I
could grasp it, Ditman Olansen was a Berserker type. Yet, as I watched
him pulling in good time at the oar, his large, pale-blue eyes seemed
almost bovine--the last man in the world, in my judgment, to have a
Berserker fit.

As we drew close to the Greek he began to scream menacingly at us and to
brandish a sheath-knife. His weight sank the ladder until the water
washed his knees, and on this submerged support he balanced himself with
wild writhing and outflinging of arms. His face, grimacing like a
monkey's, was not a pretty thing to look upon. And as he continued to
threaten us with the knife I wondered how the problem of rescuing him
would be solved.

But I should have trusted Mr. Pike for that. He removed the
boat-stretcher from under the Maltese Cockney's feet and laid it close to
hand in the stern-sheets. Then he had the men reverse the boat and back
it upon the Greek. Dodging a sweep of the knife, Mr. Pike awaited his
chance, until a passing wave lifted the boat's stern high, while Tony was
sinking toward the trough. This was the moment. Again I was favoured
with a sample of the lightning speed with which that aged man of sixty-
nine could handle his body. Timed precisely, and delivered in a flash
and with weight, the boat-stretcher came down on the Greek's head. The
knife fell into the sea, and the demented creature collapsed and followed
it, knocked unconscious. Mr. Pike scooped him out, quite effortlessly it
seemed to me, and flung him into the boat's bottom at my feet.

The next moment the men were bending to their oars and the mate was
steering back to the _Elsinore_. It was a stout rap Mr. Pike had
administered with the boat-stretcher. Thin streaks of blood oozed on the
damp, plastered hair from the broken scalp. I could but stare at the
lump of unconscious flesh that dripped sea-water at my feet. A man, all
life and movement one moment, defying the universe, reduced the next
moment to immobility and the blackness and blankness of death, is always
a fascinating object for the contemplative eye of the philosopher. And
in this case it had been accomplished so simply, by means of a stick of
wood brought sharply in contact with his skull.

If Tony the Greek be accounted an _appearance_, what was he now?--a
_disappearance_? And if so, whither had he disappeared? And whence
would he journey back to reoccupy that body when what we call
consciousness returned to him? The first word, much