So Burns and I got the log-book from the captain’s cabin.  The axe was there, where we had placed it earlier in the day, lying on the white cover of the bed.  The room was untouched, as the dead man had left it—­a collar on the stand, brushes put down hastily, a half-smoked cigar which had burned a long scar on the wood before it had gone out.  We went out silently, Burns carrying the book, I locking the door behind us.

Mrs. Johns, sitting near the companionway with the revolver on her knee, looked up and eyed me coolly.

“So they would not do it!”

“I am sorry to disappoint you—­they would not.”

She held up my revolver to me, and smiled cynically.

“Remember,” she said, “I only said you were a possibility.”

“Thank you; I shall remember.”

By unanimous consent, the task of putting down what had happened was given to me.  I have a copy of the log-book before me now, the one that was used at the trial.  The men read it through before they signed it.

August thirteenth.

This morning, between two-thirty and three o’clock, three murders were committed on the yacht Ella.  At the request of Mrs. Johns, one of the party on board, I had moved to the after house to sleep, putting my blanket and pillow in the storeroom and sleeping on the floor there.  Mrs. Johns gave, as her reason, a fear of something going wrong, as there was trouble between Mr. Turner and the captain.  I slept with a revolver beside me and with the door of the storeroom open.

At some time shortly before three o’clock I wakened with a feeling of suffocation, and found that the door was closed and locked on the outside.  I suspected a joke among the crew, and set to work with my pen-knife to unscrew the lock.  When I had two screws out, a woman screamed, and I broke down the door.

As the main cabin was dark, I saw no one and could not tell where the cry came from.  I ran into Mr. Vail’s cabin, next the storeroom, and called him.  His door was standing open.  I heard him breathing heavily.  Then the breathing stopped.  I struck a match, and found him dead.  His head had been crushed in with an axe, the left hand cut off, and there were gashes on the right shoulder and the abdomen.

I knew the helmsman would be at the wheel, and ran up the after companionway to him and told him.  Then I ran forward and called the first mate, Mr. Singleton, who was on duty.  He had been drinking.  I asked him to call the captain, but he did not.  He got his revolver, and we hurried down the forward companion.  The body of the captain was lying at the foot of the steps, his head on the lowest stair.  He had been killed like Mr. Vail.  His cap had been placed over his face.

The mate collapsed on the steps.  I found the light switch and turned it on.  There was no one in the cabin or in the chart-room.  I ran to Mr. Turner’s room, going through Mr. Vail’s and through the bathroom.  Mr. Turner was in bed, fully dressed.  I could not rouse him.  Like the mate, he had been drinking.