At the mate's command the men reeled about and glowered up at him,
one or two starting clumsily to obey. The others ceased their
drunken yammerings and regarded the mate sullenly. One of them, with
a face mashed by some mad god in the making, and who was afterwards
to be known by me as Larry, burst into a guffaw, and spat insolently
on the deck. Then, with utmost deliberation, he turned to his
fellows and demanded loudly and huskily:

"Who in hell's the old stiff, anyways?"

I saw Mr. Pike's huge form tense convulsively and involuntarily, and
I noted the way his huge hands strained in their clutch on the
bridge-railing. Beyond that he controlled himself.

"Go on, you," he said. "I'll have nothing out of you. Get into the
fo'c's'le."

And then, to my surprise, he turned and walked aft along the bridge
to where the tug was casting off its lines. So this was all his high
and mighty talk of kill and drive, I thought. Not until afterwards
did I recollect, as I turned aft down the deck, that I saw Captain
West leaning on the rail at the break of the poop and gazing for'ard.

The tug's lines were being cast off, and I was interested in watching
the manoeuvre until she had backed clear of the ship, at which
moment, from for'ard, arose a queer babel of howling and yelping, as
numbers of drunken voices cried out that a man was overboard. The
second mate sprang down the poop-ladder and darted past me along the
deck. The mate, still on the slender, white-painted bridge, that