I have spoken of the skipper as being unwell and quite unfit for duty; but that scarcely conveys a correct impression of his condition. The fact was that he was well enough to be up and about on deck, but he was constantly worried with headache of the most distracting kind, and, what was still worse, his intellect seemed to be failing him: he suffered from frequent total lapses of memory, stopping short in the midst of a conversation simply because he forgot in a moment what he was talking about; and he was subject, from time to time, to hallucinations, when he would assure us, with the utmost gravity, that he was the King of England taking a holiday “incognito”, the re-incarnation of Morgan the pirate, or something else equally ridiculous, while at other times he would be perfectly rational. For the first two or three weeks, while these symptoms were in process of development, he caused Cunningham and me a very considerable amount of anxiety, for we were constantly dreading some new departure which would render him dangerous either to himself or to others; but at length, as we were unable to detect any such tendency, we grew easier in our minds, just allowing him to wander about the ship at his own sweet will, and amuse himself by giving the most extraordinary orders, which nobody ever even pretended to carry out. We came to the conclusion that he was suffering from some obscure form of concussion of the brain, from which we hoped he might be relieved upon our arrival at Hong-Kong, where we expected to obtain efficient surgical assistance; but that, meanwhile, he was in no very serious danger. As the event proved, however, we were all woefully mistaken. We had made as much northing as I deemed necessary, and were bowling along upon a west-nor’-west course, reeling off our ten knots per hour, with all our flying kites abroad and a fine north-east breeze over our starboard quarter, when, about four bells in the first; watch, the skipper came up on deck complaining that he found it impossible to sleep in consequence of the extreme heat of his cabin. The night was brilliantly starlit, and the air so clear that we could have easily distinguished a sail at a distance of two miles, had there been owe to see; but the light was not strong enough to enable me clearly to distinguish Brown’s features, even when he was standing beside me, while the cabin lamp was turned low, so that there was not much light coming through the skylight. But when the old fellow fell into step by my side, and began to talk quite rationally about the heat below, the impossibility of sleeping, and his gratification at the fine breeze which we had fallen in with, and so on, I was completely thrown off my guard; for he appeared to be in precisely the condition that I had often previously seen him in, when he had talked rationally enough for a time, taken a little walk—as he was doing at that moment—and then, suddenly forgetting what he was conversing about, gone below and slept for several hours.
All at once, as we were walking to and fro between the main rigging and the wheel grating, the old fellow halted, pulled off his cap, extracted a big bandana handkerchief from it, and proceeded to mop his head and face, from which—as in my own case—the perspiration was freely pouring.
“Great snakes,” he ejaculated, “but it is hot, and no mistake! The sweat’s pourin’ out o’ me like water outen a sponge. I guess that’s what’s makin’ me so all-fired thirsty. Where’s the water cask? I’m boun’ to have a drink. My tongue’s so dry it’s rattlin’ agin my teeth! Can’t ye hear it? Where’s that there scuttle butt, I say?”
“Better not drink direct from the cask, sir,” I said, for Cunningham had strongly urged us all to drink nothing but filtered water, and even that with a dash of lime juice in it, during the extreme heat. “The filter stands on the sideboard, and there is an opened bottle of lime juice in the rack above it; you will find that very much cooler and more refreshing than the water from the scuttle butt. That stuff is really not fit to drink.”
“But I’m so tarnation thirsty that I must have a drink,” he insisted, “and I’d rather drink outer the cask than go below. Why, man alive, that there cabin is like a oven!”
“Oh,” said I, glancing hastily round and noting that the weather seemed fine and settled, “if that is all I’ll very soon slip down and fetch you up a drink! Bring yourself to an anchor here on the wheel grating, sir, while I go below. I’ll be back in a brace of shakes. Just keep your eye on him, Chips,” I whispered to the carpenter, who was at the wheel. “I’ll not be gone more than half a minute.”
“Right you are, sir,” responded the carpenter, turning his quid in his mouth as the skipper obediently seated himself on the wheel grating, while I made a rush for the companion. I turned up the cabin lamp, procured a tumbler, and was in the act of measuring out a liberal dose of lime juice when I heard the carpenter’s voice suddenly upraised in accents of panic.
“Man overboard! Man overboard!!” he shouted. “Mr Temple, come on deck, sir; the skipper’s been and throwed hisself over the lee rail!”
Flinging down the tumbler and bottle of lime juice, I mounted the companion ladder in two jumps, nearly dashing my brains out against the slide in my haste, and stared stupidly about me for a moment, being more than half-stunned. Then, as I pulled myself together, I heard Chips repeating, parrot-wise:
“He just laid his han’s upon the rail and swung hisself clean overboard, like a boy jumpin’ a gate.”