+shyly, as if he didn't expect to be believed; "the doctor says
+there's as much eaten from breakfast to breakfast as there was
+before Jim fell overboard, though there's a mouth less and
+another that eats nothing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> I says it's the cabin-boy that
+gets it. He's bu'sting."</p>
+
+<p>I told him that if the cabin-boy ate more than his share, he must
+work more than his share, so as to balance things. But the man
+laughed queerly, and looked at me again.</p>
+
+<p>"I only said that, sir, just like that. We all know it ain't so."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"How is it?" asked the man, half-angry all at once. "I don't know
+how it is, but there's a hand on board that's getting his whack
+along with us as regular as the bells."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he use tobacco?" I asked, meaning to laugh it out of him,
+but as I spoke I remembered the water-logged pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess he's using his own still," the man answered, in a queer,
+low voice. "Perhaps he'll take some one else's when his is all
+gone."</p>
+
+<p>It was about nine o'clock in the morning, I remember, for just
+then the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> captain called to me to stand by the chronometer
+while he took his fore observation. Captain Hackstaff wasn't one
+of those old skippers who do everything themselves with a pocket
+watch, and keep the key of the chronometer in their waistcoat
+pocket, and won't tell the mate how far the dead reckoning is
+out. He was rather the other way, and I was glad of it, for he
+generally let me work the sights he took, and just ran his eye
+over my figures afterwards. I am bound to say his eye was pretty
+good, for he would pick out a mistake in a logarithm, or tell me
+that I had worked the "Equation of Time" with the wrong sign,
+before it seemed to me that he could have got as far as "half the
+sum, minus the altitude." He was always right, too, and besides
+he knew a lot about iron ships and local deviation, and adjusting
+the compass, and all that sort of thing. I don't know how he came
+to be in command of a fore-and-aft schooner. He never talked
+about himself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> and maybe he had just been mate on one of
+those big steel square-riggers, and something had put him back.
+Perhaps he had been captain, and had got his ship aground,
+through no particular fault of his, and had to begin over again.
+Sometimes he talked just like you and me, and sometimes he would
+speak more like books do, or some of those Boston people I have
+heard. I don't know. We have all been shipmates now and then with
+men who have seen better days. Perhaps he had been in the Navy,
+but what makes me think he couldn't have been, was that he was a
+thorough good seaman, a regular old wind-jammer, and understood
+sail, which those Navy chaps rarely do. Why, you and I have
+sailed with men before the mast who had their master's
+certificates in their pockets,&mdash;English Board of Trade
+certificates, too,&mdash;who could work a double altitude if you
+would lend them a sextant and give them a look at the
+chronometer, as well as many a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> man who commands a big
+square-rigger. Navigation ain't everything, nor seamanship,
+either. You've got to have it in you, if you mean to get there.</p>
+
+<p>I don't know how our captain heard that there was trouble
+forward. The cabin-boy may have told him, or the men may have
+talked outside his door when they relieved the wheel at night.
+Anyhow, he got wind of it, and when he had got his sight that
+morning he had all hands aft, and gave them a lecture. It was
+just the kind of talk you might have expected from him. He said
+he hadn't any complaint to make, and that so far as he knew
+everybody on board was doing his duty, and that he was given to
+understand that the men got their whack, and were satisfied. He
+said his ship was never a hard ship, and that he liked quiet, and
+that was the reason he didn't mean to have any nonsense, and the
+men might just as well understand that, too. We'd had a great
+misfortune, he said, and it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> was nobody's fault. We had
+lost a man we all liked and respected, and he felt that everybody
+in the ship ought to be sorry for the man's brother, who was left
+behind, and that it was rotten lubberly childishness, and unjust
+and unmanly and cowardly, to be playing schoolboy tricks with
+forks and spoons and pipes, and that sort of gear. He said it had
+got to stop right now, and that was all, and the men might go
+forward. And so they did.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 422px;"> <a name="linktoimage001" id="linktoimage001"></a> <img src="images/image_001.jpg" width="422" height="600" alt="He
+let go of the knife, and the point stuck into the deck." title=""
+/> <span class="caption">He let go of the knife, and the point stuck into the deck.</span> </div>
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It got worse after that, and the men watched the cook, and the
+cook watched the men, as if they were trying to catch each other;
+but I think everybody felt that there was something else. One
+evening, at supper-time, I was on deck, and Jack came aft to
+relieve the wheel while the man who was steering got his supper.
+He hadn't got past the main-hatch on the lee side, when I heard a
+man running in slippers that slapped on the deck, and there was a
+sort of a yell and I saw the coloured cook going for Jack, with
+a carving-knife in his hand. I jumped to get between them,
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> Jack turned round short, and put out his hand. I was
+too far to reach them, and the cook jabbed out with his knife.
+But the blade didn't get anywhere near Benton. The cook seemed to
+be jabbing it into the air again and again, at least four feet
+short of the mark. Then he dropped his right hand, and I saw the
+whites of his eyes in the dusk, and he reeled up against the
+pin-rail, and caught hold of a belaying-pin with his left. I had
+reached him by that time, and grabbed hold of his knife-hand and
+the other too, for I thought he was going to use the pin; but
+Jack Benton was standing staring stupidly at him, as if he didn't
+understand. But instead, the cook was holding on because he
+couldn't stand, and his teeth were chattering, and he let go of
+the knife, and the point stuck into the deck.</p>
+
+<p>"He's crazy!" said Jack Benton, and that was all he said; and he
+went aft.</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone the cook began to come to and he spoke
+quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> low, near my ear.</p>
+
+<p>"There were two of them! So help me God, there were two of them!"</p>
+
+<p>I don't know why I didn't take him by the collar, and give him a
+good shaking; but I didn't. I just picked up the knife and gave
+it to him, and told him to go back to his galley, and not to make
+a fool of himself. You see, he hadn't struck at Jack, but at
+something he thought he saw, and I knew what it was, and I felt
+that same thing, like a lump of ice sliding down my back, that I
+felt that night when we were bending the trysail.</p>
+
+<p>When the men had seen him running aft, they jumped up after him,
+but they held off when they saw that I had caught him. By and by,
+the man who had spoken to me before told me what had happened. He
+was a stocky little chap, with a red head.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," he said, "there isn't much to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> tell. Jack Benton
+had been eating his supper with the rest of us. He always sits at
+the after corner of the table, on the port side. His brother used
+to sit at the end, next him. The doctor gave him a thundering big
+piece of pie to finish up with, and when he had finished he
+didn't stop for a smoke, but went off quick to relieve the wheel.
+Just as he had gone, the doctor came in from the galley, and when
+he saw Jack's empty plate he stood stock still staring at it; and
+we all wondered what was the matter, till we looked at the plate.
+There were two forks in it, sir, lying side by side. Then the
+doctor grabbed his knife, and flew up through the hatch like a
+rocket. The other fork was there all right, Mr. Torkeldsen, for
+we all saw it and handled it; and we all had our own. That's all
+I know."</p>
+
+<p>I didn't feel that I wanted to laugh when he told me that story;
+but I hoped the old man wouldn't hear it, for I knew he wouldn't
+believe it, and no captain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> that ever sailed likes to have
+stories like that going round about his ship. It gives her a bad
+name. But that was all anybody ever saw except the cook, and he
+isn't the first man who has thought he saw things without having
+any drink in him. I think, if the doctor had been weak in the
+head as he was afterwards, he might have done something foolish
+again, and there might have been serious trouble. But he didn't.
+Only, two or three times I saw him looking at Jack Benton in a
+queer, scared way, and once I heard him talking to himself.</p>
+
+<p>"There's two of them! So help me God, there's two of them!"</p>
+
+<p>He didn't say anything more about asking for his discharge, but I
+knew well enough that if he got ashore at the next port we should
+never see him again, if he had to leave his kit behind him, and
+his money, too. He was scared all through, for good and all; and
+he wouldn't be right again till he got another ship. It's no use
+to talk to a man when he gets<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> like that, any more than it
+is to send a boy to the main truck when he has lost his nerve.</p>
+
+<p>Jack Benton never spoke of what happened that evening. I don't
+know whether he knew about the two forks, or not; or whether he
+understood what the trouble was. Whatever he knew from the other
+men, he was evidently living under a hard strain. He was quiet
+enough, and too quiet; but his face was set, and sometimes it
+twitched oddly when he was at the wheel, and he would turn his
+head round sharp to look behind him. A man doesn't do that
+naturally, unless there's a vessel that he thinks is creeping up
+on the quarter. When that happens, if the man at the wheel takes
+a pride in his ship, he will almost always keep glancing over his
+shoulder to see whether the other fellow is gaining. But Jack
+Benton used to look round when there was nothing there; and what
+is curious, the other men seemed to catch the trick when they
+were steering. One<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> day the old man turned out just as the
+man at the wheel looked behind him.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you looking at?" asked the captain.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing, sir," answered the man.</p>
+
+<p>"Then keep your eye on the mizzen-royal," said the old man, as if
+he were forgetting that we weren't a square-rigger.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, ay, sir," said the man.</p>
+
+<p>The captain told me to go below and work up the latitude from the
+dead-reckoning, and he went forward of the deck-house and sat
+down to read, as he often did. When I came up, the man at the
+wheel was looking round again, and I stood beside him and just
+asked him quietly what everybody was looking at, for it was
+getting to be a general habit. He wouldn't say anything at first,
+but just answered that it was nothing. But when he saw that I
+didn't seem to care, and just stood there as if there were
+nothing more to be said, he naturally began to talk.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>He said that it wasn't that
+he saw anything, because there wasn't anything to see except the
+spanker sheet just straining a little, and working in the sheaves
+of the blocks as the schooner rose to the short seas. There
+wasn't anything to be seen, but it seemed to him that the sheet
+made a queer noise in the blocks. It was a new manilla sheet; and
+in dry weather it did make a little noise, something between a
+creak and a wheeze. I looked at it and looked at the man, and
+said nothing; and presently he went on. He asked me if I didn't
+notice anything peculiar about the noise. I listened awhile, and
+said I didn't notice anything. Then he looked rather sheepish,
+but said he didn't think it could be his own ears, because every
+man who steered his trick heard the same thing now and
+then,&mdash;sometimes once in a day, sometimes once in a night,
+sometimes it would go on a whole hour.</p>
+
+<p>"It sounds like sawing wood," I said, just like that.<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"To us it sounds a good deal more like a man whistling 'Nancy
+Lee.'" He started nervously as he spoke the last words. "There,
+sir, don't you hear it?" he asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>I heard nothing but the creaking of the manilla sheet. It was
+getting near noon, and fine, clear weather in southern
+waters,&mdash;just the sort of day and the time when you would
+least expect to feel creepy. But I remembered how I had heard
+that same tune overhead at night in a gale of wind a fortnight
+earlier, and I am not ashamed to say that the same sensation came
+over me now, and I wished myself well out of the <i>Helen B.</i>, and
+aboard of any old cargo-dragger, with a windmill on deck, and an
+eighty-nine-forty-eighter for captain, and a fresh leak whenever
+it breezed up.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little during the next few days life on board that
+vessel came to be about as unbearable as you can imagine. It
+wasn't that there was much talk, for I think the men were shy
+even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> of speaking to each other freely about what they
+thought. The whole ship's company grew silent, until one hardly
+ever heard a voice, except giving an order and the answer. The
+men didn't sit over their meals when their watch was below, but
+either turned in at once or sat about on the forecastle smoking
+their pipes without saying a word. We were all thinking of the
+same thing. We all felt as if there were a hand on board,
+sometimes below, sometimes about decks, sometimes aloft,
+sometimes on the boom end; taking his full share of what the
+others got, but doing no work for it. We didn't only feel it, we
+knew it. He took up no room, he cast no shadow, and we never
+heard his footfall on deck; but he took his whack with the rest
+as regular as the bells, and&mdash;he whistled "Nancy Lee." It
+was like the worst sort of dream you can imagine; and I dare say
+a good many of us tried to believe it was nothing else sometimes,
+when we stood looking over the weather rail in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> fine
+weather with the breeze in our faces; but if we happened to turn
+round and look into each other's eyes, we knew it was something
+worse than any dream could be; and we would turn away from each
+other with a queer, sick feeling, wishing that we could just for
+once see somebody who didn't know what we knew.</p>
+
+<p>There's not much more to tell about the <i>Helen B. Jackson</i> so far
+as I am concerned. We were more like a shipload of lunatics than
+anything else when we ran in under Morro Castle, and anchored in
+Havana. The cook had brain fever, and was raving mad in his
+delirium; and the rest of the men weren't far from the same
+state. The last three or four days had been awful, and we had
+been as near to having a mutiny on board as I ever want to be.
