here were half-a-dozen
boats around us, and he got pulled into one. I, with the boatswain and
the carpenter, let go the other anchor in a hurry and brought the
ship up somehow. The pilot had gone silly. He walked up and down the
forecastle head wringing his hands and muttering to himself: 'Killing
women, now! Killing women, now!' Not another word could you get out of
him.

"Dusk fell, then a night black as pitch; and peering upon the river I
heard a low, mournful hail, 'Ship, ahoy!' Two Gravesend watermen came
alongside. They had a lantern in their wherry, and looked up the ship's
side, holding on to the ladder without a word. I saw in the patch of
light a lot of loose, fair hair down there."

He shuddered again.

"After the tide turned poor Maggie's body had floated clear of one of
them big mooring buoys," he explained. "I crept aft, feeling half-dead,
and managed to send a rocket up--to let the other searchers know, on
the river. And then I slunk away forward like a cur, and spent the night
sitting on the heel of the bowsprit so as to be as far as possible out
of Charley's way."

"Poor fellow!" I murmured.

"Yes. Poor fellow," he repeated, musingly. "That brute wouldn't let
him--not even him--cheat her of her prey. But he made her fast in dock
next morning. He did. We hadn't exchanged a word--not a single look for
that matter. I didn't want to look at him. When the last rope was fast
he put his hands to his head and stood gazing down at his feet as if
trying to remember something. The men waited on the main deck for
the words that end the voyage. Perhaps that is what he was trying to
remember. I spoke for him. 'That'll do, men.'

"I never saw a crew leave a ship so quietly. They sneaked over the rail
one after another, taking care not to bang their sea chests too heavily.
They looked our way, but not one had the stomach to come up and offer to
shake hands with the mate as is usual.

"I followed him all over the empty ship to and fro, here and there, with
no living soul about but the two of us, because the old ship-keeper
had locked himself up in the galley--both doors. Suddenly poor Charley
mutters, in a crazy voice: 'I'm done here,' and strides down the gangway
with me at his heels, up the dock, out at the gate, on towards Tower
Hill. He used to take rooms with a decent old landlady in America
Square, to be near his work.

"All at once he stops short, turns round, and comes back straight at
me. 'Ned,' says