last fight ended in helplessness and maudlin amity, and the
red-shirted men were sprawled around on the moonlit deck, snoring.
Though the barrel of rum broached on the main-hatch was but slightly
lowered, their sleep was heavy; scurvy-tainted men at the end of a Cape
Horn passage may not drink long or deeply. Some lay as they fell--face
upward; others on their sides for a while, then to roll over on their
backs and so remain until the sleep was done; for in no other position
may the human body rest easy on a hard bed with no pillow. And as they
slept through the tropic night the full moon in the east rose higher
and higher, passed overhead and disappeared behind a thickening haze in
the western sky; but before it had crossed the meridian its cold,
chemical rays had worked disastrously on the eyes of the sleeping men.

Captain Swarth, prone upon the poop-deck, was the first to waken. There
was pain in his head, pain in his eyes,--which were swollen,--and a
whistling tumult of sound in his ears coming from the Plutonian
darkness surrounding him, while a jarring vibration of the deck beneath
him apprised his awakening brain that the anchor was dragging. As he
staggered to his feet a violent pressure of wind hurled him against the
wheel, to which he clung, staring into the blackness to windward.

"All hands, there!" he roared! "Up with you all! Go forward and pay out
on the chain!"

Shouts, oaths, and growls answered him, and he heard the nasal voice of
his mate repeating his order. "Angel," he called, "get the other anchor
over and give her all of both chains."

"Aye, aye, sir," answered the mate. "Send a lantern forrard, Bill.
Can't see our noses."

"Steward," yelled the captain, "where are you? Light up a deck-lantern
and the binnacle. Bear a hand."

He heard the steward's voice close to him, and the sound of the
binnacle lights being removed from their places, then the opening and
closing of the cabin companionway. He could see nothing, but knew that
the steward had gone below to his store-room. In a minute more a shriek
came from the cabin. It rang out again and again, and soon sounded from
the companionway: "I'm blind, I'm blind, capt'n. I can't see. I lit the
lantern and burned my fingers; but I can't see the light. I'm blind."
The steward's voice ended in a howl.

"Shut up, you blasted fool," answered Captain Swarth; "get down there
and light up."

"Where's that light?" came the mate's voice in a yell from