+The men didn't want to hurt anybody; but they wanted to get away
+out of that ship, if they had to swim for it; to get away from
+that whistling,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> from that dead shipmate who had come
+back, and who filled the ship with his unseen self. I know that
+if the old man and I hadn't kept a sharp lookout the men would
+have put a boat over quietly on one of those calm nights, and
+pulled away, leaving the captain and me and the mad cook to work
+the schooner into harbour. We should have done it somehow, of
+course, for we hadn't far to run if we could get a breeze; and
+once or twice I found myself wishing that the crew were really
+gone, for the awful state of fright in which they lived was
+beginning to work on me too. You see I partly believed and partly
+didn't; but anyhow I didn't mean to let the thing get the better
+of me, whatever it was. I turned crusty, too, and kept the men at
+work on all sorts of jobs, and drove them to it until they wished
+I was overboard, too. It wasn't that the old man and I were
+trying to drive them to desert without their pay, as<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> I am sorry to say a good many
+skippers and mates do, even now. Captain Hackstaff was as
+straight as a string, and I didn't mean those poor fellows should
+be cheated out of a single cent; and I didn't blame them for
+wanting to leave the ship, but it seemed to me that the only
+chance to keep everybody sane through those last days was to work
+the men till they dropped. When they were dead tired they slept a
+little, and forgot the thing until they had to tumble up on deck
+and face it again. That was a good many years ago. Do you believe
+that I can't hear "Nancy Lee" now, without feeling cold down my
+back? For I heard it too, now and then, after the man had
+explained why he was always looking over his shoulder. Perhaps it
+was imagination. I don't know. When I look back it seems to me
+that I only remember a long fight against something I couldn't
+see, against an appalling presence, against something worse than
+cholera or Yellow Jack or the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> plague&mdash;and goodness
+knows the mildest of them is bad enough when it breaks out at
+sea. The men got as white as chalk, and wouldn't go about decks
+alone at night, no matter what I said to them. With the cook
+raving in his bunk the forecastle would have been a perfect hell,
+and there wasn't a spare cabin on board. There never is on a
+fore-and-after. So I put him into mine, and he was more quiet
+there, and at last fell into a sort of stupor as if he were going
+to die. I don't know what became of him, for we put him ashore
+alive and left him in the hospital.</p>
+
+<p>The men came aft in a body, quiet enough, and asked the captain
+if he wouldn't pay them off, and let them go ashore. Some men
+wouldn't have done it, for they had shipped for the voyage, and
+had signed articles. But the captain knew that when sailors get
+an idea into their heads they're no better than children; and if
+he forced them to stay aboard he wouldn't get much work out<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> of them, and couldn't rely on
+them in a difficulty. So he paid them off, and let them go. When
+they had gone forward to get their kits, he asked me whether I
+wanted to go too, and for a minute I had a sort of weak feeling
+that I might just as well. But I didn't, and he was a good friend
+to me afterwards. Perhaps he was grateful to me for sticking to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>When the men went off he didn't come on deck; but it was my duty
+to stand by while they left the ship. They owed me a grudge for
+making them work during the last few days, and most of them
+dropped into the boat without so much as a word or a look, as
+sailors will. Jack Benton was the last to go over the side, and
+he stood still a minute and looked at me, and his white face
+twitched. I thought he wanted to say something.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care of yourself, Jack," said I. "So long!"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed as if he couldn't speak for two or three seconds; then
+his words came thick.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't my fault, Mr. Torkeldsen. I swear it wasn't my fault!"</p>
+
+<p>That was all; and he dropped over the side, leaving me to wonder
+what he meant.</p>
+
+<p>The captain and I stayed on board, and the ship-chandler got a
+West India boy to cook for us.</p>
+
+<p>That evening, before turning in, we were standing by the rail
+having a quiet smoke, watching the lights of the city, a quarter
+of a mile off, reflected in the still water. There was music of
+some sort ashore, in a sailors' dance-house, I dare say; and I
+had no doubt that most of the men who had left the ship were
+there, and already full of jiggy-jiggy. The music played a lot of
+sailors' tunes that ran into each other, and we could hear the
+men's voices in the chorus now and then. One followed another,
+and then it was "Nancy Lee," loud and clear, and the men singing
+"Yo-ho, heave-ho!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have no ear for music," said Captain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> Hackstaff, "but
+it appears to me that's the tune that man was whistling the night
+we lost the man overboard. I don't know why it has stuck in my
+head, and of course it's all nonsense; but it seems to me that I
+have heard it all the rest of the trip."</p>
+
+<p>I didn't say anything to that, but I wondered just how much the
+old man had understood. Then we turned in, and I slept ten hours
+without opening my eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I stuck to the <i>Helen B. Jackson</i> after that as long as I could
+stand a fore-and-after; but that night when we lay in Havana was
+the last time I ever heard "Nancy Lee" on board of her. The spare
+hand had gone ashore with the rest, and he never came back, and
+he took his tune with him; but all those things are just as clear
+in my memory as if they had happened yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>After that I was in deep water for a year or more, and after I
+came home I got my certificate, and what with having<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> friends and having saved a
+little money, and having had a small legacy from an uncle in
+Norway, I got the command of a coastwise vessel, with a small
+share in her. I was at home three weeks before going to sea, and
+Jack Benton saw my name in the local papers, and wrote to me.</p>
+
+<p>He said that he had left the sea, and was trying farming, and he
+was going to be married, and he asked if I wouldn't come over for
+that, for it wasn't more than forty minutes by train; and he and
+Mamie would be proud to have me at the wedding. I remembered how
+I had heard one brother ask the other whether Mamie knew. That
+meant, whether she knew he wanted to marry her, I suppose. She
+had taken her time about it, for it was pretty nearly three years
+then since we had lost Jim Benton overboard.</p>
+
+<p>I had nothing particular to do while we were getting ready for
+sea; nothing to prevent me from going over for a<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> day, I mean; and I thought
+I'd like to see Jack Benton, and have a look at the girl he was
+going to marry. I wondered whether he had grown cheerful again,
+and had got rid of that drawn look he had when he told me it
+wasn't his fault. How could it have been his fault, anyhow? So I
+wrote to Jack that I would come down and see him married; and
+when the day came I took the train, and got there about ten
+o'clock in the morning. I wish I hadn't. Jack met me at the
+station, and he told me that the wedding was to be late in the
+afternoon, and that they weren't going off on any silly wedding
+trip, he and Mamie, but were just going to walk home from her
+mother's house to his cottage. That was good enough for him, he
+said. I looked at him hard for a minute after we met. When we had
+parted I had a sort of idea that he might take to drink, but he
+hadn't. He looked very respectable and well-to-do in his black
+coat and high city collar; but he was thinner and bonier
+than<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> when I had known him, and there were lines in his
+face, and I thought his eyes had a queer look in them, half
+shifty, half scared. He needn't have been afraid of me, for I
+didn't mean to talk to his bride about the <i>Helen B. Jackson</i>.</p>
+
+<p>He took me to his cottage first, and I could see that he was
+proud of it. It wasn't above a cable's-length from high-water
+mark, but the tide was running out, and there was already a broad
+stretch of hard wet sand on the other side of the beach road.
+Jack's bit of land ran back behind the cottage about a quarter of
+a mile, and he said that some of the trees we saw were his. The
+fences were neat and well kept, and there was a fair-sized barn a
+little way from the cottage, and I saw some nice-looking cattle
+in the meadows; but it didn't look to me to be much of a farm,
+and I thought that before long Jack would have to leave his wife
+to take care of it, and go to sea again. But I said it was a nice
+farm, so as to seem pleasant, and as I don't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> know much
+about these things I dare say it was, all the same. I never saw
+it but that once. Jack told me that he and his brother had been
+born in the cottage, and that when their father and mother died
+they leased the land to Mamie's father, but had kept the cottage
+to live in when they came home from sea for a spell. It was as
+neat a little place as you would care to see: the floors as clean
+as the decks of a yacht, and the paint as fresh as a man-o'-war.
+Jack always was a good painter. There was a nice parlour on the
+ground floor, and Jack had papered it and had hung the walls with
+photographs of ships and foreign ports, and with things he had
+brought home from his voyages: a boomerang, a South Sea club,
+Japanese straw hats and a Gibraltar fan with a bull-fight on it,
+and all that sort of gear. It looked to me as if Miss Mamie had
+taken a hand in arranging it. There was a bran-new polished iron
+Franklin stove set into the old fireplace,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> and a red
+table-cloth from Alexandria, embroidered with those outlandish
+Egyptian letters. It was all as bright and homelike as possible,
+and he showed me everything, and was proud of everything, and I
+liked him the better for it. But I wished that his voice would
+sound more cheerful, as it did when we first sailed in the <i>Helen
+B.</i>, and that the drawn look would go out of his face for a
+minute. Jack showed me everything, and took me upstairs, and it
+was all the same: bright and fresh and ready for the bride. But
+on the upper landing there was a door that Jack didn't open. When
+we came out of the bedroom I noticed that it was ajar, and Jack
+shut it quickly and turned the key.</p>
+
+<p>"That lock's no good," he said, half to himself. "The door is
+always open."</p>
+
+<p>I didn't pay much attention to what he said, but as we went down
+the short stairs, freshly painted and varnished so that I was
+almost afraid to step on them, he spoke again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That was his room, sir. I have made a sort of store-room of it."</p>
+
+<p>"You may be wanting it in a year or so," I said, wishing to be
+pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess we won't use his room for that," Jack answered in a low
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>Then he offered me a cigar from a fresh box in the parlour, and
+he took one, and we lit them, and went out; and as we opened the
+front door there was Mamie Brewster standing in the path as if
+she were waiting for us. She was a fine-looking girl, and I
+didn't wonder that Jack had been willing to wait three years for
+her. I could see that she hadn't been brought up on steam-heat
+and cold storage, but had grown into a woman by the sea-shore.
+She had brown eyes, and fine brown hair, and a good figure.</p>
+
+<p>"This is Captain Torkeldsen," said Jack. "This is Miss Brewster,
+captain; and she is glad to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I am," said Miss Mamie, "for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> Jack has often talked
+to us about you, captain."</p>
+
+<p>She put out her hand, and took mine and shook it heartily, and I
+suppose I said something, but I know I didn't say much.</p>
+
+<p>The front door of the cottage looked toward the sea, and there
+was a straight path leading to the gate on the beach road. There
+was another path from the steps of the cottage that turned to the
+right, broad enough for two people to walk easily, and it led
+straight across the fields through gates to a larger house about
+a quarter of a mile away. That was where Mamie's mother lived,
+and the wedding was to be there. Jack asked me whether I would
+like to look round the farm before dinner, but I told him I
+didn't know much about farms. Then he said he just wanted to look
+round himself a bit, as he mightn't have much more chance that
+day; and he smiled, and Mamie laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Show the captain the way to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> house, Mamie," he said.
+"I'll be along in a minute."</p>
+
+<p>So Mamie and I began to walk along the path, and Jack went up
+toward the barn.</p>
+
+<p>"It was sweet of you to come, captain," Miss Mamie began, "for I
+have always wanted to see you."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I said, expecting something more.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, I always knew them both," she went on. "They used to
+take me out in a dory to catch codfish when I was a little girl,
+and I liked them both," she added thoughtfully. "Jack doesn't
+care to talk about his brother now. That's natural. But you won't
+mind telling me how it happened, will you? I should so much like
+to know."</p>
+
+<p>Well, I told her about the voyage and what happened that night
+when we fell in with a gale of wind, and that it hadn't been
+anybody's fault, for I wasn't going to admit that it was my old
+captain's, if it was. But I didn't tell her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> anything
+about what happened afterwards. As she didn't speak, I just went
+on talking about the two brothers, and how like they had been,
+and how when poor Jim was drowned and Jack was left, I took Jack
+for him. I told her that none of us had ever been sure which was
+which.</p>
+
+<p>"I wasn't always sure myself," she said, "unless they were
+together. Leastways, not for a day or two after they came home
+from sea. And now it seems to me that Jack is more like poor Jim,
+as I remember him, than he ever was, for Jim was always more
+quiet, as if he were thinking."</p>
+
+<p>I told her I thought so, too. We passed the gate and went into
+the next field, walking side by side. Then she turned her head to
+look for Jack, but he wasn't in sight. I sha'n't forget what she
+said next.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure now?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>I stood stock-still, and she went on a step, and then turned and
+looked at me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> We must have looked at each other while you
+could count five or six.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it's silly," she went on, "it's silly, and it's awful,
+too, and I have got no right to think it, but sometimes I can't
+help it. You see it was always Jack I meant to marry."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," I said stupidly, "I suppose so."</p>
+
+<p>She waited a minute, and began walking on slowly before she went
+on again.</p>
+
+<p>"I am talking to you as if you were an old friend, captain, and I
+have only known you five minutes. It was Jack I meant to marry,
+but now he is so like the other one."</p>
+
+<p>When a woman gets a wrong idea into her head, there is only one
+way to make her tired of it, and that is to agree with her.
+That's what I did, and she went on talking the same way for a
+little while, and I kept on agreeing and agreeing until she
+turned round on me.</p>
+
+<p>"You know you don't believe what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> you say," she said, and
+laughed. "You know that Jack is Jack, right enough; and it's Jack
+I am going to marry."</p>
+
+<p>Of course I said so, for I didn't care whether she thought me a
+weak creature or not. I wasn't going to say a word that could
+interfere with her happiness, and I didn't intend to go back on
+Jack Benton; but I remembered what he had said when he left the
+ship in Havana: that it wasn't his fault.</p>
+
+<p>"All the same," Miss Mamie went on, as a woman will, without
+realising what she was saying, "all the same, I wish I had seen
+it happen. Then I should know."</p>
+
+<p>Next minute she knew that she didn't mean that, and was afraid
+that I would think her heartless, and began to explain that she
+would really rather have died herself than have seen poor Jim go
+overboard. Women haven't got much sense, anyhow. All the same, I
+wondered how she could marry Jack if she had a doubt that he
+might be Jim after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> all. I suppose she had really got used
+to him since he had given up the sea and had stayed ashore, and
+she cared for him.</p>
+
+<p>Before long we heard Jack coming up behind us, for we had walked
+very slowly to wait for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Promise not to tell anybody what I said, captain," said Mamie,
+as girls do as soon as they have told their secrets.</p>
+
+<p>Anyhow, I know I never did tell any one but you. This is the
+first time I have talked of all that, the first time since I took
+the train from that place. I am not going to tell you all about
+the day. Miss Mamie introduced me to her mother, who was a quiet,
+hard-faced old New England farmer's widow, and to her cousins and
+relations; and there were plenty of them too at dinner, and there
+was the parson besides. He was what they call a Hard-shell
+Baptist in those parts, with a long, shaven upper lip and a
+whacking appetite, and a sort of superior look, as if he didn't
+expect to see many of us<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> hereafter&mdash;the way a New
+York pilot looks round, and orders things about when he boards an
+Italian cargo-dragger, as if the ship weren't up to much anyway,
+though it was his business to see that she didn't get aground.
+That's the way a good many parsons look, I think. He said grace
+as if he were ordering the men to sheet home the topgallant-sail
+and get the helm up. After dinner we went out on the piazza, for
+it was warm autumn weather; and the young folks went off in pairs
+along the beach road, and the tide had turned and was beginning
+to come in. The morning had been clear and fine, but by four
+o'clock it began to look like a fog, and the damp came up out of
+the sea and settled on everything. Jack said he'd go down to his
+cottage and have a last look, for the wedding was to be at five
+o'clock, or soon after, and he wanted to light the lights, so as
+to have things look cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>"I will just take a last look," he said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> again, as we
+reached the house. We went in, and he offered me another cigar,
+and I lit it and sat down in the parlour. I could hear him moving
+about, first in the kitchen and then upstairs, and then I heard
+him in the kitchen again; and then before I knew anything I heard
+somebody moving upstairs again. I knew he couldn't have got up
+those stairs as quick as that. He came into the parlour, and he
+took a cigar himself, and while he was lighting it I heard those
+steps again overhead. His hand shook, and he dropped the match.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you got in somebody to help?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"No," Jack answered sharply, and struck another match.</p>
+
+<p>"There's somebody upstairs, Jack," I said. "Don't you hear
+footsteps?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the wind, captain," Jack answered; but I could see he was
+trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"That isn't any wind, Jack," I said; "it's still and foggy. I'm
+sure there's somebody upstairs."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"If you are so sure of it, you'd better go and see for yourself,
+captain," Jack answered, almost angrily.</p>
+
+<p>He was angry because he was frightened. I left him before the
+fireplace, and went upstairs. There was no power on earth that
+could make me believe I hadn't heard a man's footsteps overhead.
+I knew there was somebody there. But there wasn't. I went into
+the bedroom, and it was all quiet, and the evening light was
+streaming in, reddish through the foggy air; and I went out on
+the landing and looked in the little back room that was meant for
+a servant girl or a child. And as I came back again I saw that
+the door of the other room was wide open, though I knew Jack had
+locked it. He had said the lock was no good. I looked in. It was
+a room as big as the bedroom, but almost dark, for it had
+shutters, and they were closed. There was a musty smell, as of
+old gear, and I could make out that the floor was littered with
+sea chests,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> and that there were oilskins and stuff piled
+on the bed. But I still believed that there was somebody
+upstairs, and I went in and struck a match and looked round. I
+could see the four walls and the shabby old paper, an iron bed
+and a cracked looking-glass, and the stuff on the floor. But
+there was nobody there. So I put out the match, and came out and
+shut the door and turned the key. Now, what I am telling you is
+the truth. When I had turned the key, I heard footsteps walking
+away from the door inside the room. Then I felt queer for a
+minute, and when I went downstairs I looked behind me, as the men
+at the wheel used to look behind them on board the <i>Helen B.</i></p>
+
+<p>Jack was already outside on the steps, smoking. I have an idea
+that he didn't like to stay inside alone.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" he asked, trying to seem careless.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't find anybody," I answered, "but I heard somebody moving
+about."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I told you it was the wind," said Jack, contemptuously. "I ought
+to know, for I live here, and I hear it often."</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to be said to that, so we began to walk down
+toward the beach. Jack said there wasn't any hurry, as it would
+take Miss Mamie some time to dress for the wedding. So we
+strolled along, and the sun was setting through the fog, and the
+tide was coming in. I knew the moon was full, and that when she
+rose the fog would roll away from the land, as it does sometimes.
