“Man!  What were you thinking of?  You mustn’t do that sort of thing.”

After a pause he assented:  “I suppose I mustn’t.”  Then after another short silence he added:  “I am all right now,” quickly, between the tell-tale gasps.

I could neither hear nor see anybody else; but when I spoke up, answering sad murmurs filled the quarter-deck, and its shadows seemed to shift here and there.  I ordered all the halyards laid down on deck clear for running.

“I’ll see to that, sir,” volunteered Ransome in his natural, pleasant tone, which comforted one and aroused one’s compassion, too, somehow.

That man ought to have been in his bed, resting, and my plain duty was to send him there.  But perhaps he would not have obeyed me; I had not the strength of mind to try.  All I said was: 

“Go about it quietly, Ransome.”

Returning on the poop I approached Gambril.  His face, set with hollow shadows in the light, looked awful, finally silenced.  I asked him how he felt, but hardly expected an answer.  Therefore, I was astonished at his comparative loquacity.

“Them shakes leaves me as weak as a kitten, sir,” he said, preserving finely that air of unconsciousness as to anything but his business a helmsman should never lose.  “And before I can pick up my strength that there hot fit comes along and knocks me over again.”

He sighed.  There was no reproach in his tone, but the bare words were enough to give me a horrible pang of self-reproach.  It held me dumb for a time.  When the tormenting sensation had passed off I asked: 

“Do you feel strong enough to prevent the rudder taking charge if she gets sternway on her?  It wouldn’t do to get something smashed about the steering-gear now.  We’ve enough difficulties to cope with as it is.”

He answered with just a shade of weariness that he was strong enough to hang on.  He could promise me that she shouldn’t take the wheel out of his hands.  More he couldn’t say.

At that moment Ransome appeared quite close to me, stepping out of the darkness into visibility suddenly, as if just created with his composed face and pleasant voice.

Every rope on deck, he said, was laid down clear for running, as far as one could make certain by feeling.  It was impossible to see anything.  Frenchy had stationed himself forward.  He said he had a jump or two left in him yet.

Here a faint smile altered for an instant the clear, firm design of Ransome’s lips.  With his serious clear, gray eyes, his serene temperament—­he was a priceless man altogether.  Soul as firm as the muscles of his body.

He was the only man on board (except me, but I had to preserve my liberty of movement) who had a sufficiency of muscular strength to trust to.  For a moment I thought I had better ask him to take the wheel.  But the dreadful knowledge of the enemy he had to carry about him made me hesitate.  In my ignorance of physiology it occurred to me that he might die suddenly, from excitement, at a critical moment.