It came to me that his was the action of a man striving vainly against a weariness unutterable.

I swept the deck with my glasses.

There was no other sign of life.

I turned to find the Portuguese staring intently and with puzzled air at the sloop, now separated from us by a scant half mile.
"Something veree wrong I think there, sair," he said in his curious English.

"The man on deck I know.