+I felt that Jack didn't like my having heard that noise, so I
+talked of other things, and asked him about his prospects, and
+before long we were chatting as pleasantly as possible.</p>
+
+<p>I haven't been at many weddings in my life, and I don't suppose
+you have, but that one seemed to me to be all right until it was
+pretty near over; and then, I don't know whether it was part of
+the ceremony or not, but Jack put out his hand and took Mamie's
+and held<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> it a minute, and looked at her, while the parson
+was still speaking.</p>
+
+<p>Mamie turned as white as a sheet and screamed. It wasn't a loud
+scream, but just a sort of stifled little shriek, as if she were
+half frightened to death; and the parson stopped, and asked her
+what was the matter, and the family gathered round.</p>
+
+<p>"Your hand's like ice," said Mamie to Jack, "and it's all wet!"</p>
+
+<p>She kept looking at it, as she got hold of herself again.</p>
+
+<p>"It don't feel cold to me," said Jack, and he held the back of
+his hand against his cheek. "Try it again."</p>
+
+<p>Mamie held out hers, and touched the back of his hand, timidly at
+first, and then took hold of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, that's funny," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"She's been as nervous as a witch all day," said Mrs. Brewster,
+severely.</p>
+
+<p>"It is natural," said the parson, "that young Mrs. Benton should
+experience a little agitation at such a moment."<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Most of the bride's relations lived at a distance, and were busy
+people, so it had been arranged that the dinner we'd had in the
+middle of the day was to take the place of a dinner afterwards,
+and that we should just have a bite after the wedding was over,
+and then that everybody should go home, and the young couple
+would walk down to the cottage by themselves. When I looked out I
+could see the light burning brightly in Jack's cottage, a quarter
+of a mile away. I said I didn't think I could get any train to
+take me back before half-past nine, but Mrs. Brewster begged me
+to stay until it was time, as she said her daughter would want to
+take off her wedding dress before she went home; for she had put
+on something white with a wreath, that was very pretty, and she
+couldn't walk home like that, could she?</p>
+
+<p>So when we had all had a little supper the party began to break
+up, and when they were all gone Mrs. Brewster and Mamie went
+upstairs, and Jack and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> went out on the piazza, to have
+a smoke, as the old lady didn't like tobacco in the house.</p>
+
+<p>The full moon had risen now, and it was behind me as I looked
+down toward Jack's cottage, so that everything was clear and
+white, and there was only the light burning in the window. The
+fog had rolled down to the water's edge, and a little beyond, for
+the tide was high, or nearly, and was lapping up over the last
+reach of sand, within fifty feet of the beach road.</p>
+
+<p>Jack didn't say much as we sat smoking, but he thanked me for
+coming to his wedding, and I told him I hoped he would be happy;
+and so I did. I dare say both of us were thinking of those
+footsteps upstairs, just then, and that the house wouldn't seem
+so lonely with a woman in it. By and by we heard Mamie's voice
+talking to her mother on the stairs, and in a minute she was
+ready to go. She had put on again the dress she had worn in<span class='pagenum'><a
+name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> the morning, and it looked
+black at night, almost as black as Jack's coat.</p>
+
+<p>Well, they were ready to go now. It was all very quiet after the
+day's excitement, and I knew they would like to walk down that
+path alone now that they were man and wife at last. I bade them
+good-night, although Jack made a show of pressing me to go with
+them by the path as far as the cottage, instead of going to the
+station by the beach road. It was all very quiet, and it seemed
+to me a sensible way of getting married; and when Mamie kissed
+her mother good-night I just looked the other way, and knocked my
+ashes over the rail of the piazza. So they started down the
+straight path to Jack's cottage, and I waited a minute with Mrs.
+Brewster, looking after them, before taking my hat to go. They
+walked side by side, a little shyly at first, and then I saw Jack
+put his arm round her waist. As I looked he was on her left, and
+I saw the outline of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> the two figures very distinctly
+against the moonlight on the path; and the shadow on Mamie's
+right was broad and black as ink, and it moved along, lengthening
+and shortening with the unevenness of the ground beside the path.</p>
+
+<p>I thanked Mrs. Brewster, and bade her good-night; and though she
+was a hard New England woman her voice trembled a little as she
+answered, but being a sensible person she went in and shut the
+door behind her as I stepped out on the path. I looked after the
+couple in the distance a last time, meaning to go down to the
+road, so as not to overtake them; but when I had made a few steps
+I stopped and looked again, for I knew I had seen something
+queer, though I had only realised it afterwards. I looked again,
+and it was plain enough now; and I stood stock-still, staring at
+what I saw. Mamie was walking between two men. The second man was
+just the same height as Jack, both being about a half a head
+taller than she; Jack<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> on her left in his black tail-coat
+and round hat, and the other man on her right&mdash;well, he was
+a sailor-man in wet oilskins. I could see the moonlight shining
+on the water that ran down him, and on the little puddle that had
+settled where the flap of his sou'wester was turned up behind:
+and one of his wet, shiny arms was round Mamie's waist, just
+above Jack's. I was fast to the spot where I stood, and for a
+minute I thought I was crazy. We'd had nothing but some cider for
+dinner, and tea in the evening, otherwise I'd have thought
+something had got into my head, though I was never drunk in my
+life. It was more like a bad dream after that.</p>
+
+<p>I was glad Mrs. Brewster had gone in. As for me, I couldn't help
+following the three, in a sort of wonder to see what would
+happen, to see whether the sailor-man in his wet togs would just
+melt away into the moonshine. But he didn't.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 512px;"> <a name="linktoimage002" id="linktoimage002"></a> <img src="images/image_002a.jpg" width="512" height="400"
+alt="One of his wet, shiny arms was round Mamie&#39;s waist."
+title="" /> <span class="caption">One of his wet, shiny arms was round Mamie&#39;s
+waist.</span> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <p>I moved slowly, and I remembered afterwards that I
+walked on the grass,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> coming. I suppose it all happened
+in less than five minutes after that, but it seemed as if it must
+have taken an hour. Neither Jack nor Mamie seemed to notice the
+sailor. She didn't seem to know that his wet arm was round her,
+and little by little they got near the cottage, and I wasn't a
+hundred yards from them when they reached the door. Something
+made me stand still then. Perhaps it was fright, for I saw
+everything that happened just as I see you now.</p>
+
+<p>Mamie set her foot on the step to go up, and as she went forward
+I saw the sailor slowly lock his arm in Jack's, and Jack didn't
+move to go up. Then Mamie turned round on the step, and they all
+three stood that way for a second or two. She cried out
+then,&mdash;I heard a man cry like that once, when his arm was
+taken off by a steam-crane,&mdash;and she fell back in a heap on
+the little piazza.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>I tried to jump forward, but I couldn't move, and I felt my hair
+rising under my hat. The sailor turned slowly where he stood, and
+swung Jack round by the arm steadily and easily, and began to
+walk him down the pathway from the house. He walked him straight
+down that path, as steadily as Fate; and all the time I saw the
+moonlight shining on his wet oilskins. He walked him through the
+gate, and across the beach road, and out upon the wet sand, where
+the tide was high. Then I got my breath with a gulp, and ran for
+them across the grass, and vaulted over the fence, and stumbled
+across the road. But when I felt the sand under my feet, the two
+were at the water's edge; and when I reached the water they were
+far out, and up to their waists; and I saw that Jack Benton's
+head had fallen forward on his breast, and his free arm hung limp
+beside him, while his dead brother steadily marched him to his
+death. The moonlight was on the dark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> water, but the
+fog-bank was white beyond, and I saw them against it; and they
+went slowly and steadily down. The water was up to their armpits,
+and then up to their shoulders, and then I saw it rise up to the
+black rim of Jack's hat. But they never wavered; and the two
+heads went straight on, straight on, till they were under, and
+there was just a ripple in the moonlight where Jack had been.</p>
+
+<p>It has been on my mind to tell you that story, whenever I got a
+chance. You have known me, man and boy, a good many years; and I
+thought I would like to hear your opinion. Yes, that's what I
+always thought. It wasn't Jim that went overboard; it was Jack,
+and Jim just let him go when he might have saved him; and then
+Jim passed himself off for Jack with us, and with the girl. If
+that's what happened, he got what he deserved. People said the
+next day that Mamie found it out as they reached the house, and
+that her husband just walked out into the sea,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> and
+drowned himself; and they would have blamed me for not stopping
+him if they'd known that I was there. But I never told what I had
+seen, for they wouldn't have believed me. I just let them think I
+had come too late.</p>
+
+<p>When I reached the cottage and lifted Mamie up, she was raving
+mad. She got better afterwards, but she was never right in her
+head again.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, you want to know if they found Jack's body? I don't know
+whether it was his, but I read in a paper at a Southern port
+where I was with my new ship that two dead bodies had come ashore
+in a gale down East, in pretty bad shape. They were locked
+together, and one was a skeleton in oilskins.</p> <hr style="width:
+65%;" />
+
+<p>FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD the youngest of the four children of the
+well-known sculptor Thomas Crawford, was born in Rome, educated
+by a French governess; then at St Paul's School, Concord, N.H.;
+in the quiet country village of Hatfield Regis, under an English
+tutor; at Trinity College, Cambridge, where they thought him a
+mathematician in those days; at Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, and at
+the University of Rome, where a special interest in Oriental
+languages sent him to India with the idea of preparing for a
+professorship.</p>
+
+<p>At one time in India hard times nearly forced him into enlistment
+in the British army, but a chance opening sent him as editor of
+the <i>Indian Herald</i> to Allahabad. It was during the next eighteen
+months that he met at Simla the hero of his first novel, "Mr.
+Isaacs." "If it had not been for him," Mr. Crawford has been
+known to say, "I might at this moment be a professor of Sanskrit
+in some American college;" for that idea persisted after his
+return to the United States, where he entered Harvard for special
+study of the subject.</p>
+
+<p>But from the May evening when the story of the interesting man
+at Simla was first told in a club smoking-room overlooking Madison
+Square, Mr. Crawford's life has been one of hard literary work.
+He returned to Italy in 1883, spent most of the next year in
+Constantinople, where he was married to a daughter of General Berdan.
+From 1885 he has made his home in Sorrento, Italy, visiting America
+at intervals.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Isaacs," published in 1882, was followed almost at once by
+"Dr. Claudius." Then <i>The Atlantic Monthly</i> claimed a serial, "A
+Roman Singer," in 1883. Since that time the list of his novels
+has been increased to thirty-two, besides the historical and
+descriptive works entitled "Ave Roma Immortalis" and "The Rulers
+of the South."</p>
+
+<p>To Mr. Crawford, the development of a story and of the character
+which suggested it, is the pre&euml;minent thing. As the critics
+say:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"He is an artist, a born story-teller and colourist,
+imaginative and dramatic, virile and vivid."</p></div>
+
+<p>His wide range as a traveller has contributed doubtless to
+another characteristic quality:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"... his strength in unexcelled portraits of odd
+characters and his magical skill in seeming to make his
+readers witnesses of the spectacles."</p></div>
+
+<p>His intimate knowledge of many countries has resulted in an
+unequalled series of brilliant romances, including varied
+characters from the old families of Rome, the glassblowers of
+Venice, the silversmiths of Rome, the cigarette makers of Munich,
+the court of old Madrid, the Turks of Stamboul and the Bosphorus,
+simple sailors on the coast of Spain, Americans of modern New
+York and Bar Harbor, to Crusaders of the twelfth century. But
+whether the scene be in modern India, rural England, the Black
+Forest, or the palaces of Babylon, the story seizes on the
+imagination and fascinates the reader.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The romantic reader will find here a tale of love
+passionate and pure; the student of character, the
+subtle analysis and deft portrayal he loves; the
+historian will approve its conscientious historic
+accuracy; the lover of adventure will find his blood
+stir and pulses quicken as he reads."</p></div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<div class="block">
+<h3>THE NOVELS OF</h3>
+<h3>F. MARION CRAWFORD</h3>
+
+<h4>NEW UNIFORM EDITION</h4>
+
+
+<p>Dr. Claudius<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A Roman Singer<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Zoroaster<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Don Orsino<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Marion Darche<br />
+A Cigarette Maker's Romance and Khaled<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Taquisara<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Via Crucis<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Sant' Ilario<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Ralstons<br />
+Adam Johnstone's Son and A Rose of Yesterday<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Mr. Isaacs<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;A Tale of a Lonely Parish<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Saracinesca<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Paul Patoff<br />
+The Witch of Prague<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Pietro Ghisleri<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Corleone<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Children of the King<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Katherine Lauderdale<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;To Leeward<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><b>Each, bound in cloth, green and gold, $1.80</b></p>
+
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p><i>In preparation in the Uniform Edition</i></p>
+
+<p>An American Politician<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Marzio's Crucifix<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+With the Immortals<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Greifenstein<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+The Three Fates<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Casa Braccio. 2 vols.<br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Love in Idleness<br /><br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<h3>F. MARION CRAWFORD'S</h3>
+<h4>MOST RECENT NOVELS</h4>
+<p>CECILIA: A Story of Modern Rome<br />
+<i>Cloth</i>, $1.50<br />
+"The reincarnation of a great love is the real story, and that is well worth
+reading."&mdash;<i>San Francisco Chronicle.</i><br />
+<br /></p>
+<p>MARIETTA: A Maid of Venice<br />
+<i>Cloth</i>, $1.50<br />
+<br /></p>
+<p>IN THE PALACE OF THE KING<br />
+A Love Story of Old Madrid<br />
+<i>Illustrated, Cloth</i>, $1.50<br /></p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h4>HANDSOMELY ILLUSTRATED</h4>
+<h4>DESCRIPTIVE BOOKS</h4>
+<p>AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS<br />
+Studies from the Chronicles of Rome<br />
+<i>New edition. Revised. x + 613 pp. 8vo. $3.00, net.</i></p>
+
+
+<p>RULERS OF THE SOUTH<br />
+Sicily, Calabria, Malta<br />
+<i>In two volumes. Crown 8vo. $6.00, net.</i></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h4>The Macmillan Little Novels</h4>
+
+<h4>BY FAVOURITE AUTHORS</h4>
+<p style=' font-size:1.0em; text-align:center; margin-top:1em;'><b>Handsomely Bound in Decorated Cloth</b></p>
+<p style=' font-size:1.0em; text-align:center;'>16mo 50 cents each</p>
+
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; text-align:center; margin-top:2em;'><b>PHILOSOPHY FOUR</b></p>
+<p style=' font-size:1.0em; text-align:center;'>A STORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center;'>By Owen Wister</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center;'>Author of "The Virginian" etc.</p>
+
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; text-align:center; margin-top:1em;'><b>MAN OVERBOARD</b></p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center;'>By Owen Wister</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center;'>Author of "Cecilia," "Marietta," etc.</p>
+
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; text-align:center; margin-top:1em;'><b>MR. KEEGAN'S ELOPEMENT</b></p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center;'>By Winston Churchill</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center;'>Author of "The Crisis," "Richard Carvel," etc.</p>
+
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; text-align:center; margin-top:1em;'><b>MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND</b></p>
+<p style=' font-size:1.0em; text-align:center;'>By Gertrude Atherton</p>
+<p style=' font-size:0.8em; text-align:center;'>Author of "The Conqueror," "The Splendid Idle Forties,"
+etc.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<h4>THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 Fifth Avenue, New York</h4>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Man Overboard!, by F(rancis) Marion Crawford
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Man Overboard!, by F(rancis) Marion Crawford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Man Overboard!
+
+Author: F(rancis) Marion Crawford
+
+Release Date: February 12, 2008 [EBook #24584]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAN OVERBOARD! ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Roberta Staehlin, Grinnell
+College Library and the Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from
+scanned images of public domain material from the Google
+Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+    Man Overboard!
+    BY
+    F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+    AUTHOR OF "THE UPPER BERTH," "CECILIA,"
+    "THE WITCH OF PRAGUE," ETC.
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    New York
+    THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+    London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
+    1903
+
+    _All rights reserved_
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1903,
+    BY F. MARION CRAWFORD.
