Alone on the deep with a dead man.
Well, well. It was not for the first time surely. A ghost, long-laid, walked again. A sudden lightning had flashed upon his past. In it he had seen and remembered. Something of a forgotten self floated to the surface. In turmoil, his Eternal Mind had thrown up on the sea of Time a memory from its imperishable hoard.
Slowly he recollected himself, and looked about him.
He was kneeling on something soft, and his hands were warm and slimy.
He looked down, and jerked back with a scream.
He was kneeling on a dead man, and his hands were crimson.
A gust caught the lugger: she staggered forward with a flap and swing of her boom. Her master, her mate, was dead; and the spirit had gone out of her.
No time for the horrors! he must be doing.
In a moment he was at work with his dirk. The great lug came down with a rattle.
Forward under the boom, he cut the sheet of the jib. It fluttered furiously, streaming lee-ward. Then he stumbled aft.
The murdered helmsman still lolled in drunken stupor, smiling inscrutably.