gall me when I used my arm. Then I looked around me, and
as the ship was now, in a sense, my own, I began to think of clearing it
from its last passenger--the dead man, O'Brien.

He had pitched, as I have said, against the bulwarks, where he lay like
some horrid, ungainly sort of puppet; life-size, indeed, but how
different from life's color or life's comeliness! In that position, I
could easily have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical
adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the dead, I took him by
the waist as if he had been a sack of bran, and, with one good heave,
tumbled him overboard. He went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap
came off, and remained floating on the surface; and as soon as the
splash subsided, I could see him and Israel lying side by side, both
wavering with the tremulous movement of the water. O'Brien, though still
quite a young man, was very bald. There he lay with that bald head
across the knees of the man who killed him, and the quick fishes
steering to and fro over both.

I was now alone upon the ship; the tide had just turned. The sun was
within so few degrees of setting that already the shadow of the pines
upon the western shore began to reach right across the anchorage and
fall in patterns on the deck. The evening breeze had sprung up, and
though it was well warded off by the hill with the two peaks upon the
east, the cordage had begun to sing a little softly to itself and the
idle sails to rattle to and fro.

I began to see a danger to the ship. The jibs I speedily doused and
brought tumbling to the deck, but the mainsail was a harder matter. Of
course, when the schooner canted over, the boom had swung outboard, and
the cap of it and a foot or two of sail hung even under water. I thought
this made it still more dangerous, yet the strain was so heavy that I
half feared to meddle. At last I got my knife and cut the halyards. The
peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon
the water; and since, pull as I liked, I could not budge the downhaul,
that was the extent of what I could accomplish. For the rest, the
_Hispaniola_ must trust to luck, like myself.

By this time the whole anchorage had fallen into shadow--the last rays,
I remember, falling through a glade of the wood, and shining bright as
jewels on the flowery mantle of the wreck. It began to be chill, the
tide was rapidly fleeting seaward, the schooner settling more and more
on her