Classic Audiobook Collection - Man Overboard! by F. Marion Crawford ~ Full Audiobook [horror]

Episode Date: December 27, 2022

Man Overboard! by F. Marion Crawford audiobook. Genre: horror A storm howls across the sea as the schooner Helen B. Jackson fights to stay afloat, and in the chaos a cry rings out: man overboard. When the crew counts heads after the gale, one of the Benton twins is missing - Jim or Jack, so alike that even shipmates hesitate to swear which brother was swept away. The loss should be the end of it, another hard truth of life before the mast, yet strange details begin to accumulate: an extra place setting that appears to have been used, footsteps where no one is walking, a sense of company in the tight quarters of the ship. The narrator, a practical seaman with no taste for superstition, tries to explain away what he sees and hears, but the uncanny follows the surviving twin back to shore as well. With a young woman named Mamie waiting in his new life, the survivor should be able to begin again - if grief, guilt, and whatever came back from the storm will let him. Crawford blends nautical realism with a slow, chilling ghostly doubt about identity and the boundaries between the living and the dead. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 1 (00:29:32) Chapter 2 (00:59:19) Chapter 3 (01:27:36) Chapter 4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

man overboard by f marion crawford section one yes i have heard man overboard a good many times since i was a boy and once or twice i have seen the man go there are more men lost in that way than passengers on ocean streamers ever learn of i have stood looking over the rail on a dark night when there was a step beside me and something flew past my head like a big black bat and then there was a splash stokers often go like that they go mad with the heat and they slip up on deck and are gone before anybody can stop them often without being seen or heard now and then a passenger will do it but he generally has what he thinks a pretty good reason i have seen a man empty his revolver into a crowd of emigrants forward and then go over like a rocket of course any officer who respects himself will do what he can to pick a man up if the weather is not so heavy that he would have to risk his ship but i don't think i remember seeing a man come back when he was once fairly gone more than two or three times in all my life though he have often picked up the life boy and sometimes the fellow's cap stokers and passengers jump over i never knew a sailor to do that-i never knew a sailor to do that drunk or sober yes they say it has happened on hard ships but i never knew a case myself once in a long time a man is fished out when it is just too late and dies in the boat before you can get him aboard and well i don't know that i ever told that story since it happened i knew a fellow who went over and came back dead i didn't see him after he came back

only one of us did, but we all knew he was there. No, I am not giving you sharks. There isn't a shark in this story, and I don't know that I would tell it at all if we weren't alone, just you and I. But you and I have seen things in various parts, and maybe you will understand. Anyhow, you know that I am telling what I know about, and nothing else, and it has been on my mind to tell you ever since it happened, only there hasn't been a chance.

It's a long story, and it took some time to happen, and it began a good many years ago, in October as well as I can remember. I was mate, then. I passed the local Marine Board for Master about three years later. She was the Helen B. Jackson of New York, with lumber for the West Indies, four-masted schooner, Captain Hackstaff. She was an old-fashioned one, even then, no steam-dunky, and all to do by hand.

There were still sailors in the coasting trade in those days, you remember. She wasn't a hard ship, for the old man was better than most of them, though he kept to himself and had a face like a monkey wrench. We were thirteen, all told, in the ship's company. and some of them afterwards thought that might have had something to do with it. But I had all that nonsense knocked out of me when I was a boy. I don't mean to say that I like to go to sea on a Friday, but I have gone to sea on a Friday, and nothing has happened.

And twice before that we have been thirteen, because one of the hands didn't turn up at the last minute, and nothing ever happened either. nothing worse than the loss of a light spar or two or a little canvas whenever i have been wrecked we had sailed as cheerily as you please no thirteens no fridays no dead men in the hold i believe it generally happens that way i dare say you remember those two benton boys that were so much alike it is no wonder for they were twin brothers they shipped with us as boys on the old boston bell when you were mate and i was before the mast i was never quite sure which was which of those two even then and when they both had beards it was harder than ever to tell them apart one was jim and the other was jack james benton and john benton the only difference i could ever see was that one seemed to be rather more cheerful and inclined to talk than the other but one couldn't even be sure of that perhaps they had moods anyhow there was one of them that used to whistle when he was alone he only knew one tune and that was one tune and that was

Nancy Lee, and the other didn't know any tune at all. But I may be mistaken about that, too. Perhaps they both knew it. Well, those two Benton boys turned up on board the Helen B. Jackson. They had been on half a dozen ships since the Boston Bell, and they had grown up, and were good seamen. They had reddish beards and bright blue eyes and freckled faces, and they were quiet. fellows, good workmen on rigging, pretty willing, and both good men at the wheel. They managed to be in the same watch. It was the port watch on the Helen B, and that was mine, and I had great confidence in them both. If there was any job aloft that needed two hands, they were always the first to jump into the rigging. But that doesn't often happen on a fore-and-aft,

schooner. If it breezed up and the jib-topsil was to be taken in, they never minded a wedding, and they would be out at the boughsprit end before there was a hand at the down-haul. The men liked them for that, and because they didn't blow about what they could do. I remember one day in a reefing job, the downhall parted and came down on deck from the peak of the spanker. When the weather moderated, and we shook the reefs out, the down-haul was forgotten until we happened to think we might soon need it again. There was some sea on, and the boom was off, and the gaff was slamming. One of those Benton boys was at the wheel,

and before I knew what he was doing, the other was out on the gaff with the end of the new down-haul, trying to reave it through its block. The one who was steering watched him and got as white as cheese. The other one was swinging about on the gaff end, and every time she rolled to leeward, he brought up with a jerk that would have sent anything but a monkey flying into space. But he didn't leave it until he had roved the new rope,

and he got back all right. I think it was Jack at the wheel, the one that seemed more cheerful. the one that whistled Nancy Lee. He had rather have been doing the job himself than watch his brother do it, and he had a scared look. But he kept her as steady as he could in the swell,

and he drew a long breath when Jim had worked his way back to the peak, Halliard block, and had something to hold on to. I think it was Jim. They had good togs, too, and they were neat and clean, men in the folks'le. I knew they had nobody belonging to them ashore, no mother, no sisters, and no wives, but somehow they both looked as if a woman overhauled them now and then.

I remember that they had one ditty-bag between them, and they had a woman's thimble in it. One of the men said something about it to them, and they looked at each other, and one smiled, but the other didn't. Most of their clothes were alike, but they had one red Guernsey between them. For some time I used to think it was always the same one that wore it, and I thought that might be a way to tell them apart. But then I heard one asking the other for it,

and saying that the other had worn it last, so that was no sign either. The cook was a West Indianman called James Law, his father had been hanged for putting lights and coconut trees where they didn't belong but he was a good cook and knew his business and it wasn't soup and bully and dog's body every sunday that's what i meant to say on sunday the cook called both those boys jim and on week-days he called them jack he used to say he must be right sometimes if he did that because he's a good boy's just to say he must be right sometimes if he did that because he's a good boy's just to be right he's just he because even the hands on a painted clock point right twice a day. What started me to trying for some way of telling the Benton's apart was this. I heard them talking about a girl.

It was at night in our watch, and the wind had headed us off a little rather suddenly, and when we had flattened in the jibbs, we clued down the topsils, while the two Benton boys got the spanker sheet aft. one of them was at the helm i coiled down the mizzen-topsle downhall downhall myself and was going aft to see how she headed up when i stopped to look at a light and leaned against the deck-house while i was standing there i heard the two boys talking it sounded as if they had talked of the same thing before and as far as i could tell the voice i heard first belonged to the one who wasn't quite so cheerful as the other, the one who was Jim, when one knew which he was. "'Does Mamie know?' Jim asked.

