Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Roberta Staehlin, Grinnell College Library and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) Man Overboard! BY F. MARION CRAWFORD AUTHOR OF "THE UPPER BERTH," "CECILIA," "THE WITCH OF PRAGUE," ETC. [Illustration] New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd. 1903 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY F. MARION CRAWFORD. COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. * * * * * Set up and electrotyped April, 1903. Norwood Press J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait of F. Marion Crawford _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE "He let go of the knife, and the point stuck into the deck" 54 "One of his wet, shiny arms was round Mamie's waist" 92 MAN OVERBOARD Yes--I have heard "Man overboard!" a good many times since I was a boy, and once or twice I have seen the man go. There are more men lost in that way than passengers on ocean steamers ever learn of. I have stood looking over the rail on a dark night, when there was a step beside me, and something flew past my head like a big black bat--and then there was a splash! Stokers often go like that. They go mad with the heat, and they slip up on deck and are gone before anybody can stop them, often without being seen or heard. Now and then a passenger will do it, but he generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason. I have seen a man empty his revolver into a crowd of emigrants forward, and then go over like a rocket. Of course, any officer who respects himself will do what he can to pick a man up, if the weather is not so heavy that he would have to risk his ship; but I don't think I remember seeing a man come back when he was once fairly gone more than two or three times in all my life, though we have often picked up the life-buoy, and sometimes the fellow's cap. Stokers and passengers jump over; I never knew a sailor to do that, drunk or sober. Yes, they say it has happened on hard ships, but I never knew a case myself. Once in a long time a man is fished out when it is just too late, and dies in the boat before you can get him aboard, and--well, I don't know that I ever told that story since it happened--I knew a fellow who went over, and came back dead. I didn't see him after he came back; only one of us did, but we all knew he was there.