The melancholy cry, “Man overboard!” ...

I took oath that if I ever reached home alive, I would never go to sea again.  If I just got home, alive, I would be willing even to tie up brown parcels in grocery cord, for the rest of my life, to sweep out a store day after day, regularly and monotonously, in safety!...

The captain saw me trembling with a nausea of fear.  And, with the winds booming from all sides, the deck as slippery as the body of a live eel, he gave me a shove far out on the slant of the poop.  I sped in the grey drive of sleet clear to the rail.  The ship dipped under as a huge wave smashed over, all fury and foam, overwhelming the helmsman and bearing down on me....

It was miraculous that I was not swept overboard.

After that, strangely, I no longer feared, but enjoyed a quickening of pulse.  And I gladly took in the turns in the rope as the men sang and heaved away ... waves would heap up over us.  We would hold tight till we emerged again.  Then again we would shout and haul away.

* * * * *

“It’s all according to what you grow used to,” commented the captain.

* * * * *

By the time I was beginning to look into the face of danger as into a mother’s face, the weather wore down.  The ocean was still heavy with running seas, but we rode high and dry.

* * * * *

Unlucky Kampke!

His shipmates bore his dunnage aft, for the captain to take in charge.  And, just as in melodramas and popular novels, a picture of a fair-haired girl was found at the bottom of his sea-chest, together with one of his mother ... his sweetheart and his mother....

Depositions were taken down from his forecastle mates, as to his going overboard, and duly entered into the log ... and the captain wrote a letter to his mother, to be mailed to her from Sydney.

* * * * *

For a day we were sad.  An imminent sense of mortality hung over us.

But there broke, the next morning, a clear sky of sunshine and an open though still yesty sea—­and we sang, and became thoughtless and gay again.

* * * * *

“Yes,” sighed the cook, “I wish it had been Franz instead of Gottlieb.  Gottlieb was such a fine fellow, and Franz is such a son of a——.”

* * * * *

...  I have left something out.

At the beginning of the voyage Captain Schantze housed a flock of two dozen chickens in a coop under the forecastle ... in order to insure himself of fresh eggs during the voyage....

And for fresh meat, he had a huge sow hauled aboard—­to be killed later on....

* * * * *

One morning, when I went forward to fetch the captain’s and mates’ breakfast, I found the cook all white and ghastly....