"'Not yet,' Jack answered quietly. He was at the wheel. "'I mean to tell her next time we get home.' "'All right.' That was all I heard, because I didn't care to stand there listening while they were talking about their own affairs. so i went aft to look into the binnacle and i told the one at the wheel to keep her so as long as she had way on her for i thought the wind would back up again before long and there was land to leeward when he answered his voice somehow didn't sound like the cheerful one perhaps his brother had relieved the wheel while they had been speaking but what i had heard set me wondering which of them it was that had a girl at home there's lots of time for wondering on a schooner in fair weather after that i thought i noticed that the two brothers were more silent when they were together

perhaps they guessed that i'd overheard something that night and kept quiet when i was about some men would have amused themselves by trying to chaff them separately about the girl at home and i suppose whichever one it was would have let the cat out of the bag if i had done that but somehow i didn't like to yes i was thinking of getting married myself at that time so i had a sort of fellow-feeling for whichever one it was that made me not want to chaff him they didn't talk much it seemed to me but in fair weather when there was nothing to do at night and one was steering the other was was everlastingly hanging round as if he were waiting to relieve the wheel, though he might have been enjoying a quiet nap for all I cared in such weather. Or else, when one was taking his turn at the lookout, the other would be sitting on an anchor beside him. One kept near the other, at night more than in the daytime.

I noticed that. They were fond of sitting on that anchor, and they generally tucked away their pipes. under it, for the Helen B was a dry boat in most weather, and like most foreign aftors was better on a wind than going free. With a beam sea we sometimes shipped a little water aft. We were by the stern, anyhow, on that voyage, and that is one reason why we lost the man. We fell in with a southerly gale, southeast at first, and then the barometer began to fall. while you can watch it, and a long swell began to come up from the southard.

A couple of months earlier we might have been in for a cyclone, but it's October all over in those waters, as you know better than I. It was just going to blow, and then it was going to rain, that was all. And we had plenty of time to make everything snug before it breezed up much. It blew harder after sunset, and by the time it was quite dark it was a full gale. We had shortened sail for it, but as we were by the stern,

we were carrying the spanker close-reefed, instead of the storm-trysal. She steered better so, as long as we didn't have to heave too. I had the first watch with the Benton boys, and we had not been on deck an hour when a child might have seen that the weather meant business. The old man came up on deck and looked round,

and in less than a minute he told us to give her the trysel. That meant heaving too, and I was glad of it, for though the Helen B. was a good vessel enough, she wasn't a new ship by a long way, and it did her no good to drive her in that weather. I asked whether I should call all hands, but just then the cook came aft, and the old man said he thought we could manage the job without waking the sleepers,

and the trysel was handy on deck already, for we hadn't been expecting anything better. We were all in oil skins, of course, and the night was as black as a coal mine, with only a ray of light from the slit in the binnacle shield, and you couldn't tell one man from another, except by his voice. The old man took the wheel. We got the boom amid ships, and he jammed her into the wind until she had hardly any way. It was blowing now, and it was all that I and two others could do to get in the slack of the down-haul, while the others lowered away at the peak and throat,

and we had our hands full to get a couple of turns round the wet sail. It's all child's play on a fore-and-after compared with reefing topsils in anything like weather, but the gear of a schooner sometimes does unhandy things that you don't expect, and those everlasting long halliards get foul of everything if they get adrift. I remember thinking how unhandy that particular job was. Somebody unhooked the throat hallyard block and thought he had hooked it into the head-cringle of the trysel and sang out to hoist away.

But he had missed it in the dark, and the heavy block went flying into the lee-rigging and nearly killed him when it swung back with the weather roll. Then the old man got her up in the wind until the jib was shaking like thunder. Then he held her off and she went off as soon as the head sails filled, and he couldn't get her back again without the spanker. Then the Helen B. did her favorite trick, and before we had time to say much, we had a sea, over the quarter and were up to our waists, with the perils of the trysel only half-becketed round

the mast, and the deck so full of gear that you couldn't put your foot on a plank, and the spanker beginning to get adrift again, being badly stopped, and the general confusion and hell's delight that you can only have on a fore-and-after, when there's nothing really serious the matter. Of course, I don't mean to say that the old man couldn't have steered his trick as well as you or I or any other seaman, but I don't believe he had ever been on board the Helen B. before, or had his hand on her wheel till then, and he didn't know her ways. I don't mean to say that what happened was his fault.

I don't know whose fault it was. Perhaps nobody was to blame, but I knew. something happened somewhere on board when we shipped that sea and you'll never get it out of my head i hadn't any spare time myself for i was beckoning the rest of the trysel to the mast we were on the starboard tack and the throat haliad came down to port as usual and i suppose there were at least three men at it hoisting away while i was at the beckett's now i'm going to tell you something you have known me man and boy several voyages and you are older than i am and you have always been a good friend to me now do you think i am the sort of man to think i hear things when there isn't anything to hear or to think i see things when there's nothing to see no you don't thank you well now i had passed the last becket and i sang out to the men to sway away and i was standing on the jaws on the spanker gaff with my left hand on the bolt-rope of the trysel so that i could feel when it was bored taut and i wasn't thinking of anything except being glad the job was over and that we were going to heave her too it was as black as a coal pocket except that you could see the streaks on the seat

as they went by, and abaffed the deck-house, I could see the ray of light from the binnacle in the captain's yellow oil-skin as he stood at the wheel. Or rather I might have seen it if I had looked round at that minute. But I didn't look round. I heard a man whistling. It was Nancy Lee, and I could have sworn that the man was right over my head in the cross-trees, only somehow I knew very well. that if anybody could have been up there, and could have whistled a tune, there were no living ears sharp enough to hear it on deck then. I heard it distinctly, and at the same time heard the real whistling of the wind and the weather-rigging, sharp and clear as the steam-whistle on a Dago's peanut cart in New York. That was all right, that was as it should be,

but the other wasn't right, and I felt queer and stiff as if i couldn't move and my hair was curling against the flannel lining of my solwester and i thought somebody had dropped a lump of ice down my back i said that the noise of the wind in the rigging was real as if the other wasn't for i felt that it wasn't though i heard it but it was all the same for the captain heard it too when i came to relieve the wheel while the men were cleaning up decks, he was swearing. He was a quiet man, and I hadn't heard him swear before, and I don't think I did again, though several queer things happened after that. Perhaps he said all he had to say then. I don't see how he could have said anything more.

I used to think nobody could swear like a Dane, except a Neapolitan or a South American, but when I had heard the old man, I changed my mind. There's nothing afloat or ashore that can beat one of your quiet American skippers, if he gets off on that tack. I didn't need to ask him what was the matter, for I knew he had heard Nancy Lee, as I had, only it affected us differently. He did not give me the wheel,

but told me to go forward and get the second bonnet off the stasel, so as to keep her up better. As we tailed on to the sheet when it was done, the man next me knocked his celwester against my shoulder, and his face came so close to me that I could see it in the dark. It must have been very white for me to see it, but I only thought of that afterwards. I don't see how any light could have fallen upon it,

but I knew it was one of the Benton boys. I don't know what made me, speak to him. Hello, Jim, is that you? I asked. I don't know why I said Jim, rather than Jack. I am Jack, he answered. We made all fast, and things were much quieter. The old man heard you whistling Nancy Lee just now, I said, and he didn't like it.

It was as if there were a white light inside his face, and it was gas-y, i know his teeth chattered but he didn't say anything and the next minute he was somewhere in the dark trying to find his southwester at the foot of the mast when all was quiet and she was hove too coming to and falling off her four points as regularly as a pendulum and the helm last a little to the lee the old man turned in again and i managed to light a pipe in the lee of the deck-house for there was nothing more to be done till the gale chose to moderate and the ship was as easy as a baby in its cradle of course the cook had gone below as he might have done an hour earlier so there were supposed to be four of us in the watch there was a man at the lookout and there was a hand by the wheel though there was no steering to be done and i was having my pipe in the lee of the deck-house and the fourth man was somewhere about decks probably having a smoke too i thought some skippers i had sailed with would have called the watch aft and given them a drink after that job but it wasn't cold and i guessed that our old man wouldn't be particularly generous in that way my hands and feet were red-hot and it would be time enough to get into dry clothes when it was my watch below so i saw that i should be so i should be very hot and feet were red-hot and it would be time enough to get into dry clothes when it was my watch below so i should stayed where I was and smoked. But by and by, things being so quiet, I began to wonder why

nobody moved on deck, just that sort of restless wanting to know where every man is, that one sometimes feels in a gale of wind on a dark night. So when I had finished my pipe, I began to move about. I went aft, and there was a man leaning over the wheel, with his legs apart and both hands hanging down in the light from the binnacle and his southwester over his eyes then i went forward and there was a man at the lookout with his back against the formist getting what shelter he could from the stasel i knew by his small height that he was not one of the benton boys then i went round by the weather side and poked about in the dark for i began to wonder where the other man was was. But I couldn't find him, though I searched the decks until I got right aft again. It was certainly one of the Benton boys that was missing, but it wasn't like either of them to go below to change his clothes in such warm weather. The man at the wheel was the other, of course.

