The mate relinquished it.
“You dog!” snarled the other, “to try and kill a man when he wasn’t looking, and then keep him in his wet clothes in the boat all night. Make the most o’ your time. It’ll be many a day before you see the sea again.”
The mate groaned in spirit, but made no reply.
“I’ve wrote everything down with the time it happened,” continued the other in a voice of savage satisfaction; “an’ I’ve locked that hand-spike up in my locker. It’s got blood on it.”
“That’s enough about it,” said the mate, turning at last and speaking thickly. “What I’ve done I must put up with.”
He walked forward to end the discussion; but the skipper shouted out choice bits from time to time as they occurred to him, and sat steering and gibing, a gruesome picture of vengeance.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet with a sharp cry. “There’s somebody in the water,” he roared; “stand by to pick him up.”
As he spoke he pointed with his left hand, and with his right steered for something which rose and fell lazily on the water a short distance from them.
The mate, following his outstretched arm, saw it too, and picking up a boat-hook stood ready, and they were soon close enough to distinguish the body of a man supported by a life-belt.
“Don’t miss him,” shouted the skipper.