But it was the
middle of the night, and a night in the Orient, with a sky of studded
velvet and a sea that flowed by like a smooth roll of dark belting, and
he was only--Tolliver was his name, from Georgia--only a slim young
Southern boy dreaming of home and mother, and maybe of a girl he had
left behind him, and he looked up at the emblazoned firmament and again
at the flashing sea, and then he rested his head on the top chain-rail.
"For just a second. He had said to himself he wouldn't go to sleep; but
all at once he heard a move below him, as of somebody unscrewing an
air-port, and then he heard a voice say, 'Well, here goes a ghost that
will stay laid!' and then a plash, a pl-m-p! and looking over quickly,
he saw plain as could be the phosphorus hole in the sea, then a quarter
of a second later something white as a man's face, and then it was gone
into the ship's wake.
"'Man overboard!' he yells, and snaps the patent life-buoy over the
side, and the marine on the starboard side of the quarter he yells, 'Man
overboard!' and the marine on the after-bridge he yells, 'Man
overboard!' and the two seaman on watch on the for'ard bridge, 'Man
overboard, sir!' they yell, and the watch officer orders, 'Hard on your
wheel, Quartermaster!' and to the bosun's mate on watch the watch
officer yells, 'Pipe the deck division to quarters!' and the watch
officer pulls a few bells and talks through three or four tubes, and in
no time the ship is coming around in a circle, and up on deck came
piling about two hundred lusty young seamen, and it was, 'boats away,'
and over the side went hanging gigs and cutters and whale-boats, and
then it was, 'Search-lights all clear!' and in about one minute the big
ship was back on the spot, and in another minute and a half there were
eight boats with half-dressed crews rowing around, and six big
search-lights playing tag on the waters.
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