Queen Anne cottage on the poop.

"Oh dear, oh dear," Mr. Mellaire sighed. "This is the funniest voyage
and the funniest crew I've ever tackled. It's not going to come to a
good end. Anybody can see that with half an eye. It'll be dead of
winter off the Horn, and a fo'c's'le full of lunatics and cripples to do
the work.--Just take a look at that one. Crazy as a bedbug. He's likely
to go overboard any time."

I followed his glance and saw Tony the Greek, the one who had sprung
overboard the first day. He had just come around the corner of the
house, and, beyond one arm in a sling, seemed in good condition. He
walked easily and with strength, a testimonial to the virtues of Mr.
Pike's rough surgery.

My eyes kept returning to the canvas-covered body of Christian Jespersen,
and to the Japanese who sewed with sail-twine his sailor's shroud. One
of them had his right hand in a huge wrapping of cotton and bandage.

"Did he get hurt, too?" I asked.

"No, sir. He's the sail-maker. They're both sail-makers. He's a good
one, too. Yatsuda is his name. But he's just had blood-poisoning and
lain in hospital in New York for eighteen months. He flatly refused to
let them amputate. He's all right now, but the hand is dead, all except
the thumb and fore-finger, and he's teaching himself to sew with his left
hand. He's as clever a sail-maker as you'll find at sea."

"A lunatic and a razor make a cruel combination," I remarked.

"It's put five men out of commission," Mr. Mellaire sighed. "There's
O'Sullivan himself, and Christian Jespersen gone, and Andy Fay, and
Shorty, and the sheeny. And the voyage not started yet. And there's
Lars with the broken leg, and Davis laid off for keeps--why, sir, we'll
soon be that weak it'll take both watches to set a staysail."

Nevertheless, while I talked in a matter-of-fact way with Mr. Mellaire, I
was shocked--no; not because death was aboard with us. I have stood by
my philosophic guns too long to be shocked by death, or by murder. What
affected me was the utter, stupid bestiality of the affair. Even
murder--murder for cause--I can understand. It is comprehensible that
men should kill one another in the passion of love, of hatred, of
patriotism, of religion. But this was different. Here was killing
without cause, an orgy of blind-brutishness, a thing monstrously
irrational.

Later on, strolling with Possum on the main deck, as I passed the open
door of the hospital