I spoke to him. Jim, what's becoming your brother? I am Jack, sir. "'Well, then, Jack, where's Jim? He's not on deck.' "'I don't know, sir.' When I had come up to him, he had stood up from force of instinct, and had laid his hands on the spokes as if he were steering, though the wheel was lashed. But he still bent his face down,

and it was half hidden by the edge of his southwestern, while he seemed to be staring at the compass. He spoke in a very low voice, but that was natural, for the captain had left his door open when he turned in, as it was a warm night in spite of the storm, and there was no fear of shipping any more water now. What put it into your head to whistle like that, Jack? You've been at sea long enough to know better.

He said something, but I couldn't hear the words. It sounded as if he were denying the charge. somebody whistled i said he didn't answer and then i don't know why perhaps because the old man hadn't given us a drink i cut half an inch off the plug of tobacco i had in my oilskin pocket and gave it to him he knew my tobacco was good and he shoved it into his mouth with a word of thanks i was on the weather side of the wheel go forward and see if you can find out of the word of thanks go forward and see if you can fine gym i said he started a little and then stepped back and passed behind me and was going along the weather side maybe his silence about the whistling had irritated me and his taking it for granted that because we were hove too and it was a dark night he might go forward any way he pleased anyhow i stopped him though i spoke good-naturedly enough pass to leeward jack i said he didn't answer but crossed the deck between the binnacle and the deck-house to the lee side she was only falling off and coming too and riding the big seas as easily as possible but the man was not steady on his feet and reeled against the corner of the deck-house and then against the lee rail i was quite sure he couldn't have had anything to drink

for neither of the two brothers were the kind to hide rum from their shipmates if they had any and the only spirits that were aboard were locked up in the captain's cabin i wondered whether he had been hit by the throat hallied block and was hurt i left the wheel and went after him but when i got to the corner of the deck-house i saw that he was on a full run forward so i went back i watched the compass for a while to see how far she went off and she must have come to again half a dozen times before i heard voices more than three or four forward and then i heard the little west indies cook's voice high and shrill above the rest man overboard end of section one recording by roger maline section two of man o'an This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Man Overboard by F. Marion Crawford. Section 2.

There wasn't anything to be done, with the ship hove 2 and the wheel lashed. If there was a man overboard, he must be in the water right alongside. I couldn't imagine how it could have happened. but I ran forward instinctively. I came upon the cook first, half-dressed in his shirt and trousers, just as he had tumbled out of his bunk. He was jumping into the main rigging, evidently hoping to see the man,

as if anyone could have seen anything on such a night, except the foam streaks on the black water, and now and then the curl of a breaking sea as it went away to leeward. Several of the men were peering over the rail into the dark, i caught the cook by the foot and asked who was gone it's jim benton he shouted to me he's not aboard this ship there was no doubt about that jim benton was gone and i knew in a flash that he had been taken off by that sea when we were setting the storm trisle it was nearly half an hour since then she had run like wild for a few minutes until we got her hove to and no swimmer that ever swam could have lived as long as that in such a sea the men knew it as well as i but still they stared into the foam as if they had any chance of seeing the lost man i let the cook get into the rigging and joined the men and asked if they had made a thorough search on board though i knew they had and that it could not take long for he wasn't on deck and there was only the folks he'll blow

that sea took him over sir as sure as you're born said one of the men close beside me we had no boat that could have lived in that sea of course and we all knew it i offered to put one over and let her drift astern two or three cables lengths by a line if the men thought they could haul me aboard again but none of them would listen to that and i should probably have been drowned if i had tried it even with a life belt for it was a breaking sea besides they all knew as well as i did that the man could not be right in our wake i don't know why i spoke again jack benton are you there will you go if i will no sir answered a voice and that was all by that time the old man was on deck and i felt his hand on my shoulder rather roughly as if he meant to shake me i'd reckon you had more sense mr torkelson he said god knows i would risk my ship to look for him if it were any use but he must have gone half an hour ago he was a quiet man and the men knew he was right and that they had seen the last of jim benton when they were bending the trysel if anybody had seen him then the captain went below again and for some time the men stood around jack quite near him without saying anything as sailors do when they are sorry for a man and can't help him and then the watch below turned in again and we were three on deck nobody can understand that there can be much consolation in a funeral unless he has felt that blank feeling there is when a man's gone overboard whom everybody likes i suppose landsmen think it would be easier if they didn't have to bury their fathers and mothers and friends but it wouldn't be somehow the funeral keeps up the idea of something beyond

you may believe in that something just the same but a man who has gone in the dark between two seas without a cry seems much more beyond reach than if he were still lying on his bed and had only just stopped breathing perhaps jim benton knew that and wanted to come back to us i don't know and i am only telling you what happened and you may think what you like jack stuck by the wheel that night until the watch was over i don't know whether he slept afterwards but when i came on deck four hours later there he was again in his oil skins with his southwestern over his eyes staring into the binnacle we saw that he would rather stand there and we left him alone perhaps it was some consolation to him to get that ray of light when everything was so dark it began to rain too as it can when a southerly gale is going to break up and we got every bucket and tub on board and set them under the booms to catch the fresh water for washing our clothes the rain made it very thick and i went and stood under the lee of the sea-oombs and i went and stood under the lee of the sea stasel, looking out. I could tell that day was breaking, because the foam was whiter in the dark where the seas crested, and little by little the black rain grew gray and steamy, and I couldn't see the red glare of the port light on the water when she went off and rolled to leeward. The gale had moderated

considerably, and in another hour we should be underway again. I was still standing there when Jack Benton came forward. He stood still a few minutes near me. The rain came down in a solid sheet, and I could see his wet beard and a corner of his cheek, too, gray in the dawn. Then he stooped down and began feeling under the anchor for his pipe. We had hardly shipped any water forward, and I suppose he had some way of tucking the pipe in, so that the rain hadn't floated it off. Presently he got on his legs again, and I saw that he had two pipes in his hand. One of them had belonged to his brother, and after looking at them a moment, I suppose he recognized his own, for he put it in his mouth, dripping with water. Then he looked at the other, fully a minute without moving.

