rcingly
and burst into such a loud laugh as I had never heard before. It was a
provoking, mocking peal, with a hair-raising, screeching over-note of
defiance. I stepped back, utterly confounded.

Instantly there was a stir on the quarter-deck; murmurs of dismay. A
distressed voice cried out in the dark below us: "Who's that gone crazy,
now?"

Perhaps they thought it was their captain? Rush is not the word that
could be applied to the utmost speed the poor fellows were up to; but
in an amazing short time every man in the ship able to walk upright had
found his way on to that poop.

I shouted to them: "It's the mate. Lay hold of him a couple of
you. . . ."

I expected this performance to end in a ghastly sort of fight. But
Mr. Burns cut his derisive screeching dead short and turned upon them
fiercely, yelling:

"Aha! Dog-gone ye! You've found your tongues--have ye? I thought
you were dumb. Well, then--laugh! Laugh--I tell you. Now then--all
together. One, two, three--laugh!"

A moment of silence ensued, of silence so profound that you could have
heard a pin drop on the deck. Then Ransome's unperturbed voice uttered
pleasantly the words:

"I think he has fainted, sir--" The little motionless knot of men
stirred, with low murmurs of relief. "I've got him under the arms. Get
hold of his legs, some one."

Yes. It was a relief. He was silenced for a time--for a time. I could
not have stood another peal of that insane screeching. I was sure of it;
and just then Gambril, the austere Gambril, treated us to another vocal
performance. He began to sing out for relief. His voice wailed pitifully
in the darkness: "Come aft somebody! I can't stand this. Here she'll be
off again directly and I can't. . . ."

I dashed aft myself meeting on my way a hard gust of wind whose approach
Gambril's ear had detected from afar and which filled the sails on the
main in a series of muffled reports mingled with the low plaint of
the spars. I was just in time to seize the wheel while Frenchy who had
followed me caught up the collapsing Gambril. He hauled him out of the
way, admonished him to lie still where he was, and then stepped up to
relieve me, asking calmly:

"How am I to steer her, sir?"

"Dead before it for the present. I'll get you a light in a moment."

But going forward I met Ransome bringing up the spare binnacle lamp.
That man noticed everything, attended to everything, shed comfort around
him as he moved. As he passed me