Directly, in that demoralised crowd, trouble broke out.  Two men who had no business there had jumped into the boat under the pretence of unhooking the tackles, while some sort of squabble arose on the deck amongst these weak, tottering spectres of a ship’s company.  The captain, who had been for days living secluded and unapproachable in the chart-room, came to the rail.  He ordered the two men to come up on board and menaced them with his revolver.  They pretended to obey, but suddenly cutting the boat’s painter, gave a shove against the ship’s side and made ready to hoist the sail.

“Shoot, sir!  Shoot them down!” cried Falk-"and I will jump overboard to regain the boat.”  But the captain, after taking aim with an irresolute arm, turned suddenly away.

A howl of rage arose.  Falk dashed into his cabin for his own pistol.  When he returned it was too late.  Two more men had leaped into the water, but the fellows in the boat beat them off with the oars, hoisted the boat’s lug and sailed away.  They were never heard of again.

Consternation and despair possessed the remaining ship’s company, till the apathy of utter hopelessness re-asserted its sway.  That day a fireman committed suicide, running up on deck with his throat cut from ear to ear, to the horror of all hands.  He was thrown overboard.  The captain had locked himself in the chart-room, and Falk, knocking vainly for admittance, heard him reciting over and over again the names of his wife and children, not as if calling upon them or commending them to God, but in a mechanical voice like an exercise of memory.  Next day the doors of the chart-room were swinging open to the roll of the ship, and the captain had disappeared.  He must during the night have jumped into the sea.  Falk locked both the doors and kept the keys.

The organised life of the ship had come to an end.  The solidarity of the men had gone.  They became indifferent to each other.  It was Falk who took in hand the distribution of such food as remained.  They boiled their boots for soup to eke out the rations, which only made their hunger more intolerable.  Sometimes whispers of hate were heard passing between the languid skeletons that drifted endlessly to and fro, north and south, east and west, upon that carcase of a ship.

And in this lies the grotesque horror of this sombre story.  The last extremity of sailors, overtaking a small boat or a frail craft, seems easier to bear, because of the direct danger of the seas.  The confined space, the close contact, the imminent menace of the waves, seem to draw men together, in spite of madness, suffering and despair.  But there was a ship—­safe, convenient, roomy:  a ship with beds, bedding, knives, forks, comfortable cabins, glass and china, and a complete cook’s galley, pervaded, ruled and possessed by the pitiless spectre of starvation.  The lamp oil had been drunk, the wicks cut up for food, the candles eaten.  At night she floated dark in all her recesses, and