When he had made up his mind, I suppose, he quietly chucked it over the lee-rail, without even looking round to see whether I was watching him. i thought it was a pity for it was a good wooden pipe with a nickel feral and somebody would have been glad to have it but i didn't like to make any remark for he had a right to do what he pleased with what had belonged to his dead brother he blew the water out of his own pipe and dried it against his jacket putting his hand inside his oil skin he filled it standing under the lee of the foremast got a light after a waste of his waist wasting two or three matches and turned the pipe upside down in his teeth to keep the rain out of the bowl i don't know why i noticed everything he did and remember it now but somehow i felt sorry for him and i kept wondering whether there was anything i could say that would make him feel better but i didn't think of anything and as it was broad daylight i went aft again for i guessed that the old man would turn out before long and or order the spanker set and the helm up but he didn't turn out before seven bells just as the clouds broke and showed blue sky to leeward the frenchman's barometer you used to call it some people don't seem to be so dead when they are dead as others are jim benton was like that he had been on my watch and i couldn't get used to the idea that he wasn't about decks with me

i was always expecting to see him and his brother was so exactly like him that i often felt as if i did see him and forgot he was dead and made the mistake of calling jack by his name though i tried not to because i knew it must hurt if ever jack had been the cheerful one of the two as i had always supposed he had been he had changed very much for he grew to be more silent than jim had ever been one fine afternoon i was sitting on the main hatch overhauling the clockwork of the taffrail log which hadn't been registering very well of late and i had got the cook to bring me a coffee cup to hold the small screws as i took them out and a saucer for the sperm oil i was going to use i noticed that he didn't go away but hung around without exactly watching what i was doing as if he wanted to say something to me i thought if it were worth much he would say it anyhow so i didn't ask him questions and sure enough he began of his own accord before long there was nobody on deck but the man at the wheel and the other man away forward mr torkelson the cook began and then stopped i supposed he was going to ask me to let the watch break out a barrel of flour or some salt horse well doctor i asked as he didn't go on well mr torkelson he answered i somehow want to ask you whether you think i am giving satisfaction on this ship or not so far as i know you are doctor i haven't heard any complaints from the forecastle and the captain has said nothing and i think you know your business and the cabin boy is bursting out of his clothes

that looks as if you are giving satisfaction what makes you think you are not i am not good at giving you what west indies talk and shan't try but the doctor beat about the bush a while and then he told me he thought the men were beginning to play tricks on him and he didn't like it and thought he hadn't deserved it and would like his discharge at our next port i told him he was a damned fool of course to begin with and that men were more apt to try a joke with a chap they liked than with anybody they wanted to get rid of unless it was a bad joke like flooding his bunk or filling his boots with tar but it wasn't that kind of practical joke the doctor said that the men were trying to frighten him and he didn't like it and that they put things in his way that frightened him so i told him he was a damned fool to be frightened anyway and i wanted to know what things they put in his way he gave me a queer answer he said they were spoons and forks and odd plates and a cup now and then and such things i set down the taffrail log on the bit of canvas i had put under it and looked at the doctor he was uneasy and his eyes had a sort of hunting looked, and his yellow face looked gray. He wasn't trying to make trouble. He was in trouble, so I asked him questions. He said he could count as well as anybody, and do sums without using his

fingers, but that when he couldn't count any other way he did use his fingers, and it always came out the same. He said that when he and the cabin boy cleared up after the men's meals, there were more things to wash than he had given out. There'd be a fork more, or there'd be a spoon more, and sometimes there'd be a spoon and a fork, and there was always a plate more. It wasn't that he complained of that. Before poor Jim Benton was lost,

they had a man more to feed, and his gear to wash up after meals, and that was in the contract, the doctor said. it would have been if there were twenty in the ship's company but he didn't think it was right for the men to play tricks like that he kept his things in good order and he counted them and he was responsible for them and it wasn't right that the men should take more things than they needed when his back was turned and just soiled them and mix them up with their own so as to make him think he stopped there and looked at me and i looked at him i didn't know what he thought but i began to guess i wasn't going to humor any such nonsense as this so i told him to speak to the men himself and not come bothering me about such things count the plates and forks and spoons before them when they sit down to table and tell them that's all they'll get and when they'll get and when they're have finished count the things again and if the count isn't right find out who did it you know it must be one of them you're not a green hand you've been going to see ten or eleven years and don't want any lesson about how to behave if the boys play a trick on you

if i could catch him said the cook i'd have a knife into him before he could say his prayers those west indian men are always talking to you about knives, especially when they're badly frightened. I knew what he meant and didn't ask him, but went on cleaning the brass cogwheels of the patent log and oiling the bearings with a feather. Wouldn't it be better to wash it out with boiling water, sir? asked the cook, in an insinuating tone. He knew that he had made a fool of himself and was anxious to make it right again.

I heard no more about the odd plight. platter and gear for two or three days, but I thought about his story a good deal. The doctor evidently believed that Jim Benton had come back, though he didn't quite like to say so. His story had sounded silly enough on a bright afternoon, in fair weather, when the sun was on the water, and every rag was drying in the breeze, and the sea looked as pleasant and harmless as a cat that has just eaten a canary. but when it was toward the end of the first watch and the waning moon had not risen yet and the water was like still oil and the jibs hung down flat and helpless like the wings of a dead bird it wasn't the same then more than once i have started then and looked round when a fish jumped expecting to see a face sticking up out of the water with its eyes shut i think we all felt something like that at the time one afternoon we were putting a fresh service on the jib-sheet pennant it wasn't my watch but i was standing by looking on

just then jack benton came up from below and went to look for his pipe under the anchor his face was hard and drawn and his eyes were cold like steel balls he hardly ever spoke now but he did his duty as usual and nobody had to complain of him though we were all beginning to wonder how long his grief for his dead brother was going to last like that i watched him as he crouched down and ran his hand into the hiding-place for the pipe when he stood up he had two pipes in his hand now i remembered very well seeing him throw one of those pipes away early in the morning after the gale and it came to me now and i didn't suppose he kept a stock of them under the anchor i caught sight of his face and it was greenish-white like the foam on shallow water and he stood a long time looking at the two pipes he wasn't looking to see which was his for i wasn't looking to see which was his for i wasn't wasn't five yards from him as he stood and one of those pipes had been smoked that day and was shiny where his hand had rubbed it and the bone mouthpiece was shaped white where his teeth had bitten it the other was water-logged it was swelled and cracking with wet and it looked to me as if there were a little green weed on it jack benton turned his head rather stealthily as i looked away and then he hid the thing in his trousers pocket and went aft on the lee side out of sight.

The men had got the sheet pennant on a stretch to serve it, but I ducked under it and stood where I could see what Jack did, just under the forest-a-s-hole. He couldn't see me, and he was looking about for something. His hand shook as he picked up a bit of half-bent iron rod, about a foot long, that had been used for turning an eye, eye bolt and had been left on the main hatch. His hand shook as he got a piece of Marlin out of his pocket

and made the water-logged pipe fast to the iron. He didn't mean it to get adrift either, for he took his turns carefully, and hove them taut and then rode them so that they couldn't slip, and made the end fast with two half-hitches round the iron and hitched it back on itself. Then he tried it with his hands, and looked up and down the deck furtively,

and then quietly dropped the pipe and iron over the rail, so that I didn't even hear the splash. If anybody was playing tricks on board, they weren't meant for the cook. I asked some questions about Jack Benton, and one of the men told me he was off his feed and hardly ate anything, and swallowed all the coffee he could lay his own. hands on and had used up all his own tobacco and had begun on what his brother had left the doctor says it ain't so sir said the man looking at me shyly as if he didn't expect to be believed the doctor says there's as much eaten from breakfast to breakfast as there was before jim fell overboard though there's a mouth less and another that eats nothing i say it's the cabin boy that gets it

he's bust him i told him that if the cabin boy ate more than his share he must work more than his share so as to balance things but the man laughed queerly and looked at me again i only said that sir just like that we all know it ain't so well how is it how is it asked the man half angry all at once i don't know how it is but there's a hand on board that's getting his whack along with us as regular as the bells does he use tobacco i asked meaning to laugh it out of him but as i spoke i remembered the waterlogged pipe i guess he's using his own still the man answered in a queer low voice perhaps he'll take someone else's when his is all gone it was about nine o'clock in the morning i remember for just then the captain called to me to stand by the chronometer while he took his fore observation captain hackstaff wasn't one of those old skippers who do everything themselves with a pocket watch and keep the key of the chronometer in their waistcoat pocket pocket and won't tell the mate how far the dead reckoning is out he was rather the other way and i was glad of it for he generally let me work the sights he took and just ran his eye over my figures afterwards i am bound to say his eye was pretty good for he would pick out a mistake in a logarithm or tell me that i had worked the equation of time with the wrong sign before it seemed to me that he could have got as far as half the sum minus the altitude

