." He heard, high above his head, the faint muttering of the wind; he heard below his feet a cry of pain.

A lost voice alongside started cursing a swivel hook.

The ship began to buzz fore and aft like a disturbed hive, and, as quietly as he was telling me of all this--because just then he was very quiet in attitude, in face, in voice--he went on to say without the slightest warning as it were, "I stumbled over his legs." 'This was the first I heard of his having moved at all.

I could not restrain a grunt of surprise.

Something had started him off at last, but of the exact moment, of the cause that tore him out of his immobility, he knew no more than the uprooted tree knows of the wind that laid it low.