past twenty
years ago since it happened. I was making my second voyage aboard a
small full-rigged ship that had been hired by the Government for the
conveyance of troops to the East Indies. I was the only midshipman;
the other youngsters consisted of five apprentices. We occupied a
deck-house a little forward of the main-hatch. This house was divided
by a fore and aft bulkhead; the apprentices lived in the port
compartment, the third and fourth mates and myself slung our hammocks
on the starboard side. The third mate was a man of good family, aged
about twenty-one, a young Hercules in strength, with heavy under-jaws
and the low, peculiar brow of the prize-fighter. He had been a
midshipman in Smith's service, and was a good and active sailor, very
nimble aloft and expert in his work about the ship, but of a sullen,
morose disposition, and a heavy drinker whenever the opportunity to
get drink presented itself. I think he was regarded by all hands as a
little touched, but I was too young to remark in him any oddities
which might strike an older observer. He was given to delivering
himself of certain dark, wild fancies. I remember he once told me that
if he owed a man a grudge he would not scruple to plant himself
alongside of him on a yard on a black night and kick the foot-rope
from under him when his hands were busy, and so let him go overboard.
But this sort of talk I would put down to mere boasting, and indeed I
thought nothing of it.

We were in the Indian Ocean, and one evening I sat at supper (as tea,
the last meal on board ship, is always called) along with this man and
the fourth mate. We fell into some sort of nautical argument, and in
the heat of the discussion I said something that caused the third mate
to look at me fixedly for a little while, whilst he muttered under his
breath, in a kind of half-stifled way, as though his teeth were set. I
did not catch the words, but I am quite certain from the fourth mate's
manner, that he had heard them, and that he knew what was in the
other's mind. I say this because I recollect that very shortly
afterwards the fellow rose and walked out on deck with an air about
him as if he was willing to give the third mate a chance of being
alone with me. It was a mean trick, but then he was a cowardly rogue,
and when I afterwards heard that he had been dismissed from the
service he had formerly entered for robbing his shipmates of money and
tobacco and the humble trifles which sa