‘What’s that? what’s that?’ cried old Keeling, bending his crowbar of a figure to the stain. ‘Ay, he has been struck down as you say, Mr. Saunders. Who has done this thing? Look about you, men; see if there’s anybody concealed here.’
Three or four fellows had come tumbling aft. One took the wheel from the second mate; and the others, along with the midshipmen of the watch, fell to peering under the gratings and into the gig that hung astern flush with the taffrail, and up aloft; but there was nothing living to be found, and the great fabric of mizzen masts and sails whitened to the truck by the moon, and the yard-arms showing in black lines against the stars, soared without blotch or stir, saving here and there a thin shadow upon the pallid cloths creeping to the movement of the spars.
Dr. Hemmeridge now arrived. The seaman, who appeared as dead as a stone, was turned over, and propped by a couple of sailors, and the doctor took a view of him by the help of the binnacle lamp. There was a desperate gash on the left side of the head. The small straw hat that the poor fellow was wearing was cut through, as though to the clip of a chopper. There was a deal of blood on the deck, and the man’s face was ghastly enough, with its beard encrimsoned and dripping, to turn the heart sick.
‘Is he dead, think you?’ demanded the captain.
‘I cannot yet tell,’ answered the doctor. ‘Raise him, men, and carry him forward at once to his bunk.’
The sailors, followed by the doctor, went staggering shadowily under their burden along the poop and disappeared, leaving a little crowd of us at the wheel dumb with wonder, and looking about us with eyes which gleamed to the flame of the binnacle lamp that Mr. Cocker yet held.
‘Now, how has this happened?’ demanded old Keeling, after a prolonged squint aloft. ‘Had you left the deck, Mr. Cocker?’
‘No, sir, not for a living instant; Mr. Dugdale will bear witness to that.’
‘It is true,’ I said.
‘Did no man from forward come along the poop?’