The mate went gingerly up to Louis, who, in the midst of a knot of men, was raving like a maniac, and, seizing him gently by the arm, led him aft. Oh, how that man raged and blasphemed! He was like an angry bull, and his loud voice rang out far over the peaceful ocean and echoed and reverberated high up overhead in the hollows of the upper sails. “Did you hear what ’ee call me, sair?” in shrill tones. “I, who have bose fazair and mozair. _I weel not stand zat, sair._ I die fairst; you can keel me, sair. And I, I stuck ’eem; I would cut ’eem again, sair, or any one else, that call me zat name. +I am a man, sair.+” This last in a perfect shriek. Never a word said the old man. Then Louis turned on him, and, insolently sneering, his head thrown back scornfully and one foot advanced, he cried,-- “And you, Capitaine Scruggs! What are you? I have been to sea twenty year and nevair saw a capitaine like you before. You starve us! you starve us! Why do you starve us? When we fairst left New York we ’ad plentee to eat, zee food was waste, and now for seex wicks we have had nossing at all. Bah! Peef! _You_, a man like _you_, a capitaine!” At this juncture the skipper said abruptly, but without the least show of anger, for which great credit is due him,-- “Where’s the knife you cut the second mate with?” “Where zee knife, eh? Here zee knife. Now you see it, now you don’t. Ha, ha!” And he jerked it over the side into the sea. All this time the mate was fussing with the irons, trying to find a pair that would encircle his great wrists; but at length a pair was found, locked on his arms, and he was led aft to the wheel-house, several other pairs of irons in the mate’s hand clanking mournfully as he walked. Into the after-division where the tiller works Louis was hustled, and his hands were then fastened with a rope to a ring-bolt in a carlin overhead, so that he had to stand upright all night. And what was my wife doing all this time? When Rarx had cried that he had been stabbed she had fled to her room, locking herself in, and sat shivering until curiosity compelled her to open the door on a crack and peep out; and when Louis and the mate stumbled along the alley-way by our windows, it sounded to her like the tramp of a ball-and-chain gang.