and spat insolently on the deck.
Then, with utmost deliberation, he turned to his fellows and demanded
loudly and huskily:

"Who in hell's the old stiff, anyways?"

I saw Mr. Pike's huge form tense convulsively and involuntarily, and I
noted the way his huge hands strained in their clutch on the
bridge-railing. Beyond that he controlled himself.

"Go on, you," he said. "I'll have nothing out of you. Get into the
fo'c's'le."

And then, to my surprise, he turned and walked aft along the bridge to
where the tug was casting off its lines. So this was all his high and
mighty talk of kill and drive, I thought. Not until afterwards did I
recollect, as I turned aft down the deck, that I saw Captain West leaning
on the rail at the break of the poop and gazing for'ard.

The tug's lines were being cast off, and I was interested in watching the
manoeuvre until she had backed clear of the ship, at which moment, from
for'ard, arose a queer babel of howling and yelping, as numbers of
drunken voices cried out that a man was overboard. The second mate
sprang down the poop-ladder and darted past me along the deck. The mate,
still on the slender, white-painted bridge, that seemed no more than a
spider thread, surprised me by the activity with which he dashed along
the bridge to the 'midship house, leaped upon the canvas-covered long-
boat, and swung outboard where he might see. Before the men could
clamber upon the rail the second mate was among them, and it was he who
flung a coil of line overboard.

What impressed me particularly was the mental and muscular superiority of
these two officers. Despite their age--the mate sixty-nine and the
second mate at least fifty--their minds and their bodies had acted with
the swiftness and accuracy of steel springs. They were potent. They
were iron. They were perceivers, willers, and doers. They were as of
another species compared with the sailors under them. While the latter,
witnesses of the happening and directly on the spot, had been crying out
in befuddled helplessness, and with slow wits and slower bodies been
climbing upon the rail, the second mate had descended the steep ladder
from the poop, covered two hundred feet of deck, sprung upon the rail,
grasped the instant need of the situation, and cast the coil of line into
the water.

And of the same nature and quality had been the actions of Mr. Pike. He
and Mr. Mellaire were masters over the wretched creatures of sailor