The Last Entry

by William Clark Russell

'After all,' she mused, keeping her hands clasped upon her open book, with her eyes fastened upon the sailors' house, 'it is the monotony of the sea that repels. It must have its good side. Plenty to eat and drink, and, as father says, most of the wonders of the world—islands, harbours, inland scenes of beauty—to be visited at the cost of others.'

Whilst she thus moralized, she beheld a head with a very savage and malicious look upon its face in the deck-house door. The figure of the man was exposed to the waist, and two great hands grasped for support each side of the opening. It was the head of the boatswain of the schooner, James Jones, carpenter and second mate—but as second mate he had never been called upon to serve. He was uncovered, and his hair was wild. His expression was devilish. Though at some distance from the man, the young lady could clearly distinguish a look of fury upon the seaman's face, as though he had just slain a shipmate, and was in the act of leaping on deck.

He stood in the doorway, and continued to stare aft. Miss Vanderholt glanced uneasily at the skylight. She waited for her father and Captain Glew to appear. The captain was bound to arrive in a minute or two, for already Mr. Tweed, who had glanced at the boatswain without appearing to see anything unusual in the man's fixed, half-in and half-out posture, and dark, endevilled face, had picked up his sextant, and was ogling the sun.

Mr. Vanderholt was the first of the two to come on deck. His daughter called to him softly, and said:

'Father, did you ever see, in all your life, such a wicked expression as that man wears?'

'What man?' exclaimed Mr. Vanderholt, lancing his teeth with a silver toothpick, and gazing along the decks with an expression of bland benevolence.

'That man there, in the door of the galley,' said the girl. 'He's been standing like that for the last three or four minutes, hatless, looking aft, with that face of fury, as if they'd tied him in the doorway and were goading him.'

'I certainly see a man lounging in the doorway,' said Mr. Vanderholt, who was a little short-sighted. 'Does he look angry?'

He spoke somewhat uneasily, and turned his head to see if the captain was on deck. Glew at that moment rose through the hatch, armed with his sextant. Vanderholt went up to him, and said: