The talk continued until three bells had struck--and with each striking of the bell Bill aloft had obediently answered--then the mate shouldered his way past me and went to his room, leaving the girl still seated in the chair. I did not go aft again until nearly four bells, when I went to take the reading of the patent log at the taffrail. As I passed the girl she half rose, as though to speak to me; then, as I moved sullenly on, sank back in her chair. A glance into the binnacle showed me the ship on her course, and a glance at Tom showed him with his left shoulder braced against a spoke, steering by easing the wheel down and painfully heaving it up. I looked aloft at the swelling canvas, noticed that Bill sprawled over the lee upper topsail yard, and saw that nothing could be done in the way of bracing the yards. The spanker should have come in; for, with the ship griping like this, she would have broached to in ten seconds if Tom lost his grip on the wheel. But the mate had forbidden it, and I let it stand. I took the reading of the log, and again passed stiffly before Mabel, going forward again by the weather alley, down the steps, and into the companionway to the desk in the passage, where I jotted down on the log slate the happenings of the watch. I could hear Mr. Butterell snoring heavily in his room on the lee, or port, side, and, wondering at his utterly nerveless makeup in being able to go to sleep so readily after a fit of anger, I closed the slate and turned toward the door. At this moment a hoarse, guttural, hair-raising scream rang out, followed instantly by another in a higher key, and I sprang out, looking wildly about me for the cause. Mabel lay prone on the deck at the foot of the lee steps and I reached her at a bound. There was no blood nor marks, nothing to show what had hurt her and caused her to scream, and I stood up, bewildered. The men forward had wakened, and some were coming aft haltingly. I called to them, to question them, when out of the companion door burst the captain in his pajamas. "What's happened?" he asked excitedly. "My girl screamed! What is it?" "I do not know, sir," I answered. "I heard her scream from the log desk, and found her here." He examined the unconscious girl, then said, "She has only fainted, I think. Call the mate and the steward. We must get her below." For the first time since Mr. Butterell had joined the ship I opened the door of his room and looked in. He lay face up in his berth beneath the open window, with the handle of a sheath knife sticking up from his chest. It had been driven home, and as I looked, horror-stricken at the sight, four bells struck at the wheel, and Bill's voice came from aloft, "Four bells, and all's well!"