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“That night the two Dagoes, Pedro and Christo, passed into the land beyond. There were the same little marks, but nothing else. Weiss, Wagner, and Myers, the three Germans, got nutty about this time, and talked together in their lingo while they pumped; and when they were alone they talked to themselves. I confess that I got nutty. Who wouldn’t, with this menace hanging over him? I walked around the deck when I was off pump duty, and I remember that I planned a great school where ambitious young sailor men could study medicine, and escape the drudgery of a life ‘fore the mast. Then I planned free eating-houses for tramps, and I was going to use some of my wealth to investigate the private life of a Sunday school superintendent, who, when I was a kid, predicted that I would come to a bad end. You see, we never can judge of our own mental condition at the time. It’s only when you look back that you can take stock of yourself. The result of this mental disturbance upon me was insomnia. I couldn’t get to sleep; but I kept track of the ship, and worried the three Dutchmen and the Jap into trimming sail when necessary.

“We’d got up to the latitude of the Bermudas, I think, and I was beginning to hope that the curse had left us; for we had passed through three nights without a man dying. But on a stormy morning, when the gaff topsails were blown away, and we four men–for the Jap was useless on deck–were trying to get a couple of reefs in the mainsail, Wagner suddenly howled out a lot of Dutch language and jumped overboard. I flung him a line, but he wouldn’t take it, and passed astern. The poor devil had taken the national remedy for trouble. Did you ever notice it in Germans, even the best? When things go wrong they kill themselves. They’re something like the Chinese in this.

“There were only four of us now, counting the Jap, who still spoiled good grub, and it took a long time to snug that schooner down to double reefs and one head sail. The water in the hold had gained on us, and we pumped while we could stand it, then knocked off, and dropped down on deck for a snooze. We were dead beat, and told the cook to call us if the wind freshened or if anything happened. He didn’t call us, but something happened. I wakened in time, and stood up, sleepy and stupid and cold; for you can’t sleep on deck, even in the tropics, without getting chilled; and we were up to thirty-six north. The Jap was fooling round the galley, and the schooner, with the wheel becketed, was lifting up and falling off, practically steering herself, by-the-wind. Of course, I thought of the water in the hold, and sounded the well. There was four feet of wet line, and I knew that things were bad. Then I went to the two Dutchmen, to call them to the pumps, and found them cold and stiff, each with the little pink marks under the ears.

“Well, I naturally went more or less crazy. I took that Jap by the throat and asked him what had happened. He did not know, he said. He had left us to sleep, and rest, sorry for us, and trying to cook us a good meal when we wakened. He was in a shaking fright, trembling and quavering, and I eased up. What was the use of anger and suspicion in the face of this horrible threat of death while you slept? We hove the two bodies overboard, and made a stagger at the pump; but we could not lessen the water in the hold, and at last I gave up, cleared away a boat, and stocked it with water and grub for two. Meanwhile I shaped a course for the Bermudas, and steered it after a fashion, hoping that I might beach the schooner and get, out of some court of salvage, a part of that seven millions down in the hold.