fellow-men in a super-benevolent, super-wise
way? Well, that is what Captain West is. Let me tell it to you.

We had a shift of wind to-day. In the height of a south-west gale the
wind shifted, in the instant, eight points, which is equivalent to a
quarter of the circle. Imagine it! Imagine a gale howling from out of
the south-west. And then imagine the wind, in a heavier and more violent
gale, abruptly smiting you from the north-west. We had been sailing
through a circular storm, Captain West vouchsafed to me, before the
event, and the wind could be expected to box the compass.

Clad in sea-boots, oilskins and sou'wester, I had for some time been
hanging upon the rail at the break of the poop, staring down fascinated
at the poor devils of sailors, repeatedly up to their necks in water, or
submerged, or dashed like straws about the deck, while they pulled and
hauled, stupidly, blindly, and in evident fear, under the orders of Mr.
Pike.

Mr. Pike was with them, working them and working with them. He took
every chance they took, yet somehow he escaped being washed off his feet,
though several times I saw him entirely buried from view. There was more
than luck in the matter; for I saw him, twice, at the head of a line of
the men, himself next to the pin. And twice, in this position, I saw the
North Atlantic curl over the rail and fall upon them. And each time he
alone remained, holding the turn of the rope on the pin, while the rest
of them were rolled and sprawled helplessly away.

Almost it seemed to me good fun, as at a circus, watching their antics.
But I did not apprehend the seriousness of the situation until, the wind
screaming higher than ever and the sea a-smoke and white with wrath, two
men did not get up from the deck. One was carried away for'ard with a
broken leg--it was Iare Jacobson, a dull-witted Scandinavian; and the
other, Kid Twist, was carried away, unconscious, with a bleeding scalp.

In the height of the gusts, in my high position, where the seas did not
break, I found myself compelled to cling tightly to the rail to escape
being blown away. My face was stung to severe pain by the high-driving
spindrift, and I had a feeling that the wind was blowing the cobwebs out
of my sleep-starved brain.

And all the time, slender, aristocratic, graceful in streaming oilskins,
in apparent unconcern, giving no orders, effortlessly accommodating his
body to the violent rolling of the _Elsinore_, Ca