he was always right too and besides he knew a lot about iron ships and local deviation and adjusting the compass and all that sort of thing i don't know how he came to be in command of a fore-and-aft schooner he never talked about himself and maybe he had just been mate on one of those big steel square rigors and something had put him back perhaps he had been captain and had got his ship aground through no particular fault of his and had to begin over again sometimes he talked just like you and me and sometimes he would speak more like books do or some of those boston people i have heard i don't know we have all been shipmates now and then with men who have seen better days perhaps he had been in the navy but what makes me think he couldn't have been was that he was a thorough good seaman a regular old wind-jammer and understood sail which those navy chaps rarely do why you and i have sailed with men before the mast who had their master certificates in their pockets english board of trade certificates too who could work a double altitude if you would lend them a sextant and give them a look at the chronometer as well as men as men's certificate too-wellers who could work a double altitude if you would lend them a sextant and give them a look at the chronometer as well as men's many a man who commands a big square rigger. Navigation ain't everything, nor seamanship either. You've got to have it in you, if you mean to get there. I don't know how our captain heard

that there was trouble forward. The cabin boy may have told him, or the men may have talked outside his door when they relieved the wheel at night. Anyhow, he got wind of it, and when he had got his sight that morning he had all hands aft and gave them a lecture it was just the kind of talk you might have expected from him he said he hadn't any complaint to make and that so far as he knew everybody on board was doing his duty and that he was given to understand that the men got their whack and were satisfied he said his ship was never a hard ship and that he liked quiet and that was the reason he didn't mean to have any nonsense and the men might just as well understand that too we had had a great misfortune he said and it was nobody's fault we had lost a man we all liked and respected and he felt that everybody in the ship ought to be sorry for the man's brother who was left behind and that it was rotten lubberly childishness and unjust and unmanly and cowardly to be playing schooled-boy tricks with forks and spoons and pipes and that sort of gear he said it had got to stop right now and that was all and the men might go forward and so they did it got worse after that and the men watched the cook and the cook watched the men as if the men watched the men as if the man watched the cook as if the man they were trying to catch each other. But I think everybody felt that there was something else.

One evening, at suppertime, I was on deck, and Jack came aft to relieve the wheel while the man who was steering got his supper. He hadn't got past the main hatch on the lee side when I heard a man running in slippers that slapped on the deck, and there was a sort of a yell, and I saw the colored cook going for Jack with a carving knife in his hand. I jumped to get between them, and Jack turned round short and put out his hand. I was too far to reach them, and the cook jabbed out with his knife. But the blade didn't get anywhere near, Benton. The cook seemed to be jabbing it into the air again and again, at least four feet short of the mark.

then he dropped his right hand and i saw the whites of his eyes in the dusk and he reeled up against the pin-rail and caught hold of a belaying pin with his left i had reached him by that time and grabbed hold of his knife hand and the other too for i thought he was going to use the pin but jack benton was standing staring stupidly at him as if he didn't understand but instead the cook was holding on because he couldn't stand and his teeth were chattering and he let go of the knife and the point stuck into the deck he's crazy said jack benton and that was all he said and he went aft when he was gone the cook began to come to and he spoke quite low near my ear there were two of them so help me god there were two of them i don't know why i didn't take him by the collar and give him a good shaking but i didn't i just picked up the knife and gave it to him and told him to go back to his galley and not to make a fool of himself you see he hadn't struck it jack but at something he thought he saw and i knew what it was and i felt that same thing, like a lump of ice sliding down my back that I felt that night when we were bending the trysel. When the men had seen him running aft, they jumped up after him, but they held off

when they saw that I had caught him. By and by, the man who had spoken to me before told me what had happened. He was a stocky little chap with a red head. Well, he said, there isn't much to tell. Jack Benton had been eating his supper with the rest of us. He always sits at the after-corner of the table, on the port side. His brother used to sit at the end, next to him. The doctor gave him a thundering big piece of pie to finish up with, and when he had finished he didn't stop for a smoke, but went off quick to relieve the wheel. Just as he had gone, the doctor came in from the alley, and when he saw Jack's empty plate, he stood stock-still staring at it. And we all wondered, what was the matter, till we looked at the plate. There were two forks in it, sir, lying side

by side. Then the doctor grabbed his knife and flew up through the hatch like a rocket. The other fork was there, all right, Mr. Torkelson, for we all saw it and handled it, and we all had our own. That's all I know. I didn't feel that I wanted to laugh when he told me that story, but I hoped the old man wouldn't hear it, for I knew he wouldn't believe it, and no captain that ever sailed likes to have stories like that going round about his ship. It gives her a bad name. But that was all anybody ever saw, except the cook, and he isn't the first man who has thought he saw things without having any drink in him. I think, if the doctor had been weak in the head as he was afterwards, he might have done

something foolish again, and there might have been serious trouble. But he didn't. Only two or three times I saw him looking at Jack Benton in a queer, scared way, and once I heard him talking to himself. There's two of them. So help me God. There's two of them. End of section two. Recording by Roger Maline.

Section 3 of Man Overboard. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Man Overboard by F. Marion Crawford. Section 3. He didn't. say anything more about asking for his discharge, but I knew well enough that if he got ashore at the next court, we should never see him again, if he had to leave his kit behind him and his money too. He was scared all through, for good and all, and he wouldn't be right again till he got another ship.

It's no use to talk to a man when he gets like that any more than it is to send a boy to the main truck when he has lost his nerve. jack benton never spoke of what happened that evening i don't know whether he knew about the two forks or not or whether he understood what the trouble was whatever he knew from the other men he was evidently living under a hard strain he was quiet enough and too quiet but his face was set and sometimes it twitched oddly when he was at the wheel and he would turn his head round sharp to look behind him a man doesn't do that naturally unless there's a vessel that he thinks is creeping up on the quarter when that happens if the man at the wheel takes a pride in his ship he will almost always keep glancing over his shoulder to see whether the other fellow was gaining but jack benton used to look round when there was nothing there and what is curious the other men seemed to catch the trick when they were steering one day the old man seemed to catch the trick when they were steering one day the old man turned out just as the man at the wheel looked behind him. What are you looking at? asked the captain. Nothing, sir, answered the man.

Then keep your eye on the mizzen-royal, said the old man, as if he were forgetting that he weren't a square-rigger. Aye, aye, sir, said the man. The captain told me to go below and work up the latitude from the dead reckoning, and he went forward of the deck-house and sat down. down to read, as he often did. When I came up, the man at the wheel was looking round again, and I stood beside him and just asked him quietly what everybody was looking at, for it was getting to be a general habit. He wouldn't say anything at first, but just answered that it was

nothing. But when he saw that I didn't seem to care, and just stood there as if there were nothing more to be said, he naturally began to talk. he said that it wasn't that he saw anything because there wasn't anything to see except the spanker sheet just straining a little and working in the sheaves of the blocks as the schooner rose to the short seas there wasn't anything to be seen but it seemed to him that the sheet made a queer noise in the blocks it was a new manila sheet and in dry weather it did make a little noise something between a creek and a wheeze i looked at it and looked at the man and said nothing and presently he went on he asked me if i didn't notice anything peculiar about the noise i listened a while and said i didn't notice anything then he looked rather sheepish but said he didn't think it could be his own ears because every man who steered his trick heard the same thing now and then sometimes once in a day-and-day sometimes once in a day Sometimes once in a night, sometimes it would go on a whole hour. It sounds like sawing wood, I said, just like that.

