Ever since the night at the beginning of the voyage when Captain Swope tried to snap us off the yardarm, I made it a practice to stick close to the big fellow during the night watches.  I owed him my life, and, anyway I was eager to give him the service of a friend, of a mate.  I was always dreading that Swope would try again some dark night, and with better success.  It is so easy to do things in the dark, you see; get a man separated from the watch, beyond the reach of friendly eyes, give him a crack on the head and a boost over the rail, and then what proof, what trace, have you?  Just a line in the logbook, “Man lost overboard in the night.”  Aye, many a lad—­and many an officer—­has had just that happen to him.

So it was that in the night watches I became Newman’s shadow.  It was literally shoulder to shoulder with us, we handed the same lines, bent over the same jobs.  Newman never mentioned it, never asked me to stick close, but I knew he welcomed the attention.  He knew the danger of walking alone in the dark in that ship.  Mister Lynch kept his word and never again sent either of us aloft at night.  In fact, the second mate did more than that; from that night on, whenever Newman had a night wheel, Lynch stayed aft on the poop during the trick.  Oh, there was no friendship between the two; I know that for certain.  Lynch was an officer, and Newman just a hand.  But he was a square man, and he was seeing to it that Newman got a square deal, at least in his watch.  And, I guessed, the lady had something to do with Lynch’s attitude.  She was not friendless in the cabin, as I had discovered.

This night Newman had no wheel.  Neither had I. During the first half of the watch we touched elbows.  As usual, the second mate worked sail and kept us dancing a lively jig.  He made work, Lynch did.  He would walk along the deck and jerk each buntline in passing—­and then order lads aloft to overhaul and stop the lines again.  He would command a tug on this line, a pull on that; no sail was ever trimmed fine enough to suit him.  Oh, aye, he was but following his nature and training; he could not bear being idle himself, and he knew that busy men don’t brood themselves into trouble.  And running a watch ragged was hell-ship style.

We were aft on a job—­brailling in the spanker, I recall—­when I missed Newman.  An instant before we were together, we had handed the same line; suddenly he was gone from my side.  At first I thought he had passed around to the other side of the mizzenmast, for we were coiling down gear that had been disarranged during the job, and I was not worried.  But when the second mate ordered us forward to another job, my friend was not with the gang.

The second mate left one of his tradesmen aft, and during the remainder of the watch kept us forward of the waist of the ship.  He drove us, kept us jumping, at perfectly useless jobs on the head sails.  It was as plain as the nose on my face that he was purposely keeping us forward.  Something was going on, aft there by the boat skids, by the break of the poop; it was a moonless night, but once or twice I saw shadows flitting about the main deck.