“Now,” I said to him, shaking the vagrant wrist, “either you come ashore with me or you go in there and get under the blankets. You’re drunk, McCord--_drunk_. Do you hear me?” “Ridgeway,” he pronounced, bringing his eyes down to me and speaking very slowly. “You’re a fool, if you can’t see better than that. I’m not drunk. I’m sick. I haven’t slept for three nights--and now I can’t. And you say--you--” He went to pieces very suddenly, jumped up, pounded the legs of his chair on the decking, and shouted at me: “And you say that, you--you landlubber, you office coddler! You’re so comfortable sure that everything in the world is cut and dried. Come back to the water again and learn how to wonder--and stop talking like a damn fool. Do you know where--Is there anything in your municipal budget to tell me where Björnsen went? Listen!” He sat down, waving me to do the same, and went on with a sort of desperate repression. “It happened on the first night after we took this hellion. I’d stood the wheel most of the afternoon--off and on, that is, because she sails herself uncommonly well. Just put her on a reach, you know, and she carries it off pretty well--” “I know,” I nodded. “Well, we mugged up about seven o’clock. There was a good deal of canned stuff in the galley, and Björnsen wasn’t a bad hand with a kettle--a thoroughgoing Square-head he was--tall and lean and yellow-haired, with little fat, round cheeks and white mustache. Not a bad chap at all. He took the wheel to stand till mid-night, and I turned in, but I didn’t drop off for quite a spell. I could hear his boots wandering around over my head, padding off forward, coming back again. I heard him whistling now and then--an out-landish air. Occasionally I could see the shadow of his head waving in a block of moonlight that lay on the decking right down there in front of the state-room. It came from the companion; the cabin was dark because we were going easy on the oil. They hadn’t left a great deal, for some reason or other.” McCord leaned back and described with his finger where the illumination had cut the decking. “There! I could see it from my bunk, as I lay, you understand. I must have almost dropped off once when I heard him fiddling around out here in the cabin, and then he said something in a whisper, just to find out if I was still awake, I suppose. I asked him what the matter was. He came and poked his head in the door. “‘The breeze is going out,’ says he. ‘I was wondering if we couldn’t get a little more sail on her.’ Only I can’t give you his fierce Square-head tang. ‘How about the tops?’ he suggested.