To us, it sounds a good deal more like a man whistling Nancy Lee. He started nervously as he spoke the last words. There, sir, don't you hear it? he asked suddenly. I heard nothing but the creaking of the manila sheet. it was getting near noon and fine clear weather in southern waters just the sort of day and the time when you would least expect to feel creepy but i remembered how i had heard that same tune overheard at night in a gale of wind a fortnight earlier and i am not ashamed to say that the same sensation came over me now and i wished myself well out of the helen b and a board of any old cargo-dragger with a windmill mill on deck and an eighty-nine forty-eighter for captain and a fresh leak whenever it breezed up little by little during the next few days life on board that vessel came to be about as unbearable as you can imagine it wasn't that there was much talk for i think the men were shy even of speaking to each other freely about what they thought the whole ship's company grew silent until

one hardly ever heard a voice, except giving an order and the answer. The men didn't sit over their meals when their watch was below, but either turned in at once or sat about on the forecastle, smoking their pipes without saying a word. We were all thinking of the same thing. We all felt as if there were a hand on board, sometimes below, sometimes about decks, sometimes aloft, sometimes on the boom end taking his full share of what the others got but doing no work for it we didn't only feel it we knew it he took up no room he cast no shadow and we never heard his footfall on deck but he took his whack with the rest as regular as the bells and-he whistled nancy lee

it was like the worst sort of dream you can imagine and i dare say a good many of us tried to believe it was nothing else sometimes when we stood looking over the weather rail in fine weather with the breeze in our faces but if we happened to turn around to look into each other's eyes we knew it was something worse than any dream could be and we would turn away from each other with a queer sick feeling wishing that we could just for once see somebody who didn't know what we knew there's not much more to tell about the helen b jackson so far as i am concerned we were more like a shipload of lunatics than anything else when we ran in under morrow castle and and anchored in Havana. The cook had brain fever and was raving mad in his delirium, and the rest of the men weren't far from the same state. The last three or four days had been awful, and we had been as near to having a mutiny on board as I ever want to be. The men didn't want to hurt anybody, but they wanted to get away out of that ship if they had to swim for it, to get away from that whistling from that dead shipmate who had come back and who filled the ship with his unseen self

i know that if the old man and i hadn't kept a sharp lookout the men would have put a boat over quietly on one of those calm nights and pulled away leaving the captain and me and the mad cook to work the schooner into harbor we should have done it somehow of course for we hadn't far to run if we could get a breeze and once or twice i found myself wishing that the crew were really gone for the awful state of fright in which they lived was beginning to work on me too you see i partly believed and partly didn't but anyhow i didn't mean to let the thing get the better of me whatever it was i turned crusty too and kept the men at work on all sorts of jobs and drove them to it until they wished i was overboard too it wasn't that the old man and i were trying to drive them to desert without their pay as i am sorry to say a good many skippers and mates do even now captain haxtaff was as straight as a string and i didn't mean those poor fellows should be cheated out of a single cent and i didn't blame them for wanting to leave the ship but it seemed to me that the only chance to keep everybody sane through those last days was to work the men till they dropped when they were dead tired they slept a little and forgot the thing until they had to tumble up on deck and forgot the thing until they had to tumble up on deck and face it again. That was a good many years ago.

Do you believe that I can't hear Nancy Lee now without feeling cold down my back? For I heard it too now and then, after the man had explained why he was always looking over his shoulder. Perhaps it was imagination. I don't know. When I look back, it seems to me that I only remember a long fight against something I couldn't see. against an appalling present against something worse than cholera or yellow jack or the plague and goodness knows the mildest of them is bad enough when it breaks out at sea the men got as white as chalk and wouldn't go about decks alone at night no matter what i said to them with the cook raving in his bunk the forecastle would have been a perfect hell and there wasn't a spare cabin on board. There never is on a for and after. So I put him into mine, and he was more quiet there, and at last fell into a sort of stupor as if he were going to die. I don't know what became of him,

for we put him ashore alive and left him in the hospital. The men came aft in a body, quiet enough, and asked the captain if he wouldn't pay them off and let them go ashore. some men wouldn't have done it for they had shipped for the voyage and had signed articles but the captain knew that when sailors get an idea into their heads they're no better than children and if he forced them to stay aboard he wouldn't get much work out of them and couldn't rely on them in a difficulty so he paid them off and let them go when they had gone forward to get their kits he asked me whether i wanted to go too and for a minute i had a sort of weak feeling that i might just as well but i didn't and he was a good friend to me afterwards perhaps he was grateful to me for sticking to him when the men went off he didn't come on deck but it was my duty to stand by while they left the ship they owed me a grudge for making them work during the last few days and most of them dropped into the boat without so much as a word or a look as sailors will jack benton was the last to go over the side and he stood still a minute and looked at me and his white face twitched i thought he wanted to say something

take care of yourself jack said i so long it seemed as if he couldn't speak for two or three seconds then his words came thick it wasn't my fault mr torkelson i swear it wasn't my fault that was all and he dropped over the side leaving me to wonder what he meant the captain and i stayed on board and the ship-chandler got a west india boy to cook for us that evening before turning in we were standing by the rail having a quiet smoke watching the lights of the city a quarter of a mile off, reflected in the still water. There was music of some sort ashore in a sailor's dancehouse, I dare say, and I had no doubt that most of the men who had left the ship were there, and already full of jiggie-jiggy. The music played a lot of sailors' tunes that ran into each other,

and we could hear the men's voices in the chorus now and then. One followed another, and then it was, nancy lee loud and clear and the men singing yo ho heave ho i have no ear for music said captain haxstaff but it appears to me that's the tune that man was whistling the night we lost the man overboard i don't know why it is stuck in my head and of course it's all nonsense but it seems to me that i have heard it all the rest of the trip i didn't say anything to that but i wondered just how much the old man had understood then we turned in and i slept ten hours without opening my eyes i stuck to the helen b jackson after that as long as i could stand afore and after but that night when we lay in havana was the last time i ever heard nancy lee on board of her the spare hand had gone ashore with the rest and he never came back and he took his tune with him but all those things are just as clear in my memory as if they had happened yesterday after that i was in deep water for a year or more and after i came home i got my certificate and what with having friends and having saved a little money and having had a small legacy from an uncle in norway

I got the command of a coastwise vessel with a small share in her. I was at home three weeks before going to sea, and Jack Benton saw my name in the local papers and wrote to me. He said that he had left the sea and was trying farming, and he was going to be married, and he asked if I wouldn't come over for that, for it wasn't more than forty minutes by train, and he and Mamie would be proud to have me at the wedding.

I remembered how I had heard one brother, asked the other brother, whether Mamie knew. That meant whether she knew he wanted to marry her, I suppose. She had taken her time about it, for it was pretty nearly three years then since we had lost Jim Benton overboard. I had nothing particular to do while we were getting ready for sea. Nothing to prevent me from going over for a day, I mean.

And I thought I'd like to see Jack Benton and have a look at the girl he was going to marry. I wondered whether he had grown cheerful again and had got rid of that drawn look he had when he told me it wasn't his fault. How could it have been his fault, anyhow? So I wrote to Jack that I would come down and see him married. And when the day came,

i took the train and got there about ten o'clock in the morning i wish i hadn't jack met me at the station and he told me that the wedding was to be late in the afternoon and that they weren't going off on any silly wedding trip he and mamie but we're just going to walk home from her mother's house to his cottage that was good enough for him he said i looked at him hard for a minute after we met when we had parted i had a sort of idea that he might take to drink but he hadn't he looked very respectable and well-to-do in his black coat and high city collar but he was thinner and bonier than when i had known him and there were lines in his face and i thought his eyes had a queer look in them half shifty half scared he needn't have been afraid of me for i didn't mean to talk to his bride about the helen b jackson he took me to his cottage first and i could see that he was proud of it it wasn't above a cable's length from high watermark but the tide was running out and there was already a broad stretch of hard wet sand on the other side of the beach road jack's bit of land ran back behind the cottage about a quarter of a mile and he said that some of the trees we saw were his the fences were neat and well kept and there was a fair-sized barn a little way from the cottage and i saw some nice-looking cattle in the meadows but it didn't look to me to be much of a farm and i thought that before long jack would have to leave his wife to take care of it and go to sea again but i said it was a nice farm so as to seem pleasant and as i don't know much about these things i dare say it was

all the same. I never saw it but that once. Jack told me that he and his brother had been born in the cottage, and that when their father and mother died, they leased the land to Mamie's father, but had kept the cottage to live in when they came home from sea for a spell. It was as neat a little place as you would care to see. The floors, as clean as the decks of a yacht, and the paint as fresh as a man of war. Jack always was a good painter. There was a nice parlor on the ground floor, and Jack had papered it and had hung the walls with photographs of ships and foreign ports,

