went to sleep on the
cabin floor alongside the chests. We couldn't waken him at eight bells,
and we knew his troubles were over. At daylight I examined his body.
Nothing wrong, only the two little pink spots under the ears. We buried
him at daylight, with scant pretense of a burial service. Things were
looking serious.

"All this time we were plowing along before the trade wind, but it soon
panned out and we had light, shifty airs from all directions, with
rain--regular Gulf Stream weather. It made us bad-tempered, and Pango
and Gleason had a fight. It was a bad fight, and we couldn't stop them;
both were powerful men, and as they brushed into me in their whirling
lunge along the deck, locked tight, they knocked me six feet away. When
I got to my feet, Pango had Gleason down and was choking him. I got a
handspike and battered that coon's head with it; but he wouldn't let
go, and before others came up to help he had killed him. He went for
me, but had to stop before the handspikes of the crowd.

"Now, with Gleason dead, the command devolved upon me or Pango, and
this fellow was in a mood to demand the place. He could lick any three
of us, but not all hands; but, while we were growling about it and
cooling down, we found other troubles to keep us busy. We had piled
several tons' weight on the weak cabin floor timbers of an old
schooner, and of a sudden, down they crashed to the hold below, leaving
a yawning hole in the cabin floor and starting a butt or two in the
planking. It was pump, pump, pump, now, for we couldn't rig any kind of
a purchase to clear those busted chests away from the leak. Pango was a
good worker, and, under the pressure of extreme fatigue, we forgot our
grudges. I did not care for the cheap position of command over a bunch
of foreigners, and so we made Pango skipper, while I remained navigator
and mate. Pango promptly quit pumping, saying that skippers don't pump.
And that night he quit everything. As skipper he stood no watch, but at
breakfast time he was cold, with the same little marks under his ears.
On his skin, however, they showed a brownish black.

"Gleason had been choked to death, and I had examined the imprint of
Pango's fingers before we buried him. There was hardly a sign; nothing
at all to show that the little pink spots came from the pressure of a
strangler's grip. Besides, you cannot choke a man asleep without waking
him. He would make some kind of a fuss, and apprise others; but th