“You’re almighty sure of yourself,” Captain Cullen sneered, turning on his heel.

A second week passed, and one morning found George Dorety standing in the coach-house companionway at the for’ard end of the long poop, taking his first gaze around the deck.  The Mary Rogers was reaching full-and-by, in a stiff breeze.  Every sail was set and drawing, including the staysails.  Captain Cullen strolled for’ard along the poop.  He strolled carelessly, glancing at the passenger out of the corner of his eye.  Dorety was looking the other way, standing with head and shoulders outside the companionway, and only the back of his head was to be seen.  Captain Cullen, with swift eye, embraced the mainstaysail-block and the head and estimated the distance.  He glanced about him.  Nobody was looking.  Aft, Joshua Higgins, pacing up and down, had just turned his back and was going the other way.  Captain Cullen bent over suddenly and cast the staysail-sheet off from its pin.  The heavy block hurtled through the air, smashing Dorety’s head like an egg-shell and hurtling on and back and forth as the staysail whipped and slatted in the wind.  Joshua Higgins turned around to see what had carried away, and met the full blast of the vilest portion of Captain Cullen’s profanity.

“I made the sheet fast myself,” whimpered the mate in the first lull, “with an extra turn to make sure.  I remember it distinctly.”

“Made fast?” the captain snarled back, for the benefit of the watch as it struggled to capture the flying sail before it tore to ribbons.  “You couldn’t make your grandmother fast, you useless scullion.  If you made that sheet fast with an extra turn, why didn’t it stay fast?  That’s what I want to know.  Why didn’t it stay fast?”

The mate whined inarticulately.

“Oh, shut up!” was the final word of Captain Cullen.

Half an hour later he was as surprised as any when the body of George Dorety was found inside the companionway on the floor.  In the afternoon, alone in his room, he doctored up the log.

“Ordinary seaman, Karl Brun,” he wrote, “lost overboard from foreroyal-yard in a gale of wind.  Was running at the time, and for the safety of the ship did not dare come up to the wind.  Nor could a boat have lived in the sea that was running.”

On another page, he wrote:—­

“Had often warned Mr. Dorety about the danger he ran because of his carelessness on deck.  I told him, once, that some day he would get his head knocked off by a block.  A carelessly fastened mainstaysail sheet was the cause of the accident, which was deeply to be regretted because Mr. Dorety was a favorite with all of us.”

Captain Dan Cullen read over his literary effort with admiration, blotted the page, and closed the log.  He lighted a cigar and stared before him.  He felt the Mary Rogers lift, and heel, and surge along, and knew that she was making nine knots.  A smile of satisfaction slowly dawned on his black and hairy face.  Well, anyway, he had made his westing and fooled God.