me. I came out, resolved to bind him down, but I was too late. He was
on his feet, the paroxysm gone, crazy as ever, and, though weak, still
able to master me.

"The ship was rolling heavily in the trough of a Biscay sea, which, no
matter how the wind, is a violent, troublesome heave of cross-forces.
The upper canvas was carried away, or hanging in the buntlines. Some of
the braces were adrift and the yards swinging. We had the courses
clewed up when the men were alive, and the lower yards were fairly
square; so the ship, with the aid of the head-sails, kept the canvas
full, and she sailed along, manned by a crew of rabid rats, a crazy
first mate, and a half-crazy second mate. I knew I was half-crazy, for
I had a fixed, insistent thought that would not go--that of a little
school-ma'am who had whipped me in childhood. I deserved the whipping,
but--Lord, how I hated her now!

"I feared the mate. He was again nosing me around the deck, glaring
murder at me and talking to himself. I feared him more than I feared
the rats, for I could brush them off. I could not get out of his sight;
but I did venture on grabbing a circular life-buoy from the
quarter-rail as I passed it, and slipping it over my head, and he did
not seem to notice the maneuver. I was resolved, as a last resort, to
jump into the sea with this scant protection against death by drowning,
hunger, or thirst, rather than risk another assault by this lunatic or
a bite from a rat. These were numbered now by the thousands. The deck
was black with them in places, and here and there a rope was as big
around as a stove-pipe.

"All was quiet this last day aboard. The mate busied himself in
following me around, talking to the rats and to himself, even as they
bit him, and I busied myself in quietly keeping out of his way and
brushing off rats that climbed my legs. I was dead tired, being on my
feet so long, and in sheer desperation and love of life I hoped for
another convulsion that would give me relief from the strain. But
before it came to him I was out of his way, and, I strongly suspect, he
was out of the way of the convulsion.

"He caught me on the forecastle deck and made for me, half mad from the
disease, but wholly mad from his mental state. There was no escape
except out the head-gear, and I went that way, with him after me. Out
the bowsprit, on to the jib foot-ropes, and out toward the end I went,
hoping to reach the martingale-stay and slip down it to th