I was gazing intently, in the effort to witness some indication of living thing on board, when, to my mingled consternation and horror, I witnessed an arm projecting through the window of the deck-house and frantically waving what resembled a white handkerchief.  As none of the men called out, I judged the signal was not perceptible to the naked eye; and in my excitement I shouted, “There’s a living man on board of her, my lads!” dropped the glass, and ran aft to call the captain.

I met him coming up the companion ladder.  The first thing he said was, “You’re out of your course,” and looked up at the sails.

“There’s a wreck yonder,” I cried, pointing eagerly, “with a man on board signaling to us.”

“Get me the glass,” he said sulkily; and I picked it up and handed it to him.

He looked at the wreck for some moments; and addressing the man at the wheel, exclaimed, making a movement with his hand, “Keep her away!  Where in the devil are you steering to?”

“Good heaven!” I ejaculated:  “there’s a man on board—­there may be others!”

“Damnation!” he exclaimed between his teeth:  “what do you mean by interfering with me?  Keep her away!” he roared out.

During this time we had drawn sufficiently near to the wreck to enable the sharper-sighted among the hands to remark the signal, and they were calling out that there was somebody flying a handkerchief aboard the hull.

“Captain Coxon,” said I, with as firm a voice as I could command,—­for I was nearly in as great a rage as he, and rendered insensible to all consequences by his inhumanity,—­“if you bear away and leave that man yonder to sink with that wreck when he can be saved with very little trouble, you will become as much a murderer as any ruffian who stabs a man asleep.”

When I had said this, Coxon turned black in the face with passion.  His eyes protruded, his hands and fingers worked as though he were under some electrical process, and I saw for the first time in my life a sight I had always laughed at as a bit of impossible novelist description,—­a mouth foaming with rage.  He rushed aft, just over Duckling’s cabin, and stamped with all his might.

“Now,” thought I, “they may try to murder me!” And without a word I pulled off my coat, seized a belaying-pin, and stood ready; resolved that happen what might, I would give the first man who should lay his fingers on me something to remember me by while he had breath in his body.

The men, not quite understanding what was happening, but seeing that a “row” was taking place, came to the forecastle and advanced by degrees along the main-deck.  Among them I noticed the cook, muttering to one or the other who stood near.

Mr. Duckling, awakened by the violent clattering over his head, came running up the companion-way with a bewildered, sleepy look in his face.  The captain grasped him by the arm, and pointing to me, cried out with an oath that “that villain was breeding a mutiny on board, and he believed wanted to murder him and Duckling.”