Evening star., 1924-04-27

board and drown than to die being
chokcd to death by this stupid brute!
| Freeing my foot that was hooked
| into the fence-for my other was
twisted up and caught under his body
Il drew it UP and kicked. back with
| all the desperate and despairing
energy 1 could put into the effort. He
let out a frightful howl and his fin
! gers relaxed AT, the same second
the ocean came aboard.
The ocean came aboard becais6 the
Wayfarer put her bow squarely under,
| just as you dip your hand into water.
| Here was a curious thing. Brown, in
an important way, must have counted
on the ocean to help him. 1t was
such a night as made my disappear
ance from the fo'c's'le head no mys-
terry of the ship. Any one. every one,
would naturally conclude I had been
washed overheard. But now the ocean
was my way of spelling his plan and
defeating his cunning.
This wasn't Immediately apparent.
! however. My eyes, strainfng upward
| in the darkness as | made a frantic
effort to get out of his choking clutch.
saw solid. darkiy glittering wall of
water, a wall of enormous height as
it seemed. rise out of nowhere and
! curve over US at the instant when my
kick had made the tight grip of
Browns fingers loosen. 1t was an
appalling sight; with time for just
one compreh eusive glimpse. Then the
whole world fell down about our ears
with a noise that seemed to break my
| eardrums.
| We were caught up and at once
| forced apart: soaked and yet pillowed
on a bed of water rushing underneath
me, I was lifted over the fence of the
| fo'c'sle head and dropped through the
water (Which broke the force of de-
scenD to the main deck below. The
! merest chance made the difference
between life and death, as also, sup
pose, between death and crippling for
| life. A swirl of water in another
direction might just as easily and
quickly have drawn me overheard, or
breaking bones and lacerating flesh.
CHOKING with the salt water.
drowning as / supposed l must
be. l felt the deck undern cath, but
with hardly any consciousness of
what it was or where / might be.
But animal instinct operates at such
a time. 1 reached out blindly as l
was being swirled away and caught
hold of an iron stanchion, one Of the
supports of the bulwark along the
main deck.
l held on like anything during an
instant in which my arm felt as if
it would be pulled from its socket.
The water sluiced rapidly away, fill
ing the ships waist. In a moment l
staggered to my feet, weak, faint,
sick and frightened. 1t took another
minute for me to grasp where | was
or what had happened.
Then I looked about for my enemy.
No sight of Brown. l wondered what
had become of him. AT the thought
that he might have been washed
overheard a perfectly savage and cal
lous joy was mine. That was my
only feeling. The life of the sea pro-
duces callosities, mental as well as
physical could have, seen him
killed before my eyes with complete
indifference-no, with horrible salts
faction.
We were thousands of miles from
home a thousand miles from any,
thing one could call civilization:
freezing cold; soaking wet, day and
night; brutalized; continuously
gnawed at by hunger A state of
mind had been produced in US Such
things happen. L have read OF for
giveness and self-sacrifices among
explorers and others suffering great
hardshipa Perhaps these things are
possible where men have a great love
for each other. But L have had a
taste of what is possible when men
hate.
Well, didn't see that ver1nin any
where about; and fervently hoping
he had been done for ("done in," as
we said on the British Wayfarer),
climbed back on the fo'c's'le head and
resumed my watcbful pacing and
staring into the blind black ahead
of US. When the watch ended and /
re-entered the fo'c's'Ie it was to find
Brown there ahead of me. He ex-