We were rounding that Cape again, heading for home, when that happened which you may believe me or not, as you take the notion, Tom; though why a man who can swallow Daniel and the lion’s den, or take down t’other chap who lived three days comfortable into the inside of a whale, should make faces at what I’ve got to tell I can’t see.

It was just about the spot that we lost the boy that we fell upon the worst gale of the trip.  It struck us quite sudden.  Whitmarsh was a little high.  He wasn’t apt to be drunk in a gale, if it gave him warning sufficient.

Well, you see, there must be somebody to furl the main-royal again, and he pitched onto McCallum.  McCallum hadn’t his beat for fighting out the royal in a blow.

So he piled away lively, up to the to’-sail yard.  There, all of a sudden, he stopped.  Next we knew he was down like heat-lightning.

His face had gone very white.

“What’s to pay with you?” roared Whitmarsh.

Said McCallum, “There’s somebody up there, sir.”

Screamed Whitmarsh, “You’re gone an idiot!”

Said McCallum, very quiet and distinct:  “There’s somebody up there, sir.  I saw him quite plain.  He saw me.  I called up.  He called down.  Says he, ’Don’t you come up!’ and hang me if I’ll stir a step for you or any other man to-night!”

I never saw the face of any man alive go the turn that mate’s face went.  If he wouldn’t have relished knocking the Scotchman dead before his eyes, I’ve lost my guess.  Can’t say what he would have done to the old fellow, if there’d been any time to lose.

He’d the sense left to see there wasn’t overmuch, so he orders out Bob
Smart direct.

Bob goes up steady, with a quid in his cheek and a cool eye.  Half-way amid to’-sail and to’-gallant he stops, and down he comes, spinning.

“Be drowned if there ain’t!” said he.  “He’s sitting square upon the yard.  I never see the boy Kentucky, if he isn’t sitting on that yard. ‘Don’t you come up!’ he cries out,—­’don’t you come up!’”

“Bob’s drunk, and McCallum’s a fool!” said Jim Welch, standing by.  So Welch wolunteers up, and takes Jaloffe with him.  They were a couple of the coolest hands aboard,—­Welch and Jaloffe.  So up they goes, and down they comes like the rest, by the back-stays, by the run.

“He beckoned of me back!” says Welch.  “He hollered not to come up! not to come up!”

After that there wasn’t a man of us would stir aloft, not for love nor money.

Well, Whitmarsh he stamped, and he swore, and he knocked us about furious; but we sat and looked at one another’s eyes, and never stirred.  Something cold, like a frost-bite, seemed to crawl along from man to man, looking into one another’s eyes.

“I’ll shame ye all, then, for a set of cowardly lubbers!” cries the mate; and what with the anger and the drink he was as good as his word, and up the ratlines in a twinkle.