“It’ll be a sign!” whispers Captain Macadam. Then he counts them. “There’ll be ‘leven o’ them,” says he; “and that means we’re ‘leven to die!” After this he dives below, and takes to the bottle. Bleared of eye, shaken of hand, Captain Macadam on the fifth morning finds first mate Jack Paul on the after deck. The eleven sharks are still sculling sullenly along in the slow wake of the wind-bound brig. “Be they there yet?” asks Captain Macadam, looking over the stern with a ghastly grin. Then answering his own query: “Ay! they’ll be there--the ‘leven of ‘em!” First mate Jack Paul, observing their daunting effect on the over-harrowed nerves of Captain Macadam, is for having up his pistols to take a shot at the sharks; but he is stayed by the other. “They’ll be sent,” says Captain Macadam; “it’ll no do to slay ‘em, mon! But losh! ain’t a sherk a fearfu’ feesli?” Then, seeing his hand shake on the brig’s rail: “It’s the rum. And that’s no gude omen, me takin’ to the rum; for I’m not preeceesely what you’d ca’ a drinkin’ body.” Two hours later Captain Macadam issues from his cabin and seeks first mate Jack Paul, where the latter is sitting in the shade of the main sail. “Mon, look at me!” he cries. “D’ye no see? I tell ye, Death has found me oot on the deep watters!” The single glance assures first mate Jack Paul that Captain Macadam is right. His eyes are congested and ferrety; his face is flushed. Even while first mate Jack Paul looks, he sees the skin turn yellow as a lemon. He thumbs the sick man’s wrist; the pulse is thumping like a trip-hammer. Also, the dry, fevered skin shows an abnormal temperature. “Your tongue!” says first mate Jack Paul; for he has a working knowledge of yellow jack. It is but piling evidence upon evidence; the tongue is the color of liver. Three hours later, the doomed man is delirious. Then the fever gives way to a chill; presently he goes raving his way into eternity, and the _King George’s Packet_ loses its Captain. First mate Jack Paul sews the dead skipper in a hammock with his own fingers; since, mates, crew and cook, not another will bear a hand. When the hammock sewing is over, the cook aids in bringing the corpse on deck. As the body slips from the grating into the sea, a thirty-two pound shot at the heels, the cook laughs overboard at the sharks, still hanging, like hounds upon a scent, to the brig’s wake. “Ye’ll have to dive for the skipper, lads!” sings out the cook. Offended by this ribaldry, first mate Jack Paul is on the brink of striking the cook down with a belaying pin. For his own nerves are a-jangle, and that misplaced merriment rasps. It is the look in the man’s face which stays his hand. “Ye’ll be right!” cries the cook, as though replying to something in the eye of first mate Jack Paul. “Don’t I know it? It is I who’ll follow the skipper! I’ll just go sew my own hammock, and have it ready, shot and all.”