and with things he had brought home from his voyages. A boomerang, a South Sea club, Japanese straw hats, and a Gibraltar fan with a bullfight on it, and all that sort of gear it looked to me as if miss maymy had taken a hand in arranging it there was a brand-new polished iron franklin stove set into the old fireplace and a red table-cloth from alexandria embroidered with those outlandish egyptian letters it was all as bright and home-like as possible and he showed me everything and was proud of everything and i liked him the better for it but i wished that his voice would sound more cheerful as it did when we first sailed on the helen b and that the drawn look would go out of his face for a minute jack showed me everything and took me upstairs and it was all the same bright and fresh and ready for the bride but on the upper landing there was a door that jack didn't open when we came out of the bedroom i noticed that it was a room i noticed that it was a door that jack didn't open when we came out of the bedroom i noticed that it was ajar and jack shut it quickly and turned the key that locks no good he said half to himself the door is always open

i didn't pay much attention to what he said but as we went down the short stairs freshly painted and varnished so that i was almost afraid to step on them he spoke again that was his room sir i have made a sort of store-room of it you may be wanting it in a year or so i said wishing to be pleasant i guess we won't use his room for that jack answered in a low voice then he offered me a cigar from a fresh box in the parlor and he took one and we lit them and went out and as we opened the front door there was mamie brewster standing in the path as if she were waiting for us she was a fine-looking girl and i didn't wonder that jack had been willing to wait three years for her i could see that she hadn't been brought up on steam heat and cold storage but had grown into a woman by the seashore she had brown eyes and fine brown hair and a good figure this is captain torkelson said jack this is miss brewster captain and she is glad to see you well i am said miss mamie for jack has often talked to us about you captain she put out her hand and took mine and shook it heartily and i suppose i said something but i know i didn't say much the front door of the cottage looked toward the sea and there was a straight path leading to the gate on the beach road.

There was another path from the steps of the cottage that turned to the right, broad enough for two people to walk easily, and it led straight across the fields through gates to a larger house, about a quarter of a mile away. That was where Mamie's mother lived, and the wedding was to be there. Jack asked me whether I would like to look round the farm, before dinner, but I told him I didn't know much about farms. Then he said he just wanted to look round himself a bit,

as he mightn't have much more chance that day, and he smiled, and Mamie laughed. Show the captain the way to the house, Mamie, he said. I'll be along in a minute. So Mamie and I began to walk along the path, and Jack went up toward the barn. it was sweet of you to come captain miss mamie began for i have always wanted to see you yes i said expecting something more you see i always knew them both she went on they used to take me out on a dory to catch codfish when i was a little girl and i liked them both she added thoughtfully jack doesn't care to talk about his brother now that's natural but you won't mind telling me how it happened will you i should so much like to know

well i told her about the voyage and what happened that night when we fell in with a gale of wind and that it hadn't been anybody's fault for i wasn't going to admit that it was my old captains if it was but i didn't tell her anything about what happened afterwards as she didn't speak i just went on talking about the two brothers and how like they had been and how when poor jim was drowned and jack was left i took jack for him i told her that none of us had ever been sure which was which i wasn't always sure myself she said unless they were together leastways not for a day or two after they came home from sea and now it seems to me that jack is more like poor jim as i remember him than he ever was for jim was always more quiet as if he were thinking i told her i thought so too we passed the gate and went into the next field walking side by side then she turned her head to look for jack but he wasn't in sight i shan't forget what she said next are you sure now she asked i stood stock still and she went on a step and then turned and looked at me we must have looked at each other while you could count five or six i know it's silly she went on it's silly and it's awful too and i've got no right to think it but sometimes i can't help it you see it was always jack i meant to marry yes i said stupidly i suppose so she waited a minute and began walking on slowly before she went on again

i am talking to you as if you were an old friend captain and i have only known you five minutes it was jack i meant to marry but now he is so like the other one when a woman gets a wrong idea into her head there is only one way to make her tired of it and that is to agree with her that's what i did and she went on talking the same way for a little while and i kept on agreeing and agreeing until she turned round on me you know you don't believe what you say she said and laughed you know that jack is jack right enough and it's jack i am going to marry of course i said so for i didn't care whether she thought me a weak creature or not i wasn't going to say a word that could interfere with her happiness and i didn't intend to go back on jack benton but i remembered what he had said when he left the ship in havana that it wasn't his fault all the same miss mamie went on as a woman will without realising what she was saying all the same i wish i had seen it happen then i should know next minute she knew that she didn't mean that and was afraid that i would think her heartless and began to explain that she would really rather have died herself than have seen poor jim go overboard women haven't got much sense anyhow all the same i wondered how she could marry jack if she had a doubt that he might be jim after all.

I suppose she had really got used to him since he had given up the sea and had stayed ashore, and she cared for him. Before long we heard Jack coming up behind us, for we had walked very slowly to wait for him. Promise not to tell anybody what I said, Captain, said Mamie, as girls do as soon as they have told their secrets. End of Section 3. Recording by Roger Maline. Section 4 of Man Overboard.

This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Man Overboard by F. Marion Crawford. Section 4. Anyhow, I know I never did tell anyone but you. This is the first time I have talked of all that, the first time since i took the train from that place i am not going to tell you all about the day miss mamie introduced me to her mother who was a quiet hard-faced old new england farmer's widow and to her cousins and relations and there were plenty of them two at dinner and there was the parson besides he was what they call a hard-shell baptist in those parts

with a long shaven upper lip and a whacking appetite and a sort of superior look as if he didn't expect to see many of us hereafter the way a new york pilot looks around and orders things about when he boards an italian cargo as if the ship weren't up to much anyway though it was his business to see that she didn't get a ground that's the way a good many parsons look i think he said grace as if he were ordering the men to sheet home the topgallant sail and get the helm up after dinner we went out on the piazza for it was warm autumn weather and the young folks went off in pairs along the beach road and the tide had turned and was beginning to come in the morning had been clear and fine but by four o'clock it began to look like a fog and the damp came up out of the sea and settled on everything. Jack said he'd go down to his cottage and have a last look, for the wedding was to be at five o'clock, or soon after, and he wanted to light the lights so as to have things look cheerful.

I will just take a last look, he said again as we reached the house. We went in, and he offered me another cigar, and I lit it and sat down in the parlor. I could hear him moving about it, about, first in the kitchen, and then upstairs. And then I heard him in the kitchen again. And then, before I knew anything, I heard somebody moving upstairs again. I knew he couldn't have got up those stairs as quick as that. He came into the parlor, and he took a cigar himself.

And while he was lighting it, I heard those steps again overhead. His hands shook, and he dropped the match. have you got in somebody to help i asked no jack answered sharply and struck another match there's somebody upstairs jack i said don't you hear footsteps it's the wind captain jack answered but i could see he was trembling that isn't any wind jack i said it's still and foggy i'm sure there's somebody upstairs if you are so sure of it you'd better go and see for yourself captain jack answered almost angrily he was angry because he was frightened i left him before the fireplace and went upstairs there was no power on earth that could make me believe i hadn't heard a man's footsteps overhead i knew there was somebody there but there wasn't i went into the bedroom and it was a man's footsteps overhead i knew there was somebody there but there wasn't i went into the bedroom and it was a man's was all quiet, and the evening light was streaming in, reddish, through the foggy air. And I went out on the landing and looked in the little back room that was meant for a servant

girl or a child. And as I came back again, I saw that the door of the other room was wide open, though I knew Jack had locked it. He had said the lock was no good. I looked in. It was a room as big as the bedroom, but almost dark, for it had shutters, and they were closed. There was a musty smell, as of old gear, and I could make out that the floor was littered with sea-chests, and that there were oil skins and stuff piled on the bed. But I still believed that there was somebody upstairs, and I went in and struck a match and looked around. i could see the four walls and the shabby old paper an iron bed and a cracked looking-glass and the stuff on the floor but there was nobody there so i put out the match and came out and shut the door and turned the key now what i am telling you is the truth when i had turned the key i heard footsteps walking away from the door inside the room

then i felt queer for a minute and when i went downstairs i looked behind me as the men at the wheel used to look behind them on board the helen b jack was already outside on the steps smoking i have an idea that he didn't like to stay inside alone well he asked trying to seem careless i didn't find anybody i answered but i heard somebody moving about i told you it was the wind said jack contemptuously i ought to know for i live here and i hear it often there was nothing to be said to that so we began to walk down toward the beach jack said there wasn't any hurry as it would take miss mamie some time to dress for the wedding so we strolled along and the sun was setting through the fog and the tide was coming in. I knew the moon was full and that when she rose the fog would roll away from the land as it does sometimes. I felt that Jack didn't like my having heard that noise, so I talked of other things and asked him about his prospects, and before long we were chatting as pleasantly as possible. I haven't been at many weddings in my life, and I don't suppose you have.

