e a dead man. Your money is stolen; and in five
minutes' time the yacht will be scuttled, and the cabin hatch will be
nailed down on you. Dead men tell no tales; and the sailing-master's
notion is to leave proofs afloat that the vessel has foundered with
all on board. It was his doing, to begin with, and we were all in it. I
can't find it in my heart not to give you a chance for your life. It's
a bad chance, but I can do no more. I should be murdered myself if I
didn't seem to go with the rest. The key of your cabin door is thrown
back to you, inside this. Don't be alarmed when you hear the hammer
above. I shall do it, and I shall have short nails in my hand as well as
long, and use the short ones only. Wait till you hear the boat with all
of us shove off, and then pry up the cabin hatch with your back. The
vessel will float a quarter of an hour after the holes are bored in her.
Slip into the sea on the port side, and keep the vessel between you
and the boat. You will find plenty of loose lumber, wrenched away on
purpose, drifting about to hold on by. It's a fine night and a smooth
sea, and there's a chance that a ship may pick you up while there's life
left in you. I can do no more.--Yours truly, J. M.'

"As I came to those last words, I heard the hammering down of the hatch
over my head. I don't suppose I'm more of a coward than most people, but
there was a moment when the sweat poured down me like rain. I got to
be my own man again before the hammering was done, and found myself
thinking of somebody very dear to me in England. I said to myself:
'I'll have a try for my life, for her sake, though the chances are dead
against me.'

"I put a letter from that person I have mentioned into one of the
stoppered bottles of my dressing-case, along with the mate's warning, in
case I lived to see him again. I hung this, and a flask of whisky, in a
sling round my neck; and, after first dressing myself in my confusion,
thought better of it, and stripped, again, for swimming, to my shirt and
drawers. By the time I had done that the hammering was over and there
was such a silence that I could hear the water bubbling into the
scuttled vessel amidships. The next noise was the noise of the boat and
the villains in her (always excepting my friend, the mate) shoving off
from the starboard side. I waited for the splash of the oars in the
water, and then got my back under the hatch. The mate had kept his
promise. I lifted it easily--cre