We didn’t know what to say, so we held in and didn’t say nothing at all.
He went aft and set down, but he couldn’t seem to git that thing out of his mind. Every now and then he would rip out something about it, and try to make us answer him, but we dasn’t.
It got lonesomer and lonesomer right along, and it did seem to me I couldn’t stand it. It was still worse when night begun to come on. By and by Tom pinched me and whispers:
“Look!”
I took a glance aft, and see the professor taking a whet out of a bottle. I didn’t like the looks of that. By and by he took another drink, and pretty soon he begun to sing. It was dark now, and getting black and stormy. He went on singing, wilder and wilder, and the thunder begun to mutter, and the wind to wheeze and moan among the ropes, and altogether it was awful. It got so black we couldn’t see him any more, and wished we couldn’t hear him, but we could. Then he got still; but he warn’t still ten minutes till we got suspicious, and wished he would start up his noise again, so we could tell where he was. By and by there was a flash of lightning, and we see him start to get up, but he staggered and fell down. We heard him scream out in the dark:
“They don’t want to go to England. All right, I’ll change the course. They want to leave me. I know they do. Well, they shall—and now!”
I ’most died when he said that. Then he was still again—still so long I couldn’t bear it, and it did seem to me the lightning wouldn’t ever come again. But at last there was a blessed flash, and there he was, on his hands and knees crawling, and not four feet from us. My, but his eyes was terrible! He made a lunge for Tom, and says, “Overboard you go!” but it was already pitch-dark again, and I couldn’t see whether he got him or not, and Tom didn’t make a sound.
There was another long, horrible wait; then there was a flash, and I see Tom’s head sink down outside the boat and disappear. He was on the rope-ladder that dangled down in the air from the gunnel. The professor let off a shout and jumped for him, and straight off it was pitch-dark again, and Jim groaned out, “Po’ Mars Tom, he’s a goner!” and made a jump for the professor, but the professor warn’t there.
Then we heard a couple of terrible screams, and then another not so loud, and then another that was ’way below, and you could only just hear it; and I heard Jim say, “Po’ Mars Tom!”
Then it was awful still, and I reckon a person could ’a’ counted four thousand before the next flash come. When it come I see Jim on his knees, with his arms on the locker and his face buried in them, and he was crying. Before I could look over the edge it was all dark again, and I was glad, because I didn’t want to see. But when the next flash come, I was watching, and down there I see somebody a-swinging in the wind on the ladder, and it was Tom!