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“Forth and back he kept goin’, in his heavy sea-boots. I could hear every step he took, and when he kicked against the hatchway-coamin’ (he did this scores o’ times) and when he stood still and spat overboard. Once he tripped over the ship’s mop–got the handle a-foul of his legs, and talked to it like a pers’nal enemy. Terrible language–terrible!

“It struck me after a bit”–here Pilot Matthey turned to me with one of those shy smiles which, as they reveal his childish, simple heart, compel you to love the man. “It struck me after a bit that a hemn-tune mightn’t come amiss to a man in that distress of mind. So I pitched to sing that grand old tune, ‘Partners of a glorious hope,’ a bit low at first, but louder as I picked up confidence. Soon as he heard it he stopped short, and called out to me to shut my head. So, findin’ that hemns only excited him, I sat quiet, while he picked up his tramp again.

“I had allowed to myself that ‘twould be all right soon after eleven, when the publics closed, and his mates would be turnin’ up, to take care of him. But eleven o’clock struck, back in the town; and the quarters, and then twelve; and still no boat came off from shore. Then, soon after twelve, he grew quiet of a sudden. The trampin’ stopped. I reckoned he’d gone below, though I couldn’t be certain. But bein’ by this time pretty cold with watchin’, and dog-tired, I tumbled below and into my bunk. I must have been uneasy though, for I didn’t take off more’n my boots.

“What’s more I couldn’t have slept more than a dog’s sleep. For I woke up sudden to the noise of a splash–it seemed I’d been waitin’ for it–and was up on deck in two shakes.

“Yes, the chap was overboard, fast enough–I heard a sort of gurgle as he came to the surface, and some sort of attempt at a cry. Before he went under again, the tide drifted his head like a little black buoy across the ray of our ridin’ light. So overboard I jumped, and struck out for him.”

At this point–the exciting point–Pilot Matthey’s narrative halted, hesitated, grew meagre and ragged.

“I got a grip on him as he rose. He couldn’t swim better’n a few strokes at the best. (So many of our boys won’t larn to swim–they say it only lengthens things out when your time comes.) . . . The man was drownin’, but he had sproil enough to catch at me and try to pull me under along with him. I knew that trick, though, luckily. . . . I got him round on his back, with my hands under his armpits, and kicked out for the Maid in Two Minds.

“‘Tisn’t easy to climb straight out o’ the water and board a lugger– not at the best of times, when you’ve only yourself to look after; and the Maid in Two Minds had no accommodation-ladder hung out . . . But, as luck would have it, they’d downed sail anyhow and, among other things, left the out-haul of the mizen danglin’ slack and close to the water. I reached for this, shortened up on it till I had it taut, and gave it into his hand to cling by–which he had the sense to do, havin’ fetched back some of his wits. After that I scrambled on to the mizen-boom somehow and hauled him aboard mainly by his collar and seat of his trousers. It was a job, too; and the first thing he did on deck was to reach his head overside and be vi’lently sick.

“He couldn’t have done better. When he’d finished I took charge, hurried him below–my! the mess down there!–and got him into somebody’s dry clothes. All the time he was whimperin’ and shiverin’; and he whimpered and shivered still when I coaxed him into his bunk and tucked him up in every rug I could find. There was a bottle of whisky, pretty near empty, ‘pon the table. Seein’ how wistful the poor chap looked at it, and mindin’ how much whisky and salt water he’d got rid of, I mixed the dregs of it with a little hot water off the stove, and poured it into him. Then I filled up the bottle with hot water, corked it hard, and slipped it down under the blankets, to warm his feet.