It didn't stop me, and the chief engineer--they had got him out of his bunk by then--raised the boat-stretcher again.

Somehow I had no mind to be surprised at anything.
All this seemed natural--and awful--and awful.

I dodged that miserable maniac, lifted him off the deck as though he had been a little child, and he started whispering in my arms: 'Don't! don't! I thought you were one of them niggers.' I flung him away, he skidded along the bridge and knocked the legs from under the little chap--the second.

The skipper, busy about the boat, looked round and came at me head down, growling like a wild beast.

I flinched no more than a stone.