He was alive. He was
screaming and knocking below us with the hurry of a man prematurely
shut up in a coffin. We went to work. We attacked with desperation the
abominable heap of things heavy, of things sharp, of things clumsy to
handle. The boatswain crawled away to find somewhere a flying end of a
rope; and Wamibo, held back by shouts:--"Don't jump!... Don't come
in here, muddle-head!"--remained glaring above us--all shining eyes,
gleaming fangs, tumbled hair; resembling an amazed and half-witted fiend
gloating over the extraordinary agitation of the damned. The boatswain
adjured us to "bear a hand," and a rope descended. We made things fast
to it and they went up spinning, never to be seen by man again. A rage
to fling things overboard possessed us. We worked fiercely, cutting our
hands and speaking brutally to one another. Jimmy kept up a distracting
row; he screamed piercingly, without drawing breath, like a tortured
woman; he banged with hands and feet. The agony of his fear wrung our
hearts so terribly that we longed to abandon him, to get out of that
place deep as a well and swaying like a tree, to get out of his hearing,
back on the poop where we could wait passively for death in incomparable
repose.
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