As to Gambril, he was fairly choked.  He coughed pitifully, the broken cough of a sick man; and I beheld him as one sees a fish in an aquarium by the light of an electric bulb, an elusive, phosphorescent shape.  Only he did not glide away.  But something else happened.  Both binnaclelamps went out.  I suppose the water forced itself into them, though I wouldn’t have thought that possible, for they fitted into the cowl perfectly.

The last gleam of light in the universe had gone, pursued by a low exclamation of dismay from Gambril.  I groped for him and seized his arm.  How startlingly wasted it was.

“Never mind,” I said.  “You don’t want the light.  All you need to do is to keep the wind, when it comes, at the back of your head.  You understand?”

“Aye, aye, sir. . . .  But I should like to have a light,” he added nervously.

All that time the ship lay as steady as a rock.  The noise of the water pouring off the sails and spars, flowing over the break of the poop, had stopped short.  The poop scuppers gurgled and sobbed for a little while longer, and then perfect silence, joined to perfect immobility, proclaimed the yet unbroken spell of our helplessness, poised on the edge of some violent issue, lurking in the dark.

I started forward restlessly.  I did not need my sight to pace the poop of my ill-starred first command with perfect assurance.  Every square foot of her decks was impressed indelibly on my brain, to the very grain and knots of the planks.  Yet, all of a sudden, I fell clean over something, landing full length on my hands and face.

It was something big and alive.  Not a dog—­more like a sheep, rather.  But there were no animals in the ship.  How could an animal. . . .  It was an added and fantastic horror which I could not resist.  The hair of my head stirred even as I picked myself up, awfully scared; not as a man is scared while his judgment, his reason still try to resist, but completely, boundlessly, and, as it were, innocently scared—­like a little child.

I could see It—­that Thing!  The darkness, of which so much had just turned into water, had thinned down a little.  There It was!  But I did not hit upon the notion of Mr. Burns issuing out of the companion on all fours till he attempted to stand up, and even then the idea of a bear crossed my mind first.

He growled like one when I seized him round the body.  He had buttoned himself up into an enormous winter overcoat of some woolly material, the weight of which was too much for his reduced state.  I could hardly feel the incredibly thin lath of his body, lost within the thick stuff, but his growl had depth and substance:  Confounded dump ship with a craven, tiptoeing crowd.  Why couldn’t they stamp and go with a brace?  Wasn’t there one Godforsaken lubber in the lot fit to raise a yell on a rope?

“Skulking’s no good, sir,” he attacked me directly.  “You can’t slink past the old murderous ruffian.  It isn’t the way.  You must go for him boldly—­as I did.  Boldness is what you want.  Show him that you don’t care for any of his damned tricks.  Kick up a jolly old row.”