“Do you?” Tom queried, sarcastically. “I feel just now as if I had more urgent need of something to put me to sleep,” and with a yawn he dropped into a convenient chair and settled himself comfortably with his feet against the rail. “Sing us that song you used to sing at college before we threatened to set the Black Hand on your trail, Dick,” he invited. “Perhaps that will help to woo sweet slumber.”
“It would be much more likely to woo sweet nightmare,” said Bert, which was true if not complimentary.
“That’s all right,” Dick retorted, good-naturedly. “Of course, I understand that this apparent reluctance on your part is due entirely to sour grapes since you doubtless are aware of the fact that I never would condescend——”
“Oh can it,” Tom murmured, sleepily. “If you won’t sing, the least you can do is to keep still and let a fellow go to sleep.”
“Oh, certainly,” Dick said, obligingly, “anything you wish. As I was saying,” he went on with a wink at Bert, “you are doubtless aware that I would never condescend to render that immortal ballad before so——”
“You have gone too far,” Tom cried in a terrible voice, as he sprang for Dick. “You have dared disobey my mandates and now you shall suffer the penalty——”
But the mock tragedy was never enacted, for, even as Tom spoke, his attention was caught by the figure of a man covered from head to foot with soot and grime and running toward their end of the deck at full speed. At his heels was a crowd led by the steward who cried out frantically to the boys, “Stop him, stop him! He’s gone mad!”
So suddenly had come the thunder-bolt from a clear sky that for a few seconds the boys could do nothing but stare at the spectacle before them and wonder if they could be awake. In fact, Bert confessed later that he had had a faint impression that Dick’s nightmare must have come upon them ahead of time.
Bert was the first to take in the situation and with a cry of, “I guess it’s up to us, fellows,” he ran toward the wild figure now only a few feet in front of them. But even as the three comrades threw out their hands to halt the flying madman, he paused, glared around him for an instant with the look of a hunted animal brought to bay, and then, with a fierce, inhuman cry that echoed in Bert’s memory for many a long day after, he threw himself over the rail and into the glassy depths nearly forty feet below!
For a brief moment there was the silence of death on board the Northland, and then arose such an uproar that even the captain’s great voice, shouting orders to the crew, could scarcely be heard above the din.