‘This John is one who doesn’t know, I’ll swear. Besides, sir, the Chinese are not such geniuses as are imagined. There are thousands amongst them to correspond with our ignorant superstitious peasantry at home. I remember at Chusan that four Chinamen were engaged to carry a piano out of the cabin. Whilst they were wrestling with it on the quarter-deck, a string broke with a loud _twang_, on which they put the instrument down and ran away, viewing it from a distance with faces working with alarm and astonishment. The mate called to know what they meant by dropping their work. “Him spirit! him speakee,” they cried; in fact, they would have no more to do with the piano; and when some of the crew picked it up to carry it to the gangway, the quivering Johns went backing and recoiling on to the forecastle, as though the instrument were a cage with a wild beast in it that might at any moment spring out on them.’ Whilst he was speaking I had been watching a star slowly creeping away from the edge of the mainsail to leeward, as though it were sweeping through the sky on its own account on a course parallel with the line of the horizon. My attention was fixed on what my companion said, and my gaze rested mechanically upon the star. Suddenly the truth flashed upon me, and I started. ‘Why, Mr. Cocker, what’s happening to the ship? Are we going home again? She is coming to rapidly! You will be having all your stun’-sails there to larboard aback in a minute.’ He had been too much engrossed by our chat to notice this. ‘Wheel there!’ he shouted, running aft as he cried. ‘What are you doing with the ship? Port your hellum, man, port your hellum!’ I hastily followed, to see what was the matter. The wheel was deserted, and as I approached, I saw the circle revolve against the stars over the taffrail like a windmill in a gale. Alongside, prone on the deck, his arms outstretched and his face down, was the figure of the helmsman. ‘He is in a fit,’ cried the second mate, grasping the wheel and revolving it, to bring the ship to her course again. Here Captain Keeling came hastily up the companion steps. ‘Where’s the officer of the watch?’ he shouted. ‘Here, sir,’ answered Cocker from the wheel. ‘Do you know, sir,’ cried the skipper, ‘that you are four points off your course?’ ‘The helmsman has fallen down in a fit, or else lies dead here, sir,’ responded the second-mate. The skipper saw how it was, and bawled for some hands to come aft. Such of the passengers as were on deck gathered about the wheel in a group. ‘What is that?’ exclaimed little Mr. Saunders, stooping close to the prostrate seaman’s head. ‘Blood, gentlemen!’ he exclaimed. ‘See the great stain of it here! This man has been struck down by some hand.’ ‘What’s that? what’s that?’ cried old Keeling, bending his crowbar of a figure to the stain. ‘Ay, he has been struck down as you say, Mr. Saunders. Who has done this thing? Look about you, men; see if there’s anybody concealed here.’