“Are you deaf, Dance?” cried Mark, angrily. “How dare you, sir! Sit down.”
“I know,” continued the man, who was tumbling about forward. “Some on you’s took it for a game, and Lufftenant Staples ain’t the man to stand no larks. ‘Where’s that there boathook, Joe Dance?’ he says. ‘Produce it ’twonce, sir, or—’ ‘Ay, ay, sir. Starn all it is. Where are you coming? Pull. Starboard there—On Portsmouth hard in Portsmouth town. Three cheers, my merry lads—Now then, pull—pull hard—Ay, ay, sir—Now all together, my lads!’”
As the coxswain was speaking from out of the darkness, to the wonderment of all, Tom Fillot whispered quickly to his young officer,—
“It’s the crack he got, sir. He’ll be overboard if we don’t mind. Poor chap, he has gone right off his nut.”
Creeping forward past the men, Tom made for where Joe Dance was speaking loudly, evidently under the belief that he was talking to a number of people around. Then, stamping about in the boat, his words came forth more rapidly, but in quite a confused gabble, of which hardly a single word was comprehensible. Invisible though he was, it was evident that he was growing more and more excited, for his words flowed strangely, swiftly, and then became a mere babble, as, with a shout, he rushed aft at the touch of Tom Fillot.
“Stop him, some on you; he’s mad!” roared Tom Fillot; and as instinctively Mark started up, it was to be seized by the poor wretch in his delirium, and held back, in spite of his struggles, more and more over the side of the boat toward the sea.