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1903,
+    BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    Set up and electrotyped April, 1903.
+
+    Norwood Press
+    J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+    Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    Portrait of F. Marion Crawford           _Frontispiece_
+
+                                               FACING PAGE
+    "He let go of the knife, and the point
+    stuck into the deck"                               54
+
+    "One of his wet, shiny arms was round
+    Mamie's waist"                                     92
+
+
+
+
+MAN OVERBOARD
+
+
+Yes--I have heard "Man overboard!" a good many times since I was
+a boy, and once or twice I have seen the man go. There are more
+men lost in that way than passengers on ocean steamers ever learn
+of. I have stood looking over the rail on a dark night, when
+there was a step beside me, and something flew past my head like
+a big black bat--and then there was a splash! Stokers often go
+like that. They go mad with the heat, and they slip up on deck
+and are gone before anybody can stop them, often without being
+seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he
+generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason. I have seen a
+man empty his revolver into a crowd of emigrants forward, and
+then go over like a rocket. Of course, any officer who respects
+himself will do what he can to pick a man up, if the weather is
+not so heavy that he would have to risk his ship; but I don't
+think I remember seeing a man come back when he was once fairly
+gone more than two or three times in all my life, though we have
+often picked up the life-buoy, and sometimes the fellow's cap.
+Stokers and passengers jump over; I never knew a sailor to do
+that, drunk or sober. Yes, they say it has happened on hard
+ships, but I never knew a case myself. Once in a long time a man
+is fished out when it is just too late, and dies in the boat
+before you can get him aboard, and--well, I don't know that I
+ever told that story since it happened--I knew a fellow who went
+over, and came back dead. I didn't see him after he came back;
+only one of us did, but we all knew he was there.
+
+No, I am not giving you "sharks." There isn't a shark in this
+story, and I don't know that I would tell it at all if we weren't
+alone, just you and I. But you and I have seen things in various
+parts, and maybe you will understand. Anyhow, you know that I am
+telling what I know about, and nothing else; and it has been on
+my mind to tell you ever since it happened, only there hasn't
+been a chance.
+
+It's a long story, and it took some time to happen; and it began
+a good many years ago, in October, as well as I can remember. I
+was mate then; I passed the local Marine Board for master about
+three years later. She was the _Helen B. Jackson_, of New York,
+with lumber for the West Indies, four-masted schooner, Captain
+Hackstaff. She was an old-fashioned one, even then--no steam
+donkey, and all to do by hand. There were still sailors in the
+coasting trade in those days, you remember. She wasn't a hard
+ship, for the old man was better than most of them, though he
+kept to himself and had a face like a monkey-wrench. We were
+thirteen, all told, in the ship's company; and some of them
+afterwards thought that might have had something to do with it,
+but I had all that nonsense knocked out of me when I was a boy. I
+don't mean to say that I like to go to sea on a Friday, but I
+_have_ gone to sea on a Friday, and nothing has happened; and
+twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands
+didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened
+either--nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two, or a
+little canvas. Whenever I have been wrecked, we had sailed as
+cheerily as you please--no thirteens, no Fridays, no dead men in
+the hold. I believe it generally happens that way.
+
+I dare say you remember those two Benton boys that were so much
+alike? It is no wonder, for they were twin brothers. They shipped
+with us as boys on the old _Boston Belle_, when you were mate
+and I was before the mast. I never was quite sure which was which
+of those two, even then; and when they both had beards it was
+harder than ever to tell them apart. One was Jim, and the other
+was Jack; James Benton and John Benton. The only difference I
+ever could see was, that one seemed to be rather more cheerful
+and inclined to talk than the other; but one couldn't even be
+sure of that. Perhaps they had moods. Anyhow, there was one of
+them that used to whistle when he was alone. He only knew one
+tune, and that was "Nancy Lee," and the other didn't know any
+tune at all; but I may be mistaken about that, too. Perhaps they
+both knew it.
+
+Well, those two Benton boys turned up on board the _Helen B.
+Jackson_. They had been on half a dozen ships since the _Boston
+Belle_, and they had grown up and were good seamen. They had
+reddish beards and bright blue eyes and freckled faces; and they
+were quiet fellows, good workmen on rigging, pretty willing, and
+both good men at the wheel. They managed to be in the same
+watch--it was the port watch on the _Helen B._, and that was
+mine, and I had great confidence in them both. If there was any
+job aloft that needed two hands, they were always the first to
+jump into the rigging; but that doesn't often happen on a
+fore-and-aft schooner. If it breezed up, and the jibtopsail was
+to be taken in, they never minded a wetting, and they would be
+out at the bowsprit end before there was a hand at the downhaul.
+The men liked them for that, and because they didn't blow about
+what they could do. I remember one day in a reefing job, the
+downhaul parted and came down on deck from the peak of the
+spanker. When the weather moderated, and we shook the reefs out,
+the downhaul was forgotten until we happened to think we might
+soon need it again. There was some sea on, and the boom was off
+and the gaff was slamming. One of those Benton boys was at the
+wheel, and before I knew what he was doing, the other was out on
+the gaff with the end of the new downhaul, trying to reeve it
+through its block. The one who was steering watched him, and got
+as white as cheese. The other one was swinging about on the gaff
+end, and every time she rolled to leeward he brought up with a
+jerk that would have sent anything but a monkey flying into
+space. But he didn't leave it until he had rove the new rope, and
+he got back all right. I think it was Jack at the wheel; the one
+that seemed more cheerful, the one that whistled "Nancy Lee." He
+had rather have been doing the job himself than watch his brother
+do it, and he had a scared look; but he kept her as steady as he
+could in the swell, and he drew a long breath when Jim had worked
+his way back to the peak-halliard block, and had something to
+hold on to. I think it was Jim.
+
+They had good togs, too, and they were neat and clean men in the
+forecastle. I knew they had nobody belonging to them ashore,--no
+mother, no sisters, and no wives; but somehow they both looked as
+if a woman overhauled them now and then. I remember that they had
+one ditty bag between them, and they had a woman's thimble in it.
+One of the men said something about it to them, and they looked
+at each other; and one smiled, but the other didn't. Most of
+their clothes were alike, but they had one red guernsey between
+them. For some time I used to think it was always the same one
+that wore it, and I thought that might be a way to tell them
+apart. But then I heard one asking the other for it, and saying
+that the other had worn it last. So that was no sign either. The
+cook was a West Indiaman, called James Lawley; his father had
+been hanged for putting lights in cocoanut trees where they
+didn't belong. But he was a good cook, and knew his business; and
+it wasn't soup-and-bully and dog's-body every Sunday. That's
+what I meant to say. On Sunday the cook called both those boys
+Jim, and on week-days he called them Jack. He used to say he must
+be right sometimes if he did that, because even the hands on a
+painted clock point right twice a day.
+
+What started me to trying for some way of telling the Bentons
+apart was this. I heard them talking about a girl. It was at
+night, in our watch, and the wind had headed us off a little
+rather suddenly, and when we had flattened in the jibs, we clewed
+down the topsails, while the two Benton boys got the spanker
+sheet aft. One of them was at the helm. I coiled down the
+mizzen-topsail downhaul myself, and was going aft to see how she
+headed up, when I stopped to look at a light, and leaned against
+the deck-house. While I was standing there I heard the two boys
+talking. It sounded as if they had talked of the same thing
+before, and as far as I could tell, the voice I heard first
+belonged to the one who wasn't quite so cheerful as the
+other,--the one who was Jim when one knew which he was.
+
+"Does Mamie know?" Jim asked.
+
+"Not yet," Jack answered quietly. He was at the wheel. "I mean to
+tell her next time we get home."
+
+"All right."
+
+That was all I heard, because I didn't care to stand there
+listening while they were talking about their own affairs; so I
+went aft to look into the binnacle, and I told the one at the
+wheel to keep her so as long as she had way on her, for I thought
+the wind would back up again before long, and there was land to
+leeward. When he answered, his voice, somehow, didn't sound like
+the cheerful one. Perhaps his brother had relieved the wheel
+while they had been speaking, but what I had heard set me
+wondering which of them it was that had a girl at home. There's
+lots of time for wondering on a schooner in fair weather.
+
+After that I thought I noticed that the two brothers were more
+silent when they were together. Perhaps they guessed that I had
+overheard something that night, and kept quiet when I was about.
+Some men would have amused themselves by trying to chaff them
+separately about the girl at home, and I suppose whichever one it
+was would have let the cat out of the bag if I had done that.
+But, somehow, I didn't like to. Yes, I was thinking of getting
+married myself at that time, so I had a sort of fellow-feeling
+for whichever one it was, that made me not want to chaff him.
+
+They didn't talk much, it seemed to me; but in fair weather, when
+there was nothing to do at night, and one was steering, the other
+was everlastingly hanging round as if he were waiting to relieve
+the wheel, though he might have been enjoying a quiet nap for all
+I cared in such weather. Or else, when one was taking his turn at
+the lookout, the other would be sitting on an anchor beside him.
+One kept near the other, at night more than in the daytime. I
+noticed that. They were fond of sitting on that anchor, and they
+generally tucked away their pipes under it, for the _Helen B._
+was a dry boat in most weather, and like most fore-and-afters was
+better on a wind than going free. With a beam sea we sometimes
+shipped a little water aft. We were by the stern, anyhow, on that
+voyage, and that is one reason why we lost the man.
+
+We fell in with a southerly gale, south-east at first; and then
+the barometer began to fall while you could watch it, and a long
+swell began to come up from the south'ard. A couple of months
+earlier we might have been in for a cyclone, but it's "October
+all over" in those waters, as you know better than I. It was just
+going to blow, and then it was going to rain, that was all; and
+we had plenty of time to make everything snug before it breezed
+up much. It blew harder after sunset, and by the time it was
+quite dark it was a full gale. We had shortened sail for it, but
+as we were by the stern we were carrying the spanker close reefed
+instead of the storm trysail. She steered better so, as long as
+we didn't have to heave to. I had the first watch with the Benton
+boys, and we had not been on deck an hour when a child might have
+seen that the weather meant business.
+
+The old man came up on deck and looked round, and in less than a
+minute he told us to give her the trysail. That meant heaving to,
+and I was glad of it; for though the _Helen B._ was a good vessel
+enough, she wasn't a new ship by a long way, and it did her no
+good to drive her in that weather. I asked whether I should call
+all hands, but just then the cook came aft, and the old man said
+he thought we could manage the job without waking the sleepers,
+and the trysail was handy on deck already, for we hadn't been
+expecting anything better. We were all in oilskins, of course,
+and the night was as black as a coal mine, with only a ray of
+light from the slit in the binnacle shield, and you couldn't tell
+one man from another except by his voice. The old man took the
+wheel; we got the boom amidships, and he jammed her into the wind
+until she had hardly any way. It was blowing now, and it was all
+that I and two others could do to get in the slack of the
+downhaul, while the others lowered away at the peak and throat,
+and we had our hands full to get a couple of turns round the wet
+sail. It's all child's play on a fore-and-after compared with
+reefing topsails in anything like weather, but the gear of a
+schooner sometimes does unhandy things that you don't expect, and
+those everlasting long halliards get foul of everything if they
+get adrift. I remember thinking how unhandy that particular job
+was. Somebody unhooked the throat-halliard block, and thought he
+had hooked it into the head-cringle of the trysail, and sang out
+to hoist away, but he had missed it in the dark, and the heavy
+block went flying into the lee rigging, and nearly killed him
+when it swung back with the weather roll. Then the old man got
+her up in the wind until the jib was shaking like thunder; then
+he held her off, and she went off as soon as the head-sails
+filled, and he couldn't get her back again without the spanker.
+Then the _Helen B._ did her favourite trick, and before we had
+time to say much we had a sea over the quarter and were up to our
+waists, with the parrels of the trysail only half becketed round
+the mast, and the deck so full of gear that you couldn't put your
+foot on a plank, and the spanker beginning to get adrift again,
+being badly stopped, and the general confusion and hell's delight
+that you can only have on a fore-and-after when there's nothing
+really serious the matter. Of course, I don't mean to say that
+the old man couldn't have steered his trick as well as you or I
+or any other seaman; but I don't believe he had ever been on
+board the _Helen B._ before, or had his hand on her wheel till
+then; and he didn't know her ways. I don't mean to say that what
+happened was his fault. I don't know whose fault it was. Perhaps
+nobody was to blame. But I knew something happened somewhere on
+board when we shipped that sea, and you'll never get it out of my
+head. I hadn't any spare time myself, for I was becketing the
+rest of the trysail to the mast. We were on the starboard tack,
+and the throat-halliard came down to port as usual, and I suppose
+there were at least three men at it, hoisting away, while I was
+at the beckets.
+
+Now I am going to tell you something. You have known me, man and
+boy, several voyages; and you are older than I am; and you have
+always been a good friend to me. Now, do you think I am the sort
+of man to think I hear things where there isn't anything to hear,
+or to think I see things when there is nothing to see? No, you
+don't. Thank you. Well now, I had passed the last becket, and I
+sang out to the men to sway away, and I was standing on the jaws
+of the spanker-gaff, with my left hand on the bolt-rope of the
+trysail, so that I could feel when it was board-taut, and I
+wasn't thinking of anything except being glad the job was over,
+and that we were going to heave her to. It was as black as a
+coal-pocket, except that you could see the streaks on the seas as
+they went by, and abaft the deck-house I could see the ray of
+light from the binnacle on the captain's yellow oilskin as he
+stood at the wheel--or rather I might have seen it if I had
+looked round at that minute. But I didn't look round. I heard a
+man whistling. It was "Nancy Lee," and I could have sworn that
+the man was right over my head in the crosstrees. Only somehow I
+knew very well that if anybody could have been up there, and
+could have whistled a tune, there were no living ears sharp
+enough to hear it on deck then. I heard it distinctly, and at the
+same time I heard the real whistling of the wind in the weather
+rigging, sharp and clear as the steam-whistle on a Dago's
+peanut-cart in New York. That was all right, that was as it
+should be; but the other wasn't right; and I felt queer and
+stiff, as if I couldn't move, and my hair was curling against the
+flannel lining of my sou'wester, and I thought somebody had
+dropped a lump of ice down my back.
+
+I said that the noise of the wind in the rigging was real, as if
+the other wasn't, for I felt that it wasn't, though I heard it.
+But it was, all the same; for the captain heard it, too. When I
+came to relieve the wheel, while the men were clearing up decks,
+he was swearing. He was a quiet man, and I hadn't heard him swear
+before, and I don't think I did again, though several queer
+things happened after that. Perhaps he said all he had to say
+then; I don't see how he could have said anything more. I used to
+think nobody could swear like a Dane, except a Neapolitan or a
+South American; but when I had heard the old man I changed my
+mind. There's nothing afloat or ashore that can beat one of your
+quiet American skippers, if he gets off on that tack. I didn't
+need to ask him what was the matter, for I knew he had heard
+"Nancy Lee," as I had, only it affected us differently.
+
+He did not give me the wheel, but told me to go forward and get
+the second bonnet off the staysail, so as to keep her up better.
+As we tailed on to the sheet when it was done, the man next me
+knocked his sou'wester off against my shoulder, and his face came
+so close to me that I could see it in the dark. It must have been
+very white for me to see it, but I only thought of that
+afterwards. I don't see how any light could have fallen upon it,
+but I knew it was one of the Benton boys. I don't know what made
+me speak to him. "Hullo, Jim! Is that you?" I asked. I don't know
+why I said Jim, rather than Jack.
+
+"I am Jack," he answered. We made all fast, and things were much
+quieter.
+
+"The old man heard you whistling 'Nancy Lee,' just now," I said,
+"and he didn't like it."
