his face, and it was
ghastly. I know his teeth chattered. But he didn't say anything,
and the next minute he was somewhere in the dark trying to find
his sou'wester at the foot of the mast.

When all was quiet, and she was hove to, coming to and falling
off her four points as regularly as a pendulum, and the helm
lashed a little to the lee, the old man turned in again, and I
managed to light a pipe in the lee of the deck-house, for there
was nothing more to be done till the gale chose to moderate, and
the ship was as easy as a baby in its cradle. Of course the cook
had gone below, as he might have done an hour earlier; so there
were supposed to be four of us in the watch. There was a man at
the lookout, and there was a hand by the wheel, though there was
no steering to be done, and I was having my pipe in the lee of
the deck-house, and the fourth man was somewhere about decks,
probably having a smoke too. I thought some skippers I had sailed
with would have called the watch aft, and given them a drink
after that job, but it wasn't cold, and I guessed that our old
man wouldn't be particularly generous in that way. My hands and
feet were red-hot, and it would be time enough to get into dry
clothes when it was my watch below; so I stayed where I was, and
smoked. But by and by, things being so quiet, I began to wonder
why nobody moved on deck; just that sort of restless wanting to
know where every man is that one sometimes feels in a gale of
wind on a dark night. So when I had finished my pipe I began to
move about. I went aft, and there was a man leaning over the
wheel, with his legs apart and both hands hanging down in the
light from the binnacle, and his sou'wester over his eyes. Then
I went forward, and there was a man at the lookout, with his back
against the foremast, getting what shelter he could from the
staysail. I knew by his small height that he was not one of the
Benton boys. Then I went round by the weather side, and poked
about in the dark, for I began to wonder where the other man was.
But I couldn't find him, though I searched the decks until I got
right aft again. It was certainly one of the Benton boys that was
missing, but it wasn't like either of them to go below to change
his clothes in such warm weather. The man at the wheel was the
other, of course. I spoke to him.

"Jim, what's become of your brother?"

"I am Jack, sir."

"Well, then, Jack, where's Jim? He's not on deck."

"I don't know, si