of, what trace, have you? Just a line in the logbook, "Man lost
overboard in the night." Aye, many a lad--and many an officer--has had
just that happen to him.

So it was that in the night watches I became Newman's shadow. It was
literally shoulder to shoulder with us, we handed the same lines, bent
over the same jobs. Newman never mentioned it, never asked me to stick
close, but I knew he welcomed the attention. He knew the danger of
walking alone in the dark in that ship. Mister Lynch kept his word and
never again sent either of us aloft at night. In fact, the second mate
did more than that; from that night on, whenever Newman had a night
wheel, Lynch stayed aft on the poop during the trick. Oh, there was no
friendship between the two; I know that for certain. Lynch was an
officer, and Newman just a hand. But he was a square man, and he was
seeing to it that Newman got a square deal, at least in his watch.
And, I guessed, the lady had something to do with Lynch's attitude.
She was not friendless in the cabin, as I had discovered.

This night Newman had no wheel. Neither had I. During the first half
of the watch we touched elbows. As usual, the second mate worked sail
and kept us dancing a lively jig. He made work, Lynch did. He would
walk along the deck and jerk each buntline in passing--and then order
lads aloft to overhaul and stop the lines again. He would command a
tug on this line, a pull on that; no sail was ever trimmed fine enough
to suit him. Oh, aye, he was but following his nature and training; he
could not bear being idle himself, and he knew that busy men don't
brood themselves into trouble. And running a watch ragged was
hell-ship style.

We were aft on a job--brailling in the spanker, I recall--when I missed
Newman. An instant before we were together, we had handed the same
line; suddenly he was gone from my side. At first I thought he had
passed around to the other side of the mizzenmast, for we were coiling
down gear that had been disarranged during the job, and I was not
worried. But when the second mate ordered us forward to another job,
my friend was not with the gang.

The second mate left one of his tradesmen aft, and during the remainder
of the watch kept us forward of the waist of the ship. He drove us,
kept us jumping, at perfectly useless jobs on the head sails. It was
as plain as the nose on my face that he was purposely keeping us
forward. Something was going on,