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“How horrible!” I exclaimed.

“I used to dream for years afterwards of anchors catching hold of girls,” said the man in tweeds, a little wildly. He shuddered. “With a most pitiful howl Charley was over after her almost on the instant. But, Lord! he didn’t see as much as a gleam of her red tam o’ shanter in the water. Nothing! nothing whatever! In a moment there were half-a-dozen boats around us, and he got pulled into one. I, with the boatswain and the carpenter, let go the other anchor in a hurry and brought the ship up somehow. The pilot had gone silly. He walked up and down the forecastle head wringing his hands and muttering to himself: ‘Killing women, now! Killing women, now!’ Not another word could you get out of him.

“Dusk fell, then a night black as pitch; and peering upon the river I heard a low, mournful hail, ‘Ship, ahoy!’ Two Gravesend watermen came alongside. They had a lantern in their wherry, and looked up the ship’s side, holding on to the ladder without a word. I saw in the patch of light a lot of loose, fair hair down there.”

He shuddered again.

“After the tide turned poor Maggie’s body had floated clear of one of them big mooring buoys,” he explained. “I crept aft, feeling half-dead, and managed to send a rocket up — to let the other searchers know, on the river. And then I slunk away forward like a cur, and spent the night sitting on the heel of the bowsprit so as to be as far as possible out of Charley’s way.”

“Poor fellow!” I murmured.

“Yes. Poor fellow,” he repeated, musingly. “That brute wouldn’t let him — not even him — cheat her of her prey. But he made her fast in dock next morning. He did. We hadn’t exchanged a word — not a single look for that matter. I didn’t want to look at him. When the last rope was fast he put his hands to his head and stood gazing down at his feet as if trying to remember something. The men waited on the main deck for the words that end the voyage. Perhaps that is what he was trying to remember. I spoke for him. ‘That’ll do, men.’

“I never saw a crew leave a ship so quietly. They sneaked over the rail one after another, taking care not to bang their sea chests too heavily. They looked our way, but not one had the stomach to come up and offer to shake hands with the mate as is usual.

“I followed him all over the empty ship to and fro, here and there, with no living soul about but the two of us, because the old ship-keeper had locked himself up in the galley — both doors. Suddenly poor Charley mutters, in a crazy voice: ‘I’m done here,’ and strides down the gangway with me at his heels, up the dock, out at the gate, on towards Tower Hill. He used to take rooms with a decent old landlady in America Square, to be near his work.

“All at once he stops short, turns round, and comes back straight at me. ‘Ned,’ says he, I am going home.’ I had the good luck to sight a four-wheeler and got him in just in time. His legs were beginning to give way. In our hall he fell down on a chair, and I’ll never forget father’s and mother’s amazed, perfectly still faces as they stood over him. They couldn’t understand what had happened to him till I blubbered out, ‘Maggie got drowned, yesterday, in the river.’

“Mother let out a little cry. Father looks from him to me, and from me to him, as if comparing our faces — for, upon my soul, Charley did not resemble himself at all. Nobody moved; and the poor fellow raises his big brown hands slowly to his throat, and with one single tug rips everything open — collar, shirt, waistcoat — a perfect wreck and ruin of a man. Father and I got him upstairs somehow, and mother pretty nearly killed herself nursing him through a brain fever.”