I sat staring across the table at Wilson for many minutes before my
wits returned to me. The mate’s words seemed too awful to be true;
they seemed words heard in a hideous nightmare. Throughout the night I
had fought and denied the still whisperings of potential horrors
aboard which had striven for room in my thoughts; and here the
blackest depths of these horrors were realized by Wilson’s simple
words. For in my mind’s eye I did not see the picture that his words
should have conjured up: of a seaman swept from his post, falling into
the sea by mischance, drowning in the dark, without a chance to be
saved—I saw Brack talking to young Larson, I saw the brutal gleam of
Garvin’s bandaged eyes, I saw—Good God! I was afraid to admit to
myself what I did see.
“Lost?” I repeated stupidly. “You mean drowned?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good God!” I chattered. “How can you sit there and talk about it so
calmly.”
“I have followed the sea since I was fourteen, Mr. Pitt,” he replied
respectfully. “I have seen many men lost, good men, better men than
myself. The sea is hard.”
“But how—how could it happen?”
“I don’t know, sir; it wasn’t in my watch.”