nd while he dispatched the second mate for marlin with which to tie
the fellow's arms.

"Bughouse," Mr. Pike grinned at me. "I've seen some bughouse crews in my
time, but this one's the limit."

"What are you going to do?" I asked. "The man will bleed to death."

"And good riddance," he answered promptly. "We'll have our hands full of
him until we can lose him somehow. When he gets easy I'll sew him up,
that's all, if I have to ease him with a clout of the jaw."

I glanced at the mate's huge paw and appreciated its anaesthetic
qualities. Out on deck again, I saw Captain West on the poop, hands
still in pockets, quite uninterested, gazing at a blue break in the sky
to the north-east. More than the mates and the maniac, more than the
drunken callousness of the men, did this quiet figure, hands in pockets,
impress upon me that I was in a different world from any I had known.

Wada broke in upon my thoughts by telling me he had been sent to say that
Miss West was serving tea in the cabin.

CHAPTER IV

The contrast, as I entered the cabin, was startling. All contrasts
aboard the _Elsinore_ promised to be startling. Instead of the cold,
hard deck my feet sank into soft carpet. In place of the mean and narrow
room, built of naked iron, where I had left the lunatic, I was in a
spacious and beautiful apartment. With the bawling of the men's voices
still in my ears, and with the pictures of their drink-puffed and filthy
faces still vivid under my eyelids, I found myself greeted by a delicate-
faced, prettily-gowned woman who sat beside a lacquered oriental table on
which rested an exquisite tea-service of Canton china. All was repose
and calm. The steward, noiseless-footed, expressionless, was a shadow,
scarcely noticed, that drifted into the room on some service and drifted
out again.

Not at once could I relax, and Miss West, serving my tea, laughed and
said:

"You look as if you had been seeing things. The steward tells me a man
has been overboard. I fancy the cold water must have sobered him."

I resented her unconcern.

"The man is a lunatic," I said. "This ship is no place for him. He
should be sent ashore to some hospital."

"I am afraid, if we begin that, we'd have to send two-thirds of our
complement ashore--one lump?

"Yes, please," I answered. "But the man has terribly wounded himself. He
is liable to bleed to death."

She looked at me for a moment, her gray eyes serious and s