+
+It was as if there were a white light inside his face, and it was
+ghastly. I know his teeth chattered. But he didn't say anything,
+and the next minute he was somewhere in the dark trying to find
+his sou'wester at the foot of the mast.
+
+When all was quiet, and she was hove to, coming to and falling
+off her four points as regularly as a pendulum, and the helm
+lashed a little to the lee, the old man turned in again, and I
+managed to light a pipe in the lee of the deck-house, for there
+was nothing more to be done till the gale chose to moderate, and
+the ship was as easy as a baby in its cradle. Of course the cook
+had gone below, as he might have done an hour earlier; so there
+were supposed to be four of us in the watch. There was a man at
+the lookout, and there was a hand by the wheel, though there was
+no steering to be done, and I was having my pipe in the lee of
+the deck-house, and the fourth man was somewhere about decks,
+probably having a smoke too. I thought some skippers I had sailed
+with would have called the watch aft, and given them a drink
+after that job, but it wasn't cold, and I guessed that our old
+man wouldn't be particularly generous in that way. My hands and
+feet were red-hot, and it would be time enough to get into dry
+clothes when it was my watch below; so I stayed where I was, and
+smoked. But by and by, things being so quiet, I began to wonder
+why nobody moved on deck; just that sort of restless wanting to
+know where every man is that one sometimes feels in a gale of
+wind on a dark night. So when I had finished my pipe I began to
+move about. I went aft, and there was a man leaning over the
+wheel, with his legs apart and both hands hanging down in the
+light from the binnacle, and his sou'wester over his eyes. Then
+I went forward, and there was a man at the lookout, with his back
+against the foremast, getting what shelter he could from the
+staysail. I knew by his small height that he was not one of the
+Benton boys. Then I went round by the weather side, and poked
+about in the dark, for I began to wonder where the other man was.
+But I couldn't find him, though I searched the decks until I got
+right aft again. It was certainly one of the Benton boys that was
+missing, but it wasn't like either of them to go below to change
+his clothes in such warm weather. The man at the wheel was the
+other, of course. I spoke to him.
+
+"Jim, what's become of your brother?"
+
+"I am Jack, sir."
+
+"Well, then, Jack, where's Jim? He's not on deck."
+
+"I don't know, sir."
+
+When I had come up to him he had stood up from force of instinct,
+and had laid his hands on the spokes as if he were steering,
+though the wheel was lashed; but he still bent his face down, and
+it was half hidden by the edge of his sou'wester, while he seemed
+to be staring at the compass. He spoke in a very low voice, but
+that was natural, for the captain had left his door open when he
+turned in, as it was a warm night in spite of the storm, and
+there was no fear of shipping any more water now.
+
+"What put it into your head to whistle like that, Jack? You've
+been at sea long enough to know better."
+
+He said something, but I couldn't hear the words; it sounded as
+if he were denying the charge.
+
+"Somebody whistled," I said.
+
+He didn't answer, and then, I don't know why, perhaps because the
+old man hadn't given us a drink, I cut half an inch off the plug
+of tobacco I had in my oilskin pocket, and gave it to him. He
+knew my tobacco was good, and he shoved it into his mouth with a
+word of thanks. I was on the weather side of the wheel.
+
+"Go forward and see if you can find Jim," I said.
+
+He started a little, and then stepped back and passed behind me,
+and was going along the weather side. Maybe his silence about the
+whistling had irritated me, and his taking it for granted that
+because we were hove to and it was a dark night, he might go
+forward any way he pleased. Anyhow, I stopped him, though I spoke
+good-naturedly enough.
+
+"Pass to leeward, Jack," I said.
+
+He didn't answer, but crossed the deck between the binnacle and
+the deck-house to the lee side. She was only falling off and
+coming to, and riding the big seas as easily as possible, but the
+man was not steady on his feet and reeled against the corner of
+the deck-house and then against the lee rail. I was quite sure he
+couldn't have had anything to drink, for neither of the brothers
+were the kind to hide rum from their shipmates, if they had any,
+and the only spirits that were aboard were locked up in the
+captain's cabin. I wondered whether he had been hit by the
+throat-halliard block and was hurt.
+
+I left the wheel and went after him, but when I got to the corner
+of the deck-house I saw that he was on a full run forward, so I
+went back. I watched the compass for a while, to see how far she
+went off, and she must have come to again half a dozen times
+before I heard voices, more than three or four, forward; and then
+I heard the little West Indies cook's voice, high and shrill
+above the rest:--
+
+"Man overboard!"
+
+There wasn't anything to be done, with the ship hove-to and the
+wheel lashed. If there was a man overboard, he must be in the
+water right alongside. I couldn't imagine how it could have
+happened, but I ran forward instinctively. I came upon the cook
+first, half-dressed in his shirt and trousers, just as he had
+tumbled out of his bunk. He was jumping into the main rigging,
+evidently hoping to see the man, as if any one could have seen
+anything on such a night, except the foam-streaks on the black
+water, and now and then the curl of a breaking sea as it went
+away to leeward. Several of the men were peering over the rail
+into the dark. I caught the cook by the foot, and asked who was
+gone.
+
+"It's Jim Benton," he shouted down to me. "He's not aboard this
+ship!"
+
+There was no doubt about that. Jim Benton was gone; and I knew in
+a flash that he had been taken off by that sea when we were
+setting the storm trysail. It was nearly half an hour since then;
+she had run like wild for a few minutes until we got her hove-to,
+and no swimmer that ever swam could have lived as long as that in
+such a sea. The men knew it as well as I, but still they stared
+into the foam as if they had any chance of seeing the lost man. I
+let the cook get into the rigging and joined the men, and asked
+if they had made a thorough search on board, though I knew they
+had and that it could not take long, for he wasn't on deck, and
+there was only the forecastle below.
+
+"That sea took him over, sir, as sure as you're born," said one
+of the men close beside me.
+
+We had no boat that could have lived in that sea, of course, and
+we all knew it. I offered to put one over, and let her drift
+astern two or three cable's-lengths by a line, if the men thought
+they could haul me aboard again; but none of them would listen to
+that, and I should probably have been drowned if I had tried it,
+even with a life-belt; for it was a breaking sea. Besides, they
+all knew as well as I did that the man could not be right in our
+wake. I don't know why I spoke again. "Jack Benton, are you
+there? Will you go if I will?"
+
+"No, sir," answered a voice; and that was all.
+
+By that time the old man was on deck, and I felt his hand on my
+shoulder rather roughly, as if he meant to shake me.
+
+"I'd reckoned you had more sense, Mr. Torkeldsen," he said. "God
+knows I would risk my ship to look for him, if it were any use;
+but he must have gone half an hour ago."
+
+He was a quiet man, and the men knew he was right, and that they
+had seen the last of Jim Benton when they were bending the
+trysail--if anybody had seen him then. The captain went below
+again, and for some time the men stood around Jack, quite near
+him, without saying anything, as sailors do when they are sorry
+for a man and can't help him; and then the watch below turned in
+again, and we were three on deck.
+
+Nobody can understand that there can be much consolation in a
+funeral, unless he has felt that blank feeling there is when a
+man's gone overboard whom everybody likes. I suppose landsmen
+think it would be easier if they didn't have to bury their
+fathers and mothers and friends; but it wouldn't be. Somehow the
+funeral keeps up the idea of something beyond. You may believe in
+that something just the same; but a man who has gone in the dark,
+between two seas, without a cry, seems much more beyond reach
+than if he were still lying on his bed, and had only just stopped
+breathing. Perhaps Jim Benton knew that, and wanted to come back
+to us. I don't know, and I am only telling you what happened, and
+you may think what you like.
+
+Jack stuck by the wheel that night until the watch was over. I
+don't know whether he slept afterwards, but when I came on deck
+four hours later, there he was again, in his oilskins, with his
+sou'wester over his eyes, staring into the binnacle. We saw that
+he would rather stand there, and we left him alone. Perhaps it
+was some consolation to him to get that ray of light when
+everything was so dark. It began to rain, too, as it can when a
+southerly gale is going to break up, and we got every bucket and
+tub on board, and set them under the booms to catch the fresh
+water for washing our clothes. The rain made it very thick, and I
+went and stood under the lee of the staysail, looking out. I
+could tell that day was breaking, because the foam was whiter in
+the dark where the seas crested, and little by little the black
+rain grew grey and steamy, and I couldn't see the red glare of
+the port light on the water when she went off and rolled to
+leeward. The gale had moderated considerably, and in another hour
+we should be under way again. I was still standing there when
+Jack Benton came forward. He stood still a few minutes near me.
+The rain came down in a solid sheet, and I could see his wet
+beard and a corner of his cheek, too, grey in the dawn. Then he
+stooped down and began feeling under the anchor for his pipe. We
+had hardly shipped any water forward, and I suppose he had some
+way of tucking the pipe in, so that the rain hadn't floated it
+off. Presently he got on his legs again, and I saw that he had
+two pipes in his hand. One of them had belonged to his brother,
+and after looking at them a moment I suppose he recognised his
+own, for he put it in his mouth, dripping with water. Then he
+looked at the other fully a minute without moving. When he had
+made up his mind, I suppose, he quietly chucked it over the lee
+rail, without even looking round to see whether I was watching
+him. I thought it was a pity, for it was a good wooden pipe, with
+a nickel ferrule, and somebody would have been glad to have it.
+But I didn't like to make any remark, for he had a right to do
+what he pleased with what had belonged to his dead brother. He
+blew the water out of his own pipe, and dried it against his
+jacket, putting his hand inside his oilskin; he filled it,
+standing under the lee of the foremast, got a light after wasting
+two or three matches, and turned the pipe upside down in his
+teeth, to keep the rain out of the bowl. I don't know why I
+noticed everything he did, and remember it now; but somehow I
+felt sorry for him, and I kept wondering whether there was
+anything I could say that would make him feel better. But I
+didn't think of anything, and as it was broad daylight I went aft
+again, for I guessed that the old man would turn out before long
+and order the spanker set and the helm up. But he didn't turn out
+before seven bells, just as the clouds broke and showed blue sky
+to leeward--"the Frenchman's barometer," you used to call it.
+
+Some people don't seem to be so dead, when they are dead, as
+others are. Jim Benton was like that. He had been on my watch,
+and I couldn't get used to the idea that he wasn't about decks
+with me. I was always expecting to see him, and his brother was
+so exactly like him that I often felt as if I did see him and
+forgot he was dead, and made the mistake of calling Jack by his
+name; though I tried not to, because I knew it must hurt. If ever
+Jack had been the cheerful one of the two, as I had always
+supposed he had been, he had changed very much, for he grew to be
+more silent than Jim had ever been.
+
+One fine afternoon I was sitting on the main-hatch, overhauling
+the clock-work of the taffrail-log, which hadn't been registering
+very well of late, and I had got the cook to bring me a
+coffee-cup to hold the small screws as I took them out, and a
+saucer for the sperm-oil I was going to use. I noticed that he
+didn't go away, but hung round without exactly watching what I
+was doing, as if he wanted to say something to me. I thought if
+it were worth much he would say it anyhow, so I didn't ask him
+questions; and sure enough he began of his own accord before
+long. There was nobody on deck but the man at the wheel, and the
+other man away forward.
+
+"Mr. Torkeldsen," the cook began, and then stopped.
+
+I supposed he was going to ask me to let the watch break out a
+barrel of flour, or some salt horse.
+
+"Well, doctor?" I asked, as he didn't go on.
+
+"Well, Mr. Torkeldsen," he answered, "I somehow want to ask you
+whether you think I am giving satisfaction on this ship, or not?"
+
+"So far as I know, you are, doctor. I haven't heard any
+complaints from the forecastle, and the captain has said nothing,
+and I think you know your business, and the cabin-boy is bursting
+out of his clothes. That looks as if you are giving satisfaction.
+What makes you think you are not?"
+
+I am not good at giving you that West Indies talk, and sha'n't
+try; but the doctor beat about the bush awhile, and then he told
+me he thought the men were beginning to play tricks on him, and
+he didn't like it, and thought he hadn't deserved it, and would
+like his discharge at our next port. I told him he was a d----d
+fool, of course, to begin with; and that men were more apt to try
+a joke with a chap they liked than with anybody they wanted to
+get rid of; unless it was a bad joke, like flooding his bunk, or
+filling his boots with tar. But it wasn't that kind of practical
+joke. The doctor said that the men were trying to frighten him,
+and he didn't like it, and that they put things in his way that
+frightened him. So I told him he was a d----d fool to be
+frightened, anyway, and I wanted to know what things they put in
+his way. He gave me a queer answer. He said they were spoons and
+forks, and odd plates, and a cup now and then, and such things.
+
+I set down the taffrail-log on the bit of canvas I had put under
+it, and looked at the doctor. He was uneasy, and his eyes had a
+sort of hunted look, and his yellow face looked grey. He wasn't
+trying to make trouble. He was in trouble. So I asked him
+questions.
+
+He said he could count as well as anybody, and do sums without
+using his fingers, but that when he couldn't count any other way
+he did use his fingers, and it always came out the same. He said
+that when he and the cabin-boy cleared up after the men's meals
+there were more things to wash than he had given out. There'd be
+a fork more, or there'd be a spoon more, and sometimes there'd be
+a spoon and a fork, and there was always a plate more. It wasn't
+that he complained of that. Before poor Jim Benton was lost they
+had a man more to feed, and his gear to wash up after meals, and
+that was in the contract, the doctor said. It would have been if
+there were twenty in the ship's company; but he didn't think it
+was right for the men to play tricks like that. He kept his
+things in good order, and he counted them, and he was responsible
+for them, and it wasn't right that the men should take more
+things than they needed when his back was turned, and just soil
+them and mix them up with their own, so as to make him think--
+
+He stopped there, and looked at me, and I looked at him. I didn't
+know what he thought, but I began to guess. I wasn't going to
+humour any such nonsense as that, so I told him to speak to the
+men himself, and not come bothering me about such things.
+
+"Count the plates and forks and spoons before them when they sit
+down to table, and tell them that's all they'll get; and when
+they have finished, count the things again, and if the count
+isn't right, find out who did it. You know it must be one of
+them. You're not a green hand; you've been going to sea ten or
+eleven years, and don't want any lesson about how to behave if
+the boys play a trick on you."
+
+"If I could catch him," said the cook, "I'd have a knife into him
+before he could say his prayers."
+
+Those West India men are always talking about knives, especially
+when they are badly frightened. I knew what he meant, and didn't
+ask him, but went on cleaning the brass cogwheels of the patent
+log and oiling the bearings with a feather. "Wouldn't it be
+better to wash it out with boiling water, sir?" asked the cook,
+in an insinuating tone. He knew that he had made a fool of
+himself, and was anxious to make it right again.
+
+I heard no more about the odd platter and gear for two or three
+days, though I thought about his story a good deal. The doctor
+evidently believed that Jim Benton had come back, though he
+didn't quite like to say so. His story had sounded silly enough
+on a bright afternoon, in fair weather, when the sun was on the
+water, and every rag was drawing in the breeze, and the sea
+looked as pleasant and harmless as a cat that has just eaten a
+canary. But when it was toward the end of the first watch, and
+the waning moon had not risen yet, and the water was like still
+oil, and the jibs hung down flat and helpless like the wings of a
+dead bird--it wasn't the same then. More than once I have started
+then, and looked round when a fish jumped, expecting to see a
+face sticking up out of the water with its eyes shut. I think we
+all felt something like that at the time.
