trail the
lee-rail of the Farallone level with the foam, he laughed out an empty
laugh, drained his glass, sprawled back among the lumber in the boat,
and fetched out a crumpled novel.

Herrick watched him, and his indignation glowed red hot. He glanced to
windward where the squall already whitened the near sea and heralded its
coming with a singular and dismal sound. He glanced at the steersman,
and saw him clinging to the spokes with a face of a sickly blue. He saw
the crew were running to their stations without orders. And it seemed
as if something broke in his brain; and the passion of anger, so long
restrained, so long eaten in secret, burst suddenly loose and shook him
like a sail. He stepped across to the captain and smote his hand heavily
on the drunkard's shoulder.

'You brute,' he said, in a voice that tottered, 'look behind you!'

'Wha's that?' cried Davis, bounding in the boat and upsetting the
champagne.

'You lost the Sea Ranger because you were a drunken sot,' said Herrick.
'Now you're going to lose the Farallone. You're going to drown here the
same way as you drowned others, and be damned. And your daughter shall
walk the streets, and your sons be thieves like their father.'

For the moment, the words struck the captain white and foolish. 'My
God!' he cried, looking at Herrick as upon a ghost; 'my God, Herrick!'

'Look behind you, then!' reiterated the assailant.

The wretched man, already partly sobered, did as he was told, and in the
same breath of time leaped to his feet. 'Down staysail!' he trumpeted.
The hands were thrilling for the order, and the great sail came with
a run, and fell half overboard among the racing foam. 'Jib
topsail-halyards! Let the stays'l be,' he said again.

But before it was well uttered, the squall shouted aloud and fell, in
a solid mass of wind and rain commingled, on the Farallone; and she
stooped under the blow, and lay like a thing dead. From the mind of
Herrick reason fled; he clung in the weather rigging, exulting; he was
done with life, and he gloried in the release; he gloried in the wild
noises of the wind and the choking onslaught of the rain; he gloried to
die so, and now, amid this coil of the elements. And meanwhile, in the
waist up to his knees in water--so low the schooner lay--the captain
was hacking at the foresheet with a pocket knife. It was a question of
seconds, for the Farallone drank deep of the encroaching seas. But the
hand of the captain had