But during the night the carpenter, without at all trying to approach the pump, had managed to creep quietly along the starboard bulwark, and, unseen, had crouched down right under Falk’s deck port.  When daylight came he rose up suddenly, looked in, and putting his arm through the round brass framed opening, fired at Falk within a foot.  He missed—­and Falk, instead of attempting to seize the arm holding the weapon, opened his door unexpectedly, and with the muzzle of his long revolver nearly touching the other’s side, shot him dead.

The best man had survived.  Both of them had at the beginning just strength enough to stand on their feet, and both had displayed pitiless resolution, endurance, cunning and courage—­all the qualities of classic heroism.  At once Falk threw overboard the captain’s revolver.  He was a born monopolist.  Then after the report of the two shots, followed by a profound silence, there crept out into the cold, cruel dawn of Antarctic regions, from various hiding-places, over the deck of that dismantled corpse of a ship floating on a grey sea ruled by iron necessity and with a heart of ice—­there crept into view one by one, cautious, slow, eager, glaring, and unclean, a band of hungry and livid skeletons.  Falk faced them, the possessor of the only fire-arm on board, and the second best man—­the carpenter—­was lying dead between him and them.

“He was eaten, of course,” I said.

He bent his head slowly, shuddered a little, drawing his hands over his face, and said, “I had never any quarrel with that man.  But there were our lives between him and me.”

Why continue the story of that ship, that story before which, with its fresh-water pump like a spring of death, its man with the weapon, the sea ruled by iron necessity, its spectral band swayed by terror and hope, its mute and unhearing heaven?-the fable of the Flying Dutchman with its convention of crime and its sentimental retribution fades like a graceful wreath, like a wisp of white mist.  What is there to say that every one of us cannot guess for himself?  I believe Falk began by going through the ship, revolver in hand, to annex all the matches.  Those starving wretches had plenty of matches!  He had no mind to have the ship set on fire under his feet, either from hate or from despair.  He lived in the open, camping on the bridge, commanding all the after deck and the only approach to the pump.  He lived!  Some of the others lived too—­concealed, anxious, coming out one by one from their hiding-places at the seductive sound of a shot.  And he was not selfish.  They shared, but only three of them all were alive when a whaler, returning from her cruising ground, nearly ran over the water-logged hull of the Borgmester Dahl, which, it seems, in the end had in some way sprung a leak in both her holds, but being loaded with deals could not sink.

“They all died,” Falk said.  “These three too, afterwards.  But I would not die.  All died, all! under this terrible misfortune.  But was I too to throw away my life?  Could I?  Tell me, captain?  I was alone there, quite alone, just like the others.  Each man was alone.  Was I to give up my revolver?  Who to?  Or was I to throw it into the sea?  What would have been the good?  Only the best man would survive.  It was a great, terrible, and cruel misfortune.”