ilors carry about with them in
their sea-chests I was wicked enough, recalling how he had walked out
of that deck-house, leaving me, a little boy, alone with a strong,
brutal, crazy third mate, to hope that he might yet prove guilty of
larger sins still, for I could not but regard him as a creature that
deserved to be hanged. The instant this man stepped through the door
the third mate jumped up and closed it. It travelled in grooves, and
he whipped it to with a temper which caused the whole structure to
echo again to the blow.

"Now, you young--" he exclaimed, turning his bulldog face, white with
rage, upon me, yet speaking in a cold voice that was more terrifying
to listen to than if he had roared out, "I have you and I mean to
punish you," and with that he unclasped his heavy belt, and then
clasped it again so as to make a double thong of the leather, and
grasped me by the collar.

What my feelings were I am unable to state at this distance of time. I
believe I was more astonished than frightened. I could not imagine
that this huge creature was in earnest in offering to beat me for what
I had said, and yet I was sensible too of an unnatural fire in his
eyes--a glow that put an expression of savage exultation into them;
and this look of his somehow held me motionless and speechless. He
half raised his arm, but a sudden irresolution possessed him, as
though my passivity was a check upon his intentions.

"No, no," he exclaimed, after a little, "I'll manage better than
this"; and still grasping me by the collar of my jacket he dropped his
belt and ran me to the fore end of the compartment, threw me on my
back, and knelt upon me. Within reach of his arm, kneeling as he was,
were three shelves on which we kept such crockery and cutlery as we
owned, along with our slender stores of sugar and flour and the cold
remains of previous repasts. He felt for a knife; I could hear the
blades rattle as his fingers groped past his curved wrist for one of
them, and then flourishing the black-handled weapon in front of my
eyes he exclaimed, "Now I'm going to murder you." I lay stock-still; I
never uttered a word; I scarcely breathed indeed. Again, I say that I
do not know that I was terrified. My condition was one of
semi-stupefaction, I think, with just enough of sense left in me to
comprehend that if I uttered the least cry or struggled, no matter how
faintly, I should transform him into a wild beast. Nothing but my
lying corpse-l