The young fellow neither answered nor moved.
“He has been stunned!” exclaimed one of the passengers.
“Oh, but wouldn’t he have fallen overboard if that were so?” cried another.
The captain shouted to some seamen, who were overhanging the bulwarks in the waist:
“Aft here, a couple of you, and help Barry inboard.”
It was at that moment the ship slightly rolled to port, and the figure of Barry plunged into the sea, falling limberly in the most lifelike manner. He struck the water, and lay afloat, and then, as he went astern, I caught a glimpse of his face. It was the colour of chocolate, most horrible to view, with nothing of his eyes showing but the whites, and his lips distended in a dreadful grin, exhibiting his teeth and gums as though his mouth had been torn away. One of the ladies fainted. A shriek arose from many of them. The third mate sprang aft, and I saw him standing erect on the taffrail poising a lifebuoy; but even whilst he flourished the thing the body sank.
Never for an instant was it doubted by any of us that he had been struck dead, and that he was a corpse when he fell from the chains. It was a fate I myself had escaped by the very skin of my teeth only! But for my having left my knife below, I should at once have dropped over the side on being ordered to do so by the mate, and there have been killed by the flash that had slain the unhappy young sailor man! Yet nothing was made of my escape. The captain merely said, “Lucky for you, Master Rockafellar, that you weren’t in Barry’s place;” whilst the midshipmen hardly referred to the matter, except to say that the mate had no right to put a man to the job of handling a lightning conductor with an electric storm hanging over the mast-heads.