As the _Elsinore_ swung around on her heel Mr. Pike put her on the back
track so as to cover the water she had just crossed over. He lowered
the glasses through which he was scanning the sea and pointed down the
hatchway that opened into the big after-room beneath. The ladder was
gone.
“Must have taken the lazarette ladder with him,” said Mr. Pike.
Captain West strolled out of the chart-room. He said good morning in
his customary way, courteously to me and formally to the mate, and
strolled on along the poop to the wheel, where he paused to glance into
the binnacle. Turning, he went on leisurely to the break of the poop.
Again he came back to us. Fully two minutes must have elapsed ere he
spoke.
“What is the matter, Mr. Pike? Man overboard?”
“Yes, sir,” was the answer.
“And took the lazarette ladder along with him?” Captain West queried.
“Yes, sir. It’s the Greek that jumped over at Baltimore.”
Evidently the affair was not serious enough for Captain West to be the
Samurai. He lighted a cigar and resumed his stroll. And yet he had
missed nothing, not even the absence of the ladder.
Mr. Pike sent look-outs aloft to every skysail-yard, and the _Elsinore_
slipped along through the smooth sea. Miss West came up and stood
beside me, searching the ocean with her eyes while I told her the
little I knew. She evidenced no excitement, and reassured me by telling
me how difficult it was to lose a man of Tony’s suicidal type.
“Their madness always seems to come upon them in fine weather or under
safe circumstances,” she smiled, “when a boat can be lowered or a tug
is alongside. And sometimes they take life—preservers with them, as in
this case.”
At the end of an hour Mr. Pike wore the _Elsinore_ around, and again
retraced the course she must have been sailing when the Greek went
over. Captain West still strolled and smoked, and Miss West made a
brief trip below to give Wada forgotten instructions about Possum. Andy
Pay was called to the wheel, and the carpenter went below to finish his
breakfast.
It all seemed rather callous to me. Nobody was much concerned for the
man who was overboard somewhere on that lonely ocean. And yet I had to
admit that everything possible was being done to find him. I talked a
little with Mr. Pike, and he seemed more vexed than anything else. He
disliked to have the ship’s work interrupted in such fashion.
Mr. Mellaire’s attitude was different.
“We are short-handed enough as it is,” he told me, when he joined us on
the poop. “We can’t afford to lose him even if he is crazy. We need
him. He’s a good sailor most of the time.”
The hail came from the mizzen-skysail-yard. The Maltese Cockney it was
who first sighted the man and called down the information. The mate,
looking to windwards, suddenly lowered his glasses, rubbed his eyes in
a puzzled way, and looked again. Then Miss West, using another pair of
glasses, cried out in surprise and began to laugh.
“What do you make of it, Miss West?” the mate asked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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