me. We closed just as an awful sea made for the ship. All hands
saw it coming and took to the rigging, but I had him by the throat,
and went on shaking him like a rat, the men above us yelling, "Look
out! look out!" Then a crash as if the sky had fallen on my head.
They say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be seen
of the ship--just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle head
and of the poop all awash driving along in a smother of foam. It
was a miracle that they found us, jammed together behind the
forebits. It's clear that I meant business, because I was holding
him by the throat still when they picked us up. He was black in
the face. It was too much for them. It seems they rushed us aft
together, gripped as we were, screaming "Murder!" like a lot of
lunatics, and broke into the cuddy. And the ship running for her
life, touch and go all the time, any minute her last in a sea fit
to turn your hair grey only a-looking at it. I understand that the
skipper, too, started raving like the rest of them. The man had
been deprived of sleep for more than a week, and to have this
sprung on him at the height of a furious gale nearly drove him out
of his mind. I wonder they didn't fling me overboard after getting
the carcass of their precious ship-mate out of my fingers. They
had rather a job to separate us, I've been told. A sufficiently
fierce story to make an old judge and a respectable jury sit up a
bit. The first thing I heard when I came to myself was the
maddening howling of that endless gale, and on that the voice of
the old man. He was hanging on to my bunk, staring into my face
out of his sou'wester.

"'Mr. Leggatt, you have killed a man. You can act no longer as
chief mate of this ship.'"