I was glad that my missile had been thrown away,--that he had not even heard the twang of the bow.
'Of course he could not know at the time the man was dead.

The next minute--his last on board--was crowded with a tumult of events and sensations which beat about him like the sea upon a rock.

I use the simile advisedly, because from his relation I am forced to believe he had preserved through it all a strange illusion of passiveness, as though he had not acted but had suffered himself to be handled by the infernal powers who had selected him for the victim of their practical joke.

The first thing that came to him was the grinding surge of the heavy davits swinging out at last--a jar which seemed to enter his body from the deck through the soles of his feet, and travel up his spine to the crown of his head.

Then, the squall being very near now, another and a heavier swell lifted the passive hull in a threatening heave that checked his breath, while his brain and his heart together were pierced as with daggers by panic-stricken screams.