During this time we had drawn sufficiently near to the wreck to enable
the sharper-sighted among the hands to remark the signal, and they were
calling out that there was somebody flying a handkerchief aboard the
hull.
"Captain Coxon," said I, with as firm a voice as I could command,--for
I was nearly in as great a rage as he, and rendered insensible to all
consequences by his inhumanity,--"if you bear away and leave that man
yonder to sink with that wreck when he can be saved with very little
trouble, you will become as much a murderer as any ruffian who stabs a
man asleep."
When I had said this, Coxon turned black in the face with passion. His
eyes protruded, his hands and fingers worked as though he were under
some electrical process, and I saw for the first time in my life a
sight I had always laughed at as a bit of impossible novelist
description,--a mouth foaming with rage. He rushed aft, just over
Duckling's cabin, and stamped with all his might.
"Now," thought I, "they may try to murder me!" And without a word I
pulled off my coat, seized a belaying-pin, and stood ready; resolved
that happen what might, I would give the first man who should lay his
fingers on me something to remember me by while he had breath in his
body.
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