+
+One afternoon we were putting a fresh service on the
+jib-sheet-pennant. It wasn't my watch, but I was standing by
+looking on. Just then Jack Benton came up from below, and went to
+look for his pipe under the anchor. His face was hard and drawn,
+and his eyes were cold like steel balls. He hardly ever spoke
+now, but he did his duty as usual, and nobody had to complain of
+him, though we were all beginning to wonder how long his grief
+for his dead brother was going to last like that. I watched him
+as he crouched down, and ran his hand into the hiding-place for
+the pipe. When he stood up, he had two pipes in his hand.
+
+Now, I remembered very well seeing him throw one of those pipes
+away, early in the morning after the gale; and it came to me now,
+and I didn't suppose he kept a stock of them under the anchor. I
+caught sight of his face, and it was greenish white, like the
+foam on shallow water, and he stood a long time looking at the
+two pipes. He wasn't looking to see which was his, for I wasn't
+five yards from him as he stood, and one of those pipes had been
+smoked that day, and was shiny where his hand had rubbed it, and
+the bone mouthpiece was chafed white where his teeth had bitten
+it. The other was water-logged. It was swelled and cracking with
+wet, and it looked to me as if there were a little green weed on
+it.
+
+Jack Benton turned his head rather stealthily as I looked away,
+and then he hid the thing in his trousers pocket, and went aft on
+the lee side, out of sight. The men had got the sheet pennant on
+a stretch to serve it, but I ducked under it and stood where I
+could see what Jack did, just under the fore-staysail. He
+couldn't see me, and he was looking about for something. His hand
+shook as he picked up a bit of half-bent iron rod, about a foot
+long, that had been used for turning an eye-bolt, and had been
+left on the main-hatch. His hand shook as he got a piece of
+marline out of his pocket, and made the water-logged pipe fast to
+the iron. He didn't mean it to get adrift, either, for he took
+his turns carefully, and hove them taut and then rode them, so
+that they couldn't slip, and made the end fast with two
+half-hitches round the iron, and hitched it back on itself. Then
+he tried it with his hands, and looked up and down the deck
+furtively, and then quietly dropped the pipe and iron over the
+rail, so that I didn't even hear the splash. If anybody was
+playing tricks on board, they weren't meant for the cook.
+
+I asked some questions about Jack Benton, and one of the men told
+me that he was off his feed, and hardly ate anything, and
+swallowed all the coffee he could lay his hands on, and had used
+up all his own tobacco and had begun on what his brother had
+left.
+
+"The doctor says it ain't so, sir," said the man, looking at me
+shyly, as if he didn't expect to be believed; "the doctor says
+there's as much eaten from breakfast to breakfast as there was
+before Jim fell overboard, though there's a mouth less and
+another that eats nothing. I says it's the cabin-boy that gets
+it. He's bu'sting."
+
+I told him that if the cabin-boy ate more than his share, he must
+work more than his share, so as to balance things. But the man
+laughed queerly, and looked at me again.
+
+"I only said that, sir, just like that. We all know it ain't so."
+
+"Well, how is it?"
+
+"How is it?" asked the man, half-angry all at once. "I don't know
+how it is, but there's a hand on board that's getting his whack
+along with us as regular as the bells."
+
+"Does he use tobacco?" I asked, meaning to laugh it out of him,
+but as I spoke I remembered the water-logged pipe.
+
+"I guess he's using his own still," the man answered, in a queer,
+low voice. "Perhaps he'll take some one else's when his is all
+gone."
+
+It was about nine o'clock in the morning, I remember, for just
+then the captain called to me to stand by the chronometer while
+he took his fore observation. Captain Hackstaff wasn't one of
+those old skippers who do everything themselves with a pocket
+watch, and keep the key of the chronometer in their waistcoat
+pocket, and won't tell the mate how far the dead reckoning is
+out. He was rather the other way, and I was glad of it, for he
+generally let me work the sights he took, and just ran his eye
+over my figures afterwards. I am bound to say his eye was pretty
+good, for he would pick out a mistake in a logarithm, or tell me
+that I had worked the "Equation of Time" with the wrong sign,
+before it seemed to me that he could have got as far as "half the
+sum, minus the altitude." He was always right, too, and besides
+he knew a lot about iron ships and local deviation, and adjusting
+the compass, and all that sort of thing. I don't know how he came
+to be in command of a fore-and-aft schooner. He never talked
+about himself, and maybe he had just been mate on one of those
+big steel square-riggers, and something had put him back. Perhaps
+he had been captain, and had got his ship aground, through no
+particular fault of his, and had to begin over again. Sometimes
+he talked just like you and me, and sometimes he would speak more
+like books do, or some of those Boston people I have heard. I
+don't know. We have all been shipmates now and then with men who
+have seen better days. Perhaps he had been in the Navy, but what
+makes me think he couldn't have been, was that he was a thorough
+good seaman, a regular old wind-jammer, and understood sail,
+which those Navy chaps rarely do. Why, you and I have sailed with
+men before the mast who had their master's certificates in their
+pockets,--English Board of Trade certificates, too,--who could
+work a double altitude if you would lend them a sextant and give
+them a look at the chronometer, as well as many a man who
+commands a big square-rigger. Navigation ain't everything, nor
+seamanship, either. You've got to have it in you, if you mean to
+get there.
+
+I don't know how our captain heard that there was trouble
+forward. The cabin-boy may have told him, or the men may have
+talked outside his door when they relieved the wheel at night.
+Anyhow, he got wind of it, and when he had got his sight that
+morning he had all hands aft, and gave them a lecture. It was
+just the kind of talk you might have expected from him. He said
+he hadn't any complaint to make, and that so far as he knew
+everybody on board was doing his duty, and that he was given to
+understand that the men got their whack, and were satisfied. He
+said his ship was never a hard ship, and that he liked quiet, and
+that was the reason he didn't mean to have any nonsense, and the
+men might just as well understand that, too. We'd had a great
+misfortune, he said, and it was nobody's fault. We had lost a
+man we all liked and respected, and he felt that everybody in the
+ship ought to be sorry for the man's brother, who was left
+behind, and that it was rotten lubberly childishness, and unjust
+and unmanly and cowardly, to be playing schoolboy tricks with
+forks and spoons and pipes, and that sort of gear. He said it had
+got to stop right now, and that was all, and the men might go
+forward. And so they did.
+
+It got worse after that, and the men watched the cook, and the
+cook watched the men, as if they were trying to catch each other;
+but I think everybody felt that there was something else. One
+evening, at supper-time, I was on deck, and Jack came aft to
+relieve the wheel while the man who was steering got his supper.
+He hadn't got past the main-hatch on the lee side, when I heard a
+man running in slippers that slapped on the deck, and there was a
+sort of a yell and I saw the coloured cook going for Jack, with
+a carving-knife in his hand. I jumped to get between them, and
+Jack turned round short, and put out his hand. I was too far to
+reach them, and the cook jabbed out with his knife. But the blade
+didn't get anywhere near Benton. The cook seemed to be jabbing it
+into the air again and again, at least four feet short of the
+mark. Then he dropped his right hand, and I saw the whites of his
+eyes in the dusk, and he reeled up against the pin-rail, and
+caught hold of a belaying-pin with his left. I had reached him by
+that time, and grabbed hold of his knife-hand and the other too,
+for I thought he was going to use the pin; but Jack Benton was
+standing staring stupidly at him, as if he didn't understand. But
+instead, the cook was holding on because he couldn't stand, and
+his teeth were chattering, and he let go of the knife, and the
+point stuck into the deck.
+
+"He's crazy!" said Jack Benton, and that was all he said; and he
+went aft.
+
+[Illustration: HE LET GO OF THE KNIFE, AND THE POINT STUCK INTO
+THE DECK.]
+
+When he was gone, the cook began to come to, and he spoke quite
+low, near my ear.
+
+"There were two of them! So help me God, there were two of them!"
+
+I don't know why I didn't take him by the collar, and give him a
+good shaking; but I didn't. I just picked up the knife and gave
+it to him, and told him to go back to his galley, and not to make
+a fool of himself. You see, he hadn't struck at Jack, but at
+something he thought he saw, and I knew what it was, and I felt
+that same thing, like a lump of ice sliding down my back, that I
+felt that night when we were bending the trysail.
+
+When the men had seen him running aft, they jumped up after him,
+but they held off when they saw that I had caught him. By and by,
+the man who had spoken to me before told me what had happened. He
+was a stocky little chap, with a red head.
+
+"Well," he said, "there isn't much to tell. Jack Benton had been
+eating his supper with the rest of us. He always sits at the
+after corner of the table, on the port side. His brother used to
+sit at the end, next him. The doctor gave him a thundering big
+piece of pie to finish up with, and when he had finished he
+didn't stop for a smoke, but went off quick to relieve the wheel.
+Just as he had gone, the doctor came in from the galley, and when
+he saw Jack's empty plate he stood stock still staring at it; and
+we all wondered what was the matter, till we looked at the plate.
+There were two forks in it, sir, lying side by side. Then the
+doctor grabbed his knife, and flew up through the hatch like a
+rocket. The other fork was there all right, Mr. Torkeldsen, for
+we all saw it and handled it; and we all had our own. That's all
+I know."
+
+I didn't feel that I wanted to laugh when he told me that story;
+but I hoped the old man wouldn't hear it, for I knew he wouldn't
+believe it, and no captain that ever sailed likes to have
+stories like that going round about his ship. It gives her a bad
+name. But that was all anybody ever saw except the cook, and he
+isn't the first man who has thought he saw things without having
+any drink in him. I think, if the doctor had been weak in the
+head as he was afterwards, he might have done something foolish
+again, and there might have been serious trouble. But he didn't.
+Only, two or three times I saw him looking at Jack Benton in a
+queer, scared way, and once I heard him talking to himself.
+
+"There's two of them! So help me God, there's two of them!"
+
+He didn't say anything more about asking for his discharge, but I
+knew well enough that if he got ashore at the next port we should
+never see him again, if he had to leave his kit behind him, and
+his money, too. He was scared all through, for good and all; and
+he wouldn't be right again till he got another ship. It's no use
+to talk to a man when he gets like that, any more than it is to
+send a boy to the main truck when he has lost his nerve.
+
+Jack Benton never spoke of what happened that evening. I don't
+know whether he knew about the two forks, or not; or whether he
+understood what the trouble was. Whatever he knew from the other
+men, he was evidently living under a hard strain. He was quiet
+enough, and too quiet; but his face was set, and sometimes it
+twitched oddly when he was at the wheel, and he would turn his
+head round sharp to look behind him. A man doesn't do that
+naturally, unless there's a vessel that he thinks is creeping up
+on the quarter. When that happens, if the man at the wheel takes
+a pride in his ship, he will almost always keep glancing over his
+shoulder to see whether the other fellow is gaining. But Jack
+Benton used to look round when there was nothing there; and what
+is curious, the other men seemed to catch the trick when they
+were steering. One day the old man turned out just as the man at
+the wheel looked behind him.
+
+"What are you looking at?" asked the captain.
+
+"Nothing, sir," answered the man.
+
+"Then keep your eye on the mizzen-royal," said the old man, as if
+he were forgetting that we weren't a square-rigger.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," said the man.
+
+The captain told me to go below and work up the latitude from the
+dead-reckoning, and he went forward of the deck-house and sat
+down to read, as he often did. When I came up, the man at the
+wheel was looking round again, and I stood beside him and just
+asked him quietly what everybody was looking at, for it was
+getting to be a general habit. He wouldn't say anything at first,
+but just answered that it was nothing. But when he saw that I
+didn't seem to care, and just stood there as if there were
+nothing more to be said, he naturally began to talk.
+
+He said that it wasn't that he saw anything, because there wasn't
+anything to see except the spanker sheet just straining a little, and
+working in the sheaves of the blocks as the schooner rose to the short
+seas. There wasn't anything to be seen, but it seemed to him that the
+sheet made a queer noise in the blocks. It was a new manilla sheet; and
+in dry weather it did make a little noise, something between a creak and
+a wheeze. I looked at it and looked at the man, and said nothing; and
+presently he went on. He asked me if I didn't notice anything peculiar
+about the noise. I listened awhile, and said I didn't notice anything.
+Then he looked rather sheepish, but said he didn't think it could be his
+own ears, because every man who steered his trick heard the same thing
+now and then,--sometimes once in a day, sometimes once in a night,
+sometimes it would go on a whole hour.
+
+"It sounds like sawing wood," I said, just like that.
+
+"To us it sounds a good deal more like a man whistling 'Nancy
+Lee.'" He started nervously as he spoke the last words. "There,
+sir, don't you hear it?" he asked suddenly.
+
+I heard nothing but the creaking of the manilla sheet. It
+was getting near noon, and fine, clear weather in southern
+waters,--just the sort of day and the time when you would least
+expect to feel creepy. But I remembered how I had heard that same
+tune overhead at night in a gale of wind a fortnight earlier,
+and I am not ashamed to say that the same sensation came over
+me now, and I wished myself well out of the _Helen B._, and
+aboard of any old cargo-dragger, with a windmill on deck, and an
+eighty-nine-forty-eighter for captain, and a fresh leak whenever
+it breezed up.
+
+Little by little during the next few days life on board that
+vessel came to be about as unbearable as you can imagine. It
+wasn't that there was much talk, for I think the men were shy
+even of speaking to each other freely about what they thought.
+The whole ship's company grew silent, until one hardly ever heard
+a voice, except giving an order and the answer. The men didn't
+sit over their meals when their watch was below, but either
+turned in at once or sat about on the forecastle smoking their
+pipes without saying a word. We were all thinking of the same
+thing. We all felt as if there were a hand on board, sometimes
+below, sometimes about decks, sometimes aloft, sometimes on the
+boom end; taking his full share of what the others got, but doing
+no work for it. We didn't only feel it, we knew it. He took up no
+room, he cast no shadow, and we never heard his footfall on deck;
+but he took his whack with the rest as regular as the bells,
+and--he whistled "Nancy Lee." It was like the worst sort of dream
+you can imagine; and I dare say a good many of us tried to
+believe it was nothing else sometimes, when we stood looking over
+the weather rail in fine weather with the breeze in our faces;
+but if we happened to turn round and look into each other's eyes,
+we knew it was something worse than any dream could be; and we
+would turn away from each other with a queer, sick feeling,
+wishing that we could just for once see somebody who didn't know
+what we knew.
+
+There's not much more to tell about the _Helen B. Jackson_ so far
+as I am concerned. We were more like a shipload of lunatics than
+anything else when we ran in under Morro Castle, and anchored in
+Havana. The cook had brain fever, and was raving mad in his
+delirium; and the rest of the men weren't far from the same
+state. The last three or four days had been awful, and we had
+been as near to having a mutiny on board as I ever want to be.
+The men didn't want to hurt anybody; but they wanted to get away
+out of that ship, if they had to swim for it; to get away from
+that whistling, from that dead shipmate who had come back, and
+who filled the ship with his unseen self. I know that if the old
+man and I hadn't kept a sharp lookout the men would have put a
+boat over quietly on one of those calm nights, and pulled away,
+leaving the captain and me and the mad cook to work the schooner
+into harbour. We should have done it somehow, of course, for we
+hadn't far to run if we could get a breeze; and once or twice I
+found myself wishing that the crew were really gone, for the
+awful state of fright in which they lived was beginning to work
+on me too. You see I partly believed and partly didn't; but
+anyhow I didn't mean to let the thing get the better of me,
+whatever it was. I turned crusty, too, and kept the men at work
+on all sorts of jobs, and drove them to it until they wished I
+was overboard, too. It wasn't that the old man and I were trying
+to drive them to desert without their pay, as I am sorry to say
+a good many skippers and mates do, even now. Captain Hackstaff
+was as straight as a string, and I didn't mean those poor fellows
+should be cheated out of a single cent; and I didn't blame them
+for wanting to leave the ship, but it seemed to me that the only
+chance to keep everybody sane through those last days was to work
+the men till they dropped. When they were dead tired they slept a
+little, and forgot the thing until they had to tumble up on deck
+and face it again. That was a good many years ago. Do you believe
+that I can't hear "Nancy Lee" now, without feeling cold down my
+back? For I heard it too, now and then, after the man had
+explained why he was always looking over his shoulder. Perhaps it
+was imagination. I don't know. When I look back it seems to me
+that I only remember a long fight against something I couldn't
+see, against an appalling presence, against something worse than
+cholera or Yellow Jack or the plague--and goodness knows the
+mildest of them is bad enough when it breaks out at sea. The men
+got as white as chalk, and wouldn't go about decks alone at
+night, no matter what I said to them. With the cook raving in
+his bunk the forecastle would have been a perfect hell, and
+there wasn't a spare cabin on board. There never is on a
+fore-and-after. So I put him into mine, and he was more quiet
+there, and at last fell into a sort of stupor as if he were going
+to die. I don't know what became of him, for we put him ashore
+alive and left him in the hospital.
