ood up surrounding
Jimmy. We begged him to hold up, to hold on, at least. He glared with
his bulging eyes, mute as a fish, and with all the stiffening knocked
out of him. He wouldn't stand; he wouldn't even as much as clutch at our
necks; he was only a cold black skin loosely stuffed with soft cotton
wool; his arms and legs swung jointless and pliable; his head rolled
about; the lower lip hung down, enormous and heavy. We pressed round
him, bothered and dismayed; sheltering him we swung here and there in
a body; and on the very brink of eternity we tottered all together with
concealing and absurd gestures, like a lot of drunken men embarrassed
with a stolen corpse.

Something had to be done. We had to get him aft. A rope was tied slack
under his armpits, and, reaching up at the risk of our lives, we
hung him on the fore-sheet cleet. He emitted no sound; he looked as
ridiculously lamentable as a doll that had lost half its sawdust, and we
started on our perilous journey over the main deck, dragging along
with care that pitiful, that limp, that hateful burden. He was not very
heavy, but had he weighed a ton he could not have been more awkward to
handle. We literally passed him from hand to hand. Now and then we had
to hang him up on a handy belaying-pin, to draw a breath and reform
the line. Had the pin broken he would have irretrievably gone into
the Southern Ocean, but he had to take his chance of that; and after a
little while, becoming apparently aware of it, he groaned slightly, and
with a great effort whispered a few words. We listened eagerly. He was
reproaching us with our carelessness in letting him run such risks:
"Now, after I got myself out from there," he breathed out weakly.
"There" was his cabin. And he got himself out. We had nothing to do with
it apparently!... No matter.... We went on and let him take his chances,
simply because we could not help it; for though at that time we hated
him more than ever--more than anything under heaven--we did not want to
lose him. We had so far saved him; and it had become a personal
matter between us and the sea. We meant to stick to him. Had we (by an
incredible hypothesis) undergone similar toil and trouble for an empty
cask, that cask would have become as precious to us as Jimmy was. More
precious, in fact, because we would have had no reason to hate the cask.
And we hated James Wait. We could not get rid of the monstrous suspicion
that this astounding black-man was s