r. Pike wore the _Elsinore_ around, and again
retraced the course she must have been sailing when the Greek went over.
Captain West still strolled and smoked, and Miss West made a brief trip
below to give Wada forgotten instructions about Possum. Andy Pay was
called to the wheel, and the carpenter went below to finish his
breakfast.

It all seemed rather callous to me. Nobody was much concerned for the
man who was overboard somewhere on that lonely ocean. And yet I had to
admit that everything possible was being done to find him. I talked a
little with Mr. Pike, and he seemed more vexed than anything else. He
disliked to have the ship's work interrupted in such fashion.

Mr. Mellaire's attitude was different.

"We are short-handed enough as it is," he told me, when he joined us on
the poop. "We can't afford to lose him even if he is crazy. We need
him. He's a good sailor most of the time."

The hail came from the mizzen-skysail-yard. The Maltese Cockney it was
who first sighted the man and called down the information. The mate,
looking to windwards, suddenly lowered his glasses, rubbed his eyes in a
puzzled way, and looked again. Then Miss West, using another pair of
glasses, cried out in surprise and began to laugh.

"What do you make of it, Miss West?" the mate asked.

"He doesn't seem to be in the water. He's standing up."

Mr. Pike nodded.

"He's on the ladder," he said. "I'd forgotten that. It fooled me at
first. I couldn't understand it." He turned to the second mate. "Mr.
Mellaire, will you launch the long boat and get some kind of a crew into
it while I back the main-yard? I'll go in the boat. Pick men that can
pull an oar."

"You go, too," Miss West said to me. "It will be an opportunity to get
outside the _Elsinore_ and see her under full sail."

Mr. Pike nodded consent, so I went along, sitting near him in the stern-
sheets where he steered, while half a dozen hands rowed us toward the
suicide, who stood so weirdly upon the surface of the sea. The Maltese
Cockney pulled the stroke oar, and among the other five men was one whose
name I had but recently learned--Ditman Olansen, a Norwegian. A good
seaman, Mr. Mellaire had told me, in whose watch he was; a good seaman,
but "crank-eyed." When pressed for an explanation Mr. Mellaire had said
that he was the sort of man who flew into blind rages, and that one never
could tell what little thing would produce such a rage. As near as