+
+The men came aft in a body, quiet enough, and asked the captain
+if he wouldn't pay them off, and let them go ashore. Some men
+wouldn't have done it, for they had shipped for the voyage, and
+had signed articles. But the captain knew that when sailors get
+an idea into their heads they're no better than children; and if
+he forced them to stay aboard he wouldn't get much work out of
+them, and couldn't rely on them in a difficulty. So he paid them
+off, and let them go. When they had gone forward to get their
+kits, he asked me whether I wanted to go too, and for a minute I
+had a sort of weak feeling that I might just as well. But I
+didn't, and he was a good friend to me afterwards. Perhaps he was
+grateful to me for sticking to him.
+
+When the men went off he didn't come on deck; but it was my duty
+to stand by while they left the ship. They owed me a grudge for
+making them work during the last few days, and most of them
+dropped into the boat without so much as a word or a look, as
+sailors will. Jack Benton was the last to go over the side, and
+he stood still a minute and looked at me, and his white face
+twitched. I thought he wanted to say something.
+
+"Take care of yourself, Jack," said I. "So long!"
+
+It seemed as if he couldn't speak for two or three seconds; then
+his words came thick.
+
+"It wasn't my fault, Mr. Torkeldsen. I swear it wasn't my fault!"
+
+That was all; and he dropped over the side, leaving me to wonder
+what he meant.
+
+The captain and I stayed on board, and the ship-chandler got a
+West India boy to cook for us.
+
+That evening, before turning in, we were standing by the rail
+having a quiet smoke, watching the lights of the city, a quarter
+of a mile off, reflected in the still water. There was music of
+some sort ashore, in a sailors' dance-house, I dare say; and I
+had no doubt that most of the men who had left the ship were
+there, and already full of jiggy-jiggy. The music played a lot of
+sailors' tunes that ran into each other, and we could hear the
+men's voices in the chorus now and then. One followed another,
+and then it was "Nancy Lee," loud and clear, and the men singing
+"Yo-ho, heave-ho!"
+
+"I have no ear for music," said Captain Hackstaff, "but it
+appears to me that's the tune that man was whistling the night we
+lost the man overboard. I don't know why it has stuck in my head,
+and of course it's all nonsense; but it seems to me that I have
+heard it all the rest of the trip."
+
+I didn't say anything to that, but I wondered just how much the
+old man had understood. Then we turned in, and I slept ten hours
+without opening my eyes.
+
+I stuck to the _Helen B. Jackson_ after that as long as I could
+stand a fore-and-after; but that night when we lay in Havana was
+the last time I ever heard "Nancy Lee" on board of her. The spare
+hand had gone ashore with the rest, and he never came back, and
+he took his tune with him; but all those things are just as clear
+in my memory as if they had happened yesterday.
+
+After that I was in deep water for a year or more, and after I
+came home I got my certificate, and what with having friends and
+having saved a little money, and having had a small legacy from
+an uncle in Norway, I got the command of a coastwise vessel, with
+a small share in her. I was at home three weeks before going to
+sea, and Jack Benton saw my name in the local papers, and wrote
+to me.
+
+He said that he had left the sea, and was trying farming, and he
+was going to be married, and he asked if I wouldn't come over for
+that, for it wasn't more than forty minutes by train; and he and
+Mamie would be proud to have me at the wedding. I remembered how
+I had heard one brother ask the other whether Mamie knew. That
+meant, whether she knew he wanted to marry her, I suppose. She
+had taken her time about it, for it was pretty nearly three years
+then since we had lost Jim Benton overboard.
+
+I had nothing particular to do while we were getting ready for
+sea; nothing to prevent me from going over for a day, I mean;
+and I thought I'd like to see Jack Benton, and have a look at the
+girl he was going to marry. I wondered whether he had grown
+cheerful again, and had got rid of that drawn look he had when he
+told me it wasn't his fault. How could it have been his fault,
+anyhow? So I wrote to Jack that I would come down and see him
+married; and when the day came I took the train, and got there
+about ten o'clock in the morning. I wish I hadn't. Jack met me at
+the station, and he told me that the wedding was to be late in
+the afternoon, and that they weren't going off on any silly
+wedding trip, he and Mamie, but were just going to walk home from
+her mother's house to his cottage. That was good enough for him,
+he said. I looked at him hard for a minute after we met. When we
+had parted I had a sort of idea that he might take to drink, but
+he hadn't. He looked very respectable and well-to-do in his black
+coat and high city collar; but he was thinner and bonier than
+when I had known him, and there were lines in his face, and I
+thought his eyes had a queer look in them, half shifty, half
+scared. He needn't have been afraid of me, for I didn't mean to
+talk to his bride about the _Helen B. Jackson_.
+
+He took me to his cottage first, and I could see that he was
+proud of it. It wasn't above a cable's-length from high-water
+mark, but the tide was running out, and there was already a broad
+stretch of hard wet sand on the other side of the beach road.
+Jack's bit of land ran back behind the cottage about a quarter of
+a mile, and he said that some of the trees we saw were his. The
+fences were neat and well kept, and there was a fair-sized barn a
+little way from the cottage, and I saw some nice-looking cattle
+in the meadows; but it didn't look to me to be much of a farm,
+and I thought that before long Jack would have to leave his wife
+to take care of it, and go to sea again. But I said it was a nice
+farm, so as to seem pleasant, and as I don't know much about
+these things I dare say it was, all the same. I never saw it but
+that once. Jack told me that he and his brother had been born in
+the cottage, and that when their father and mother died they
+leased the land to Mamie's father, but had kept the cottage to
+live in when they came home from sea for a spell. It was as neat
+a little place as you would care to see: the floors as clean as
+the decks of a yacht, and the paint as fresh as a man-o'-war.
+Jack always was a good painter. There was a nice parlour on the
+ground floor, and Jack had papered it and had hung the walls with
+photographs of ships and foreign ports, and with things he had
+brought home from his voyages: a boomerang, a South Sea club,
+Japanese straw hats and a Gibraltar fan with a bull-fight on it,
+and all that sort of gear. It looked to me as if Miss Mamie had
+taken a hand in arranging it. There was a bran-new polished iron
+Franklin stove set into the old fireplace, and a red table-cloth
+from Alexandria, embroidered with those outlandish Egyptian
+letters. It was all as bright and homelike as possible, and he
+showed me everything, and was proud of everything, and I liked
+him the better for it. But I wished that his voice would sound
+more cheerful, as it did when we first sailed in the _Helen B._,
+and that the drawn look would go out of his face for a minute.
+Jack showed me everything, and took me upstairs, and it was all
+the same: bright and fresh and ready for the bride. But on the
+upper landing there was a door that Jack didn't open. When we
+came out of the bedroom I noticed that it was ajar, and Jack shut
+it quickly and turned the key.
+
+"That lock's no good," he said, half to himself. "The door is
+always open."
+
+I didn't pay much attention to what he said, but as we went down
+the short stairs, freshly painted and varnished so that I was
+almost afraid to step on them, he spoke again.
+
+"That was his room, sir. I have made a sort of store-room of it."
+
+"You may be wanting it in a year or so," I said, wishing to be
+pleasant.
+
+"I guess we won't use his room for that," Jack answered in a low
+voice.
+
+Then he offered me a cigar from a fresh box in the parlour, and
+he took one, and we lit them, and went out; and as we opened the
+front door there was Mamie Brewster standing in the path as if
+she were waiting for us. She was a fine-looking girl, and I
+didn't wonder that Jack had been willing to wait three years for
+her. I could see that she hadn't been brought up on steam-heat
+and cold storage, but had grown into a woman by the sea-shore.
+She had brown eyes, and fine brown hair, and a good figure.
+
+"This is Captain Torkeldsen," said Jack. "This is Miss Brewster,
+captain; and she is glad to see you."
+
+"Well, I am," said Miss Mamie, "for Jack has often talked to us
+about you, captain."
+
+She put out her hand, and took mine and shook it heartily, and I
+suppose I said something, but I know I didn't say much.
+
+The front door of the cottage looked toward the sea, and there
+was a straight path leading to the gate on the beach road. There
+was another path from the steps of the cottage that turned to the
+right, broad enough for two people to walk easily, and it led
+straight across the fields through gates to a larger house about
+a quarter of a mile away. That was where Mamie's mother lived,
+and the wedding was to be there. Jack asked me whether I would
+like to look round the farm before dinner, but I told him I
+didn't know much about farms. Then he said he just wanted to look
+round himself a bit, as he mightn't have much more chance that
+day; and he smiled, and Mamie laughed.
+
+"Show the captain the way to the house, Mamie," he said. "I'll
+be along in a minute."
+
+So Mamie and I began to walk along the path, and Jack went up
+toward the barn.
+
+"It was sweet of you to come, captain," Miss Mamie began, "for I
+have always wanted to see you."
+
+"Yes," I said, expecting something more.
+
+"You see, I always knew them both," she went on. "They used to
+take me out in a dory to catch codfish when I was a little girl,
+and I liked them both," she added thoughtfully. "Jack doesn't
+care to talk about his brother now. That's natural. But you won't
+mind telling me how it happened, will you? I should so much like
+to know."
+
+Well, I told her about the voyage and what happened that night
+when we fell in with a gale of wind, and that it hadn't been
+anybody's fault, for I wasn't going to admit that it was my old
+captain's, if it was. But I didn't tell her anything about what
+happened afterwards. As she didn't speak, I just went on talking
+about the two brothers, and how like they had been, and how when
+poor Jim was drowned and Jack was left, I took Jack for him. I
+told her that none of us had ever been sure which was which.
+
+"I wasn't always sure myself," she said, "unless they were
+together. Leastways, not for a day or two after they came home
+from sea. And now it seems to me that Jack is more like poor Jim,
+as I remember him, than he ever was, for Jim was always more
+quiet, as if he were thinking."
+
+I told her I thought so, too. We passed the gate and went into
+the next field, walking side by side. Then she turned her head to
+look for Jack, but he wasn't in sight. I sha'n't forget what she
+said next.
+
+"Are you sure now?" she asked.
+
+I stood stock-still, and she went on a step, and then turned and
+looked at me. We must have looked at each other while you could
+count five or six.
+
+"I know it's silly," she went on, "it's silly, and it's awful,
+too, and I have got no right to think it, but sometimes I can't
+help it. You see it was always Jack I meant to marry."
+
+"Yes," I said stupidly, "I suppose so."
+
+She waited a minute, and began walking on slowly before she went
+on again.
+
+"I am talking to you as if you were an old friend, captain, and I
+have only known you five minutes. It was Jack I meant to marry,
+but now he is so like the other one."
+
+When a woman gets a wrong idea into her head, there is only one
+way to make her tired of it, and that is to agree with her.
+That's what I did, and she went on talking the same way for a
+little while, and I kept on agreeing and agreeing until she
+turned round on me.
+
+"You know you don't believe what you say," she said, and
+laughed. "You know that Jack is Jack, right enough; and it's Jack
+I am going to marry."
+
+Of course I said so, for I didn't care whether she thought me a
+weak creature or not. I wasn't going to say a word that could
+interfere with her happiness, and I didn't intend to go back on
+Jack Benton; but I remembered what he had said when he left the
+ship in Havana: that it wasn't his fault.
+
+"All the same," Miss Mamie went on, as a woman will, without
+realising what she was saying, "all the same, I wish I had seen
+it happen. Then I should know."
+
+Next minute she knew that she didn't mean that, and was afraid
+that I would think her heartless, and began to explain that she
+would really rather have died herself than have seen poor Jim go
+overboard. Women haven't got much sense, anyhow. All the same, I
+wondered how she could marry Jack if she had a doubt that he
+might be Jim after all. I suppose she had really got used to him
+since he had given up the sea and had stayed ashore, and she
+cared for him.
+
+Before long we heard Jack coming up behind us, for we had walked
+very slowly to wait for him.
+
+"Promise not to tell anybody what I said, captain," said Mamie,
+as girls do as soon as they have told their secrets.
+
+Anyhow, I know I never did tell any one but you. This is the
+first time I have talked of all that, the first time since I took
+the train from that place. I am not going to tell you all about
+the day. Miss Mamie introduced me to her mother, who was a quiet,
+hard-faced old New England farmer's widow, and to her cousins and
+relations; and there were plenty of them too at dinner, and there
+was the parson besides. He was what they call a Hard-shell
+Baptist in those parts, with a long, shaven upper lip and a
+whacking appetite, and a sort of superior look, as if he didn't
+expect to see many of us hereafter--the way a New York pilot
+looks round, and orders things about when he boards an Italian
+cargo-dragger, as if the ship weren't up to much anyway, though
+it was his business to see that she didn't get aground. That's
+the way a good many parsons look, I think. He said grace as if he
+were ordering the men to sheet home the topgallant-sail and get
+the helm up. After dinner we went out on the piazza, for it was
+warm autumn weather; and the young folks went off in pairs along
+the beach road, and the tide had turned and was beginning to come
+in. The morning had been clear and fine, but by four o'clock it
+began to look like a fog, and the damp came up out of the sea and
+settled on everything. Jack said he'd go down to his cottage and
+have a last look, for the wedding was to be at five o'clock, or
+soon after, and he wanted to light the lights, so as to have
+things look cheerful.
+
+"I will just take a last look," he said again, as we reached the
+house. We went in, and he offered me another cigar, and I lit it
+and sat down in the parlour. I could hear him moving about, first
+in the kitchen and then upstairs, and then I heard him in the
+kitchen again; and then before I knew anything I heard somebody
+moving upstairs again. I knew he couldn't have got up those
+stairs as quick as that. He came into the parlour, and he took a
+cigar himself, and while he was lighting it I heard those steps
+again overhead. His hand shook, and he dropped the match.
+
+"Have you got in somebody to help?" I asked.
+
+"No," Jack answered sharply, and struck another match.
+
+"There's somebody upstairs, Jack," I said. "Don't you hear
+footsteps?"
+
+"It's the wind, captain," Jack answered; but I could see he was
+trembling.
+
+"That isn't any wind, Jack," I said; "it's still and foggy. I'm
+sure there's somebody upstairs."
+
+"If you are so sure of it, you'd better go and see for yourself,
+captain," Jack answered, almost angrily.
+
+He was angry because he was frightened. I left him before the
+fireplace, and went upstairs. There was no power on earth that
+could make me believe I hadn't heard a man's footsteps overhead.