But that one seemed to me to be all right until it was pretty near over, and then, I don't know whether it was part of the ceremony or not, but Jack put out his hand and took Mamies and held it a minute and looked at her, while the parson was still speaking. Mamie turned as white as a sheet and screamed. it wasn't a loud scream but just a sort of stifled little shriek as if she were half frightened to death and the parson stopped and asked her what was the matter and the family gathered round your hands like ice said mamie to jack and it's all wet she kept looking at it as she got hold of herself again it don't feel cold to me said jack and he held the back of his hand against his cheek try it again mamie held out hers and touched the back of his hand timidly at first and then took hold of it

why that's funny she said she's been as nervous as a witch all day said mrs brewster severely it is natural said the parson said the parson that young mrs benton should experience a little agitation at such a moment most of the bride's relations lived at a distance and were busy people so it had been arranged that the dinner we had had in the middle of the day was to take the place of a dinner afterwards and that we should just have a bite after the wedding was over and then that everybody should go home and the young couple would walk down to the cottage by themselves when i looked out i could see the light burning brightly in jack's cottage a quarter of a mile away i said i didn't think i could get any train to take me back before half-past nine but mrs brewster begged me to stay until it was time as she said her daughter would want to take off her wedding dress before she went home for she had put on something white with a wreath that was very pretty and she couldn't walk home like that she could walk home like that could she so when we had all had a little supper the party began to break up and when they were all gone mrs brewster and mamie went upstairs and jack and i went out on the piazza to have a smoke as the old lady didn't like tobacco in the house the full moon had risen now and it was behind me as i looked down toward jack's cottage so that everything was clear and white and there was only the little moon had risen now and it was behind me as i looked down toward jack's cottage so that everything was clear and white and there was only the light burning in the window. The fog had rolled down to the water's edge, and a little beyond,

for the tide was high, or nearly, and was lapping up over the last reach of sand, within fifty feet of the beach road. Jack didn't say much as we sat smoking, but he thanked me for coming to his wedding, and I told him I hoped he would be happy, and so I did. I dare say both. I dare say both of us were thinking of those footsteps upstairs just then, and that the house wouldn't seem so lonely with a woman in it. By and by we heard Mamie's voice talking to her mother on the stairs, and in a minute she was ready to go. She had put on again the dress she had worn in the morning,

and it looked black at night, almost as black as Jack's coat. Well, they were ready to go now. It was all very quiet after the day's excitement, and I knew they would like to walk down that path alone, now that they were man and wife at last. I bade them good night, although Jack made a show of pressing me to go with them by the path as far as the cottage, instead of going to the station by the beach road. It was all very quiet, and it seemed to me a sensible way of getting married. And when Mamie kissed her mother good night, I just looked the other way and knocked my ashes over the rail of the piazza.

So they started down the straight path to Jack's cottage, and I waited a minute with Mrs. Brewster, looking after them before taking my hat to go. They walked side by side, a little shyly at first, and then I saw Jack put his arm around her waist. as i looked he was on her left and i saw the outline of the two figures very distinctly against the moonlight on the path and the shadow on mamie's right was broad and black as ink and it moved along lengthening and shortening with the unevenness of the ground beside the path i thanked mrs brewster and bade her good-night and though she was a hard new england woman her voice trembled a little as she answered but being a sensible person she went in and shut the door behind her as i stepped out on the path

i looked after the couple in the distance the last time meaning to go down to the road so as not to overtake them but when i had made a few steps i stopped and looked again for i knew i had seen something queer though i had only realized it afterwards i looked again and it was plain enough now and i stood stock-still staring at what i saw mamie was walking between two men the second man was just the same height as jack both being about a half a head taller than she jack on her left in his black tail coat and round hat and the other man on her right well he was a sailor man in wet oil skins i could see the moonlight shining on the water that ran down him and on the little puddle that had settled where the flap of his southwester was turned up behind and one of his wet shiny arms was around mamie's waist just above jacks i was fast to the spot where i stood and for a minute i thought i was crazy we'd had nothing but some cider for dinner and tea in the evening otherwise i'd have thought something had got into my head though i was never drunk in my life it was more like a bad dream after that i was glad mrs brewster had gone in as for me i couldn't help following the three in a sort of wonder to see what would happen to see whether the sailor man in his wet to-water's would just melt away into the moonshine, but he didn't.

I moved slowly, and I remembered afterwards that I walked on the grass, coming. I suppose it all happened in less than five minutes after that, but it seemed as if it must have taken an hour. Neither Jack nor Mamie seemed to notice the sailor. She didn't seem to know that his wet arm was around her, and little by little they got near the cottage and i wasn't a hundred yards from them when they reached the door something made me stand still then perhaps it was fright for i saw everything that happened just as i see you now mamie set her foot on the step to go up and as she went forward i saw the sailor slowly lock his arm in jack's and jack didn't move to go up.

Then Mamie turned round on the step, and they all three stood that way for a second or two. She cried out, then. I heard a man cry like that once when his arm was taken off by a steam crane, and she fell back in a heap on the little piazza. I tried to jump forward, but I couldn't move, and I felt my hair rising under my hat.

the sailor turned slowly where he stood and swung jack round by the arm steadily and easily and began to walk him down the pathway from the house he walked him straight down that path as steadily as fate and all the time i saw the moonlight shining on his wet oil skins he walked him through the gate and across the beach road and out upon the wet sand where the top was high. Then I got my breath with a gulp and ran for them across the grass and vaulted over the fence and stumbled across the road. But when I felt the sand under my feet, the two were at the water's edge. And when I reached the water, they were far out and up to their wastes. And I saw that Jack Benton's head had fallen forward on his breast, and his free arm hung limp beside him, while his dead brother steadily marched him to his death. The moonlight was on the dark water, but the fog-bank was white beyond, and I saw them against it, and they went slowly and steadily down.

The water was up to their armpits, and then up to their shoulders. and then i saw it rise up to the black rim of jack's hat but they never wavered and the two heads went straight on straight on till they were under and there was just a ripple in the moonlight where jack had been it has been on my mind to tell you that story whenever i got a chance you have known me man and boy a good many years and i thought i would like to hear your opinion yes that's what i always thought it wasn't jim that went overboard it was jack and jim just let him go when he might have saved him and then jim passed himself off for jack with us and with the girl if that's what happened he got what he deserved people said the next day that mamie found it out as they reached the house and that her husband just walked out into the sea and drowned himself and they would have blamed me for not stopping him if they had known that i was there but i never told what i had seen for they wouldn't have believed me i just let them think i had come too late when i reached the cottage and lifted mamie up she was raving mad she got better afterwards but she was never right in her head again oh you want to know if they found jack's body i don't know whether it was his but i read in a paper at a southern port where i was with my new ship that two dead bodies had come ashore in a gale down east in pretty bad shape

they were locked together and one was a skeleton in oil skins end of section four end of man overboard by Francis Marion Crawford.