it was by my own volition, and I am sure it was without a conscious
aim--both my pistols went off, and both escaped out of my hands. They
did not fall alone; with a choked cry, the coxswain loosed his grasp
upon the shrouds and plunged head first into the water.




27

"Pieces of Eight"

OWING to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water,
and from my perch on the cross-trees I had nothing below me but the
surface of the bay. Hands, who was not so far up, was in consequence
nearer to the ship and fell between me and the bulwarks. He rose once to
the surface in a lather of foam and blood and then sank again for good.
As the water settled, I could see him lying huddled together on the
clean, bright sand in the shadow of the vessel's sides. A fish or two
whipped past his body. Sometimes, by the quivering of the water, he
appeared to move a little, as if he were trying to rise. But he was dead
enough, for all that, being both shot and drowned, and was food for fish
in the very place where he had designed my slaughter.

I was no sooner certain of this than I began to feel sick, faint, and
terrified. The hot blood was running over my back and chest. The dirk,
where it had pinned my shoulder to the mast, seemed to burn like a hot
iron; yet it was not so much these real sufferings that distressed me,
for these, it seemed to me, I could bear without a murmur; it was the
horror I had upon my mind of falling from the cross-trees into that