n if
I get ashore. I'll tell her all about it. Now, go and lie down.'

"But he couldn't lie down; and when the time came that I had to sleep
in the crosstrees again, I found, on waking, that Barnes had followed
me, and in some way had got my gun out of my pocket. I knew he had it
by the insane way he laughed as I came down from my perch. I hunted
through the cabin for pistols or rifles, but he had been ahead of me;
and as I came up and he stood near the wheel--the wheel, like
everything else, was neglected now--there was a crazy look in his eyes
that meant bad luck for me.

"'Going to kill me, weren't you?' he chuckled. 'Well, you won't. Nor
will you get that woman out the Boston Road. I'm dead on to you, you
dog. And you'll get no credit for the advice you gave--that I put down
in the log. Not much you won't.'

"He darted into the cabin and returned with the ship's log, which he
had charge of, and the official log of the skipper. I do not know what
was entered in them, but he tossed them overboard.

"'There goes your record of efficiency,' he said.

"He came toward me on the run, his eyes blazing, but I did not budge.
He made no gun-play, but put up his fists, and I met him; I was used to
this form of fighting. However, I went down before his plunges and
punches, and realized that I was up against a bigger, heavier, stronger
man than myself, and could not hope to win. I'm no small boy, as you
see, but Barnes was a giant, and a skilled fighter.

"I got away from him and kept away. I wanted to hoist an ensign, union
down, but the lunatic prevented me; his intelligence had left him. He
watched me as a cat watches a mouse, or I might have brought a
handspike down on his head and ended his troubles and some of my own.
And it would have been no foul play to have done so; but I could not.
He followed me everywhere, ready to pounce upon me at the first move I
made.

"I spent that night walking away from him as he nosed me around the
deck, and brushing off the crazy rats that climbed my legs. I did not
dare make for the rigging, for without my bag I would have been worse
off than on deck, and at such a move he would have jumped on me. But in
the morning he had his first convulsion, and it left him a wreck. While
he lay gasping and choking on the deck, with equally afflicted rats
crawling over him and nipping where they felt flesh, I managed to get a
bite from the steward's storeroom, and it roused me up and strengthened