After this there was silence—silence unbroken through the long hours of the night as they slowly passed. Then the dawn came. The side-lights showed fainter and fainter in the water; the light on the mast shed no rays on the deck, but twinkled uselessly behind its glass. Then the mate turned his gaze from the wet, cheerless deck and heaving seas to the figure in the boat dragging behind. The skipper, who returned his gaze with a fierce scowl, was holding his wet handkerchief to his temple. He removed it as the mate looked, and showed a ghastly wound. Still, neither of them spoke. The mate averted his gaze, and sickened with fear as he thought of his position; and in that instant the skipper clutched the painter, and, with a mighty heave, sent the boat leaping towards the stern of the barge, and sprang on deck. The mate rose to his feet; but the other pushed him fiercely aside, and picking up the handspike, which lay on the raised top of the cabin, went below. Half an hour later he came on deck with a fresh suit of clothes on, and his head roughly bandaged, and standing in front of the mate, favoured him with a baleful stare. “Gimme that helm,” he cried. The mate relinquished it. “You dog!” snarled the other, “to try and kill a man when he wasn’t looking, and then keep him in his wet clothes in the boat all night. Make the most o’ your time. It’ll be many a day before you see the sea again.” The mate groaned in spirit, but made no reply. “I’ve wrote everything down with the time it happened,” continued the other in a voice of savage satisfaction; “an’ I’ve locked that handspike up in my locker. It’s got blood on it.” “That’s enough about it,” said the mate, turning at last and speaking thickly. “What I’ve done I must put up with.” He walked forward to end the discussion; but the skipper shouted out choice bits from time to time as they occurred to him, and sat steering and gibing, a gruesome picture of vengeance. Suddenly he sprang to his feet with a sharp cry. “There’s somebody in the water,” he roared; “stand by to pick him up.” As he spoke he pointed with his left hand, and with his right steered for something which rose and fell lazily on the water a short distance from them. The mate, following his outstretched arm, saw it too, and picking up a boat-hook stood ready, until they were soon close enough to distinguish the body of a man supported by a life-belt. “Don’t miss him,” shouted the skipper. The mate grasped the rigging with one hand, and leaning forward as far as possible stood with the hook poised. At first it seemed as though the object would escape them, but a touch of the helm in the nick of time just enabled the mate to reach. The hook caught in the jacket, and with great care he gradually shortened it, and drew the body close to the side.