character where there are no means of legal repression. And I knew well
enough also that my double there was no homicidal ruffian. I did not
think of asking him for details, and he told me the story roughly in
brusque, disconnected sentences. I needed no more. I saw it all going on
as though I were myself inside that other sleeping suit.

"It happened while we were setting a reefed foresail, at dusk. Reefed
foresail! You understand the sort of weather. The only sail we had left
to keep the ship running; so you may guess what it had been like for
days. Anxious sort of job, that. He gave me some of his cursed insolence
at the sheet. I tell you I was overdone with this terrific weather that
seemed to have no end to it. Terrific, I tell you--and a deep ship. I
believe the fellow himself was half crazed with funk. It was no time for
gentlemanly reproof, so I turned round and felled him like an ox. He up
and at 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 forebitts. 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 gray 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