+I knew there was somebody there. But there wasn't. I went into
+the bedroom, and it was all quiet, and the evening light was
+streaming in, reddish through the foggy air; and I went out on
+the landing and looked in the little back room that was meant for
+a servant girl or a child. And as I came back again I saw that
+the door of the other room was wide open, though I knew Jack had
+locked it. He had said the lock was no good. I looked in. It was
+a room as big as the bedroom, but almost dark, for it had
+shutters, and they were closed. There was a musty smell, as of
+old gear, and I could make out that the floor was littered with
+sea chests, and that there were oilskins and stuff piled on the
+bed. But I still believed that there was somebody upstairs, and I
+went in and struck a match and looked round. I could see the four
+walls and the shabby old paper, an iron bed and a cracked
+looking-glass, and the stuff on the floor. But there was nobody
+there. So I put out the match, and came out and shut the door and
+turned the key. Now, what I am telling you is the truth. When I
+had turned the key, I heard footsteps walking away from the door
+inside the room. Then I felt queer for a minute, and when I went
+downstairs I looked behind me, as the men at the wheel used to
+look behind them on board the _Helen B._
+
+Jack was already outside on the steps, smoking. I have an idea
+that he didn't like to stay inside alone.
+
+"Well?" he asked, trying to seem careless.
+
+"I didn't find anybody," I answered, "but I heard somebody moving
+about." "I told you it was the wind," said Jack, contemptuously.
+"I ought to know, for I live here, and I hear it often."
+
+There was nothing to be said to that, so we began to walk down
+toward the beach. Jack said there wasn't any hurry, as it would
+take Miss Mamie some time to dress for the wedding. So we
+strolled along, and the sun was setting through the fog, and the
+tide was coming in. I knew the moon was full, and that when she
+rose the fog would roll away from the land, as it does sometimes.
+I felt that Jack didn't like my having heard that noise, so I
+talked of other things, and asked him about his prospects, and
+before long we were chatting as pleasantly as possible.
+
+I haven't been at many weddings in my life, and I don't suppose
+you have, but that one seemed to me to be all right until it was
+pretty near over; and then, I don't know whether it was part of
+the ceremony or not, but Jack put out his hand and took Mamie's
+and held it a minute, and looked at her, while the parson was
+still speaking.
+
+Mamie turned as white as a sheet and screamed. It wasn't a loud
+scream, but just a sort of stifled little shriek, as if she were
+half frightened to death; and the parson stopped, and asked her
+what was the matter, and the family gathered round.
+
+"Your hand's like ice," said Mamie to Jack, "and it's all wet!"
+
+She kept looking at it, as she got hold of herself again.
+
+"It don't feel cold to me," said Jack, and he held the back of
+his hand against his cheek. "Try it again."
+
+Mamie held out hers, and touched the back of his hand, timidly at
+first, and then took hold of it.
+
+"Why, that's funny," she said.
+
+"She's been as nervous as a witch all day," said Mrs. Brewster,
+severely.
+
+"It is natural," said the parson, "that young Mrs. Benton should
+experience a little agitation at such a moment."
+
+Most of the bride's relations lived at a distance, and were busy
+people, so it had been arranged that the dinner we'd had in the
+middle of the day was to take the place of a dinner afterwards,
+and that we should just have a bite after the wedding was over,
+and then that everybody should go home, and the young couple
+would walk down to the cottage by themselves. When I looked out I
+could see the light burning brightly in Jack's cottage, a quarter
+of a mile away. I said I didn't think I could get any train to
+take me back before half-past nine, but Mrs. Brewster begged me
+to stay until it was time, as she said her daughter would want to
+take off her wedding dress before she went home; for she had put
+on something white with a wreath, that was very pretty, and she
+couldn't walk home like that, could she?
+
+So when we had all had a little supper the party began to break
+up, and when they were all gone Mrs. Brewster and Mamie went
+upstairs, and Jack and I went out on the piazza, to have a
+smoke, as the old lady didn't like tobacco in the house.
+
+The full moon had risen now, and it was behind me as I looked
+down toward Jack's cottage, so that everything was clear and
+white, and there was only the light burning in the window. The
+fog had rolled down to the water's edge, and a little beyond, for
+the tide was high, or nearly, and was lapping up over the last
+reach of sand, within fifty feet of the beach road.
+
+Jack didn't say much as we sat smoking, but he thanked me for
+coming to his wedding, and I told him I hoped he would be happy;
+and so I did. I dare say both of us were thinking of those
+footsteps upstairs, just then, and that the house wouldn't seem
+so lonely with a woman in it. By and by we heard Mamie's voice
+talking to her mother on the stairs, and in a minute she was
+ready to go. She had put on again the dress she had worn in the
+morning, and it looked black at night, almost as black as Jack's
+coat.
+
+Well, they were ready to go now. It was all very quiet after the
+day's excitement, and I knew they would like to walk down that
+path alone now that they were man and wife at last. I bade them
+good-night, although Jack made a show of pressing me to go with
+them by the path as far as the cottage, instead of going to the
+station by the beach road. It was all very quiet, and it seemed
+to me a sensible way of getting married; and when Mamie kissed
+her mother good-night I just looked the other way, and knocked my
+ashes over the rail of the piazza. So they started down the
+straight path to Jack's cottage, and I waited a minute with Mrs.
+Brewster, looking after them, before taking my hat to go. They
+walked side by side, a little shyly at first, and then I saw Jack
+put his arm round her waist. As I looked he was on her left, and
+I saw the outline of the two figures very distinctly against the
+moonlight on the path; and the shadow on Mamie's right was broad
+and black as ink, and it moved along, lengthening and shortening
+with the unevenness of the ground beside the path.
+
+I thanked Mrs. Brewster, and bade her good-night; and though she
+was a hard New England woman her voice trembled a little as she
+answered, but being a sensible person she went in and shut the
+door behind her as I stepped out on the path. I looked after the
+couple in the distance a last time, meaning to go down to the
+road, so as not to overtake them; but when I had made a few steps
+I stopped and looked again, for I knew I had seen something
+queer, though I had only realised it afterwards. I looked again,
+and it was plain enough now; and I stood stock-still, staring at
+what I saw. Mamie was walking between two men. The second man was
+just the same height as Jack, both being about a half a head
+taller than she; Jack on her left in his black tail-coat and
+round hat, and the other man on her right--well, he was a
+sailor-man in wet oilskins. I could see the moonlight shining on
+the water that ran down him, and on the little puddle that had
+settled where the flap of his sou'wester was turned up behind:
+and one of his wet, shiny arms was round Mamie's waist, just
+above Jack's. I was fast to the spot where I stood, and for a
+minute I thought I was crazy. We'd had nothing but some cider for
+dinner, and tea in the evening, otherwise I'd have thought
+something had got into my head, though I was never drunk in my
+life. It was more like a bad dream after that.
+
+I was glad Mrs. Brewster had gone in. As for me, I couldn't help
+following the three, in a sort of wonder to see what would
+happen, to see whether the sailor-man in his wet togs would just
+melt away into the moonshine. But he didn't.
+
+[Illustration: ONE OF HIS WET, SHINY ARMS WAS ROUND MAMIE'S WAIST.]
+
+I moved slowly, and I remembered afterwards that I walked on the
+grass, instead of on the path, as if I were afraid they might
+hear me coming. I suppose it all happened in less than five
+minutes after that, but it seemed as if it must have taken an
+hour. Neither Jack nor Mamie seemed to notice the sailor. She
+didn't seem to know that his wet arm was round her, and little by
+little they got near the cottage, and I wasn't a hundred yards
+from them when they reached the door. Something made me stand
+still then. Perhaps it was fright, for I saw everything that
+happened just as I see you now.
+
+Mamie set her foot on the step to go up, and as she went forward
+I saw the sailor slowly lock his arm in Jack's, and Jack didn't
+move to go up. Then Mamie turned round on the step, and they all
+three stood that way for a second or two. She cried out then,--I
+heard a man cry like that once, when his arm was taken off by a
+steam-crane,--and she fell back in a heap on the little piazza.
+
+I tried to jump forward, but I couldn't move, and I felt my hair
+rising under my hat. The sailor turned slowly where he stood, and
+swung Jack round by the arm steadily and easily, and began to
+walk him down the pathway from the house. He walked him straight
+down that path, as steadily as Fate; and all the time I saw the
+moonlight shining on his wet oilskins. He walked him through the
+gate, and across the beach road, and out upon the wet sand, where
+the tide was high. Then I got my breath with a gulp, and ran for
+them across the grass, and vaulted over the fence, and stumbled
+across the road. But when I felt the sand under my feet, the two
+were at the water's edge; and when I reached the water they were
+far out, and up to their waists; and I saw that Jack Benton's
+head had fallen forward on his breast, and his free arm hung limp
+beside him, while his dead brother steadily marched him to his
+death. The moonlight was on the dark water, but the fog-bank was
+white beyond, and I saw them against it; and they went slowly and
+steadily down. The water was up to their armpits, and then up to
+their shoulders, and then I saw it rise up to the black rim of
+Jack's hat. But they never wavered; and the two heads went
+straight on, straight on, till they were under, and there was
+just a ripple in the moonlight where Jack had been.
+
+It has been on my mind to tell you that story, whenever I got a
+chance. You have known me, man and boy, a good many years; and I
+thought I would like to hear your opinion. Yes, that's what I
+always thought. It wasn't Jim that went overboard; it was Jack,
+and Jim just let him go when he might have saved him; and then
+Jim passed himself off for Jack with us, and with the girl. If
+that's what happened, he got what he deserved. People said the
+next day that Mamie found it out as they reached the house, and
+that her husband just walked out into the sea, and drowned
+himself; and they would have blamed me for not stopping him if
+they'd known that I was there. But I never told what I had seen,
+for they wouldn't have believed me. I just let them think I had
+come too late.
+
+When I reached the cottage and lifted Mamie up, she was raving
+mad. She got better afterwards, but she was never right in her
+head again.
+
+Oh, you want to know if they found Jack's body? I don't know
+whether it was his, but I read in a paper at a Southern port
+where I was with my new ship that two dead bodies had come ashore
+in a gale down East, in pretty bad shape. They were locked
+together, and one was a skeleton in oilskins.
+
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+
+   Francis Marion Crawford, the youngest of the four
+   children of the well-known sculptor Thomas Crawford,
+   was born in Rome, educated by a French governess;
+   then at St Paul's School, Concord, N.H.; in the
+   quiet country village of Hatfield Regis, under an
+   English tutor; at Trinity College, Cambridge, where
+   they thought him a mathematician in those days; at
+   Heidelberg and Karlsruhe, and at the University of
+   Rome, where a special interest in Oriental languages
+   sent him to India with the idea of preparing for a
+   professorship.
+
+   At one time in India hard times nearly forced him
+   into enlistment in the British army, but a chance
+   opening sent him as editor of the _Indian Herald_ to
+   Allahabad. It was during the next eighteen months
+   that he met at Simla the hero of his first novel,
+   "Mr. Isaacs." "If it had not been for him," Mr.
+   Crawford has been known to say, "I might at this
+   moment be a professor of Sanskrit in some American
+   college;" for that idea persisted after his return
+   to the United States, where he entered Harvard for
+   special study of the subject.
+
+   But from the May evening when the story of the
+   interesting man at Simla was first told in a club
+   smoking-room overlooking Madison Square, Mr. Crawford's
+   life has been one of hard literary work. He returned to
+   Italy in 1883, spent most of the next year in
+   Constantinople, where he was married to a daughter
+   of General Berdan. From 1885 he has made his home in
+   Sorrento, Italy, visiting America at intervals.
+
+   "Mr. Isaacs," published in 1882, was followed almost
+   at once by "Dr. Claudius." Then _The Atlantic
+   Monthly_ claimed a serial, "A Roman Singer," in
+   1883. Since that time the list of his novels has
+   been increased to thirty-two, besides the historical
+   and descriptive works entitled "Ave Roma Immortalis"
+   and "The Rulers of the South."
+
+   To Mr. Crawford, the development of a story and of
+   the character which suggested it, is the preeminent
+   thing. As the critics say:--
+
+     "He is an artist, a born story-teller and
+     colourist, imaginative and dramatic, virile and
+     vivid."
+
+   His wide range as a traveller has contributed doubtless
+   to another characteristic quality:--
+
+     "... his strength in unexcelled portraits of odd
+     characters and his magical skill in seeming to make
+     his readers witnesses of the spectacles."
+
+   His intimate knowledge of many countries has resulted in
+   an unequalled series of brilliant romances, including
+   varied characters from the old families of Rome, the
+   glassblowers of Venice, the silversmiths of Rome, the
+   cigarette makers of Munich, the court of old Madrid, the
+   Turks of Stamboul and the Bosphorus, simple sailors on the
+   coast of Spain, Americans of modern New York and Bar Harbor,
+   to Crusaders of the twelfth century. But whether the scene
+   be in modern India, rural England, the Black Forest, or the
+   palaces of Babylon, the story seizes on the imagination and
+   fascinates the reader.
+
+     "The romantic reader will find here a tale of love
+     passionate and pure; the student of character, the
+     subtle analysis and deft portrayal he loves; the
+     historian will approve its conscientious historic
+     accuracy; the lover of adventure will find his
+     blood stir and pulses quicken as he reads."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+    THE NOVELS OF
+    F. MARION CRAWFORD
+
+    NEW UNIFORM EDITION
+
+    Dr. Claudius
+        A Roman Singer
+            Zoroaster
+                Don Orsino
+                    Marion Darche
+    A Cigarette Maker's Romance and Khaled
+        Taquisara
+            Via Crucis
+                Sant' Ilario
+                    The Ralstons
+    Adam Johnstone's Son and A Rose of Yesterday
+        Mr. Isaacs
+            A Tale of a Lonely Parish
+                Saracinesca
+                    Paul Patoff
+    The Witch of Prague
+        Pietro Ghisleri
+            Corleone
+                Children of the King
+                    Katherine Lauderdale
+                        To Leeward
+
+    Each, bound in cloth, green and gold, $1.80
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    _In preparation in the Uniform Edition_
+
+    An American Politician
+        Marzio's Crucifix
+            With the Immortals
+                Greifenstein
+                    The Three Fates
+                        Casa Braccio. 2 vols.
+                            Love in Idleness
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    F. MARION CRAWFORD'S
+    MOST RECENT NOVELS
+
+    CECILIA: A Story of Modern Rome
+    _Cloth_, $1.50
+    "The reincarnation of a great love
+    is the real story, and that is well worth
+    reading."--_San Francisco Chronicle._
+
+    MARIETTA: A Maid of Venice
+    _Cloth_, $1.50
+
+    IN THE PALACE OF THE KING
+    A Love Story of Old Madrid
+    _Illustrated, Cloth_, $1.50
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    HANDSOMELY ILLUSTRATED DESCRIPTIVE BOOKS
+
+    AVE ROMA IMMORTALIS
+    Studies from the Chronicles of Rome
+    _New edition. Revised. _x_ + 613 pp. 8vo. $3.00, net._
+
+    RULERS OF THE SOUTH
+    Sicily, Calabria, Malta
+    _In two volumes. Crown 8vo. $6.00, net._
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    The Macmillan Little Novels
+    BY FAVOURITE AUTHORS
+
+    Handsomely Bound in Decorated Cloth
+    16mo. 50 cents each
+
+    PHILOSOPHY FOUR
+    A STORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY
+    By Owen Wister
+    Author of "The Virginian" etc.
+
+    MAN OVERBOARD
+    By F. Marion Crawford
+    Author of "Cecilia," "Marietta," etc.
+
+    MR. KEEGAN'S ELOPEMENT
+    By Winston Churchill
+    Author of "The Crisis," "Richard Carvel," etc.
+
+    MRS. PENDLETON'S FOUR-IN-HAND
+    By Gertrude Atherton
+    Author of "The Conqueror," "The Splendid Idle
+    Forties," etc.
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+    THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 Fifth Avenue, New York
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Man Overboard!, by F(rancis) Marion Crawford
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