"I can only surmise. Something struck them that froze them stiff, that turned moving salt water to ice in an instant, that killed the intelligence that directed it. It was a passenger, a young missionary going home--a young genius of a man with a bent toward material things, and a whole boatload of scientific paraphernalia that he was always experimenting with. He was on the poop-deck when this occurred, but went clean crazy when I fell to the deck. We put him in the Cape Town hospital, but up to the last he was demented. He alone could tell what he did to that bunch of mutineers, but he could not have lived much longer." "Tell me the yarn," I suggested. "Perhaps I can make a further guess at it." "The best way," he answered, "would be to hypnotize you and question your subconscious mind. It is done in the hospitals to learn of mysterious, baffling diseases, and why could not you tell how this happened? But I never hypnotized anyone, so I'll give you the yarn--tell you what I know, and perhaps you can get the rest." He placed his picture, face downward, on my table, seated himself, and lighted his pipe as a preliminary to his story. But before he could begin there was a knock at the door, and I admitted Old Bill. "Thought, sir," he said, "that you might want me to clean up when the job is done." This was usual; when a piece of work was in the making I paid no attention to my place. Only when the last stroke was applied to a picture did I think of housecleaning, and send for Bill. "All right," I answered. "But not right away. Come back in an hour, when we're through talking." He had entered the room, and nodded at my answer, even though his eyes were fixed upon the painting on the easel. "But ye haven't put my face in it, arter all, sir," he said. "No, you didn't make good, Bill," I answered. Then my attention was taken by the expression of his face--a curious blankness which I knew too well. My neighbor noticed, too, and said sharply: "Brace up, Bill! Brace up, man!" I knew the remedy from former experience, and happened to have it in a closet. Quickly pouring a glass of liquor, I gave it to the shaking, tottering old man, and he swallowed it at a gulp. "Thank ye, sir," he said a moment later, when he was steadier. "Ye know I don't drink, sir; but when I feel it comin' on, nothin' else but a drink'll stop the spell. I'll be back in an hour, sir." He left, and the artist remarked: "Poor old Bill. He'll go out feet first one of these days, and that'll be the last of him. Well, I'll tell you about that bark. I shipped in her at Hongkong, and stuck to her at Batavia, where every other man 'fore the mast deserted. She was not exactly a hell ship, as hell ships go; but the skipper and two mates were American, with American ideas of discipline, and these ideas were too strenuous for the cosmopolitan crew of Dagoes, Dutchmen, and Sou'egians that had taken her down the China Sea.