Having no means of knowing the time—for the clock had never been wound, owing to my not being able to find the key—I cannot tell when the change came; but I think it must have been about eight next morning. The vessel suddenly righted, and then began to tumble about in so outrageous a fashion that I thought she must go all to pieces. Elsie awoke screaming with fright; and with all You Sing’s catlike capacity for holding on, it was some minutes before he could get to her to comfort her. He had not left my side more than ten minutes, when, with a tremendous lurch, the vessel was hurled over to starboard, and I knew that my greatest fear was realized—she had been caught aback! Over, over she went, until it was almost possible to stand upright upon the lee bulk-heads of the cabin. In sea-phrase, she was on her beam-ends.  
I now gave all up for lost, and waited, hardly breathing, for the crash of the end. The water on deck burst in through every crevice, and rose upon the lee-side until I was obliged to climb up to the fast-clamped settees to windward to avoid being drowned. The uproar on deck was louder than ever, and I fancied83 that I could hear every now and then through the tumult the rending and crashing of spars, and feel the shattering blow of their great masses against the hull alongside. But still the vessel appeared staunch, although every inch of her framework visible in the cabin was all awork.
 
After what seemed like a whole day, but could only have been two or three hours, she began to right herself, and the din outside grew less deafening. Rapidly the howl of the wind moderated, although the vessel still tossed and tumbled about in frantic fashion, until my anxiety to see daylight again got the better of my fears, and I painfully made my way up the companion, opened it, and stepped on to the poop. The sight I beheld took away my breath. The Blitzen was a complete wreck. Not a stick was standing except the three jagged stumps of the lower masts; the bulwarks were stripped from her sides for their entire length, the house on deck had clean disappeared, and everything that could be torn from its fastenings about the decks had gone also. It was a clean sweep. A cold shiver went through me, such as one might feel upon awakening to find his house roofless and all his household goods exposed to the glare of day. But the sky was clear, the sea was going down, and we were still afloat. A great wave of thankfulness came over me, suddenly checked by the paralyzing thought that perhaps we had sprung a leak. I stood still for a moment while this latest fear soaked in; then, bracing myself up to learn the worst, I hurried forrard to try and find the rod to sound the well. But it had gone, among the84 rest of the carpenter’s gear, with the deck-house, and I was obliged to give up the idea. Returning aft, I uncovered the cabin skylight and went below, finding You Sing busy preparing some food. Then I suddenly remembered that I was ravenously hungry, and we all three sat down and ate our fill cheerfully and gladly. But while we were swallowing the last morsels of our meal, You Sing gravely lifted his hand and sat listening intently. There was a strange sound on deck, and it made me almost helpless with fear; for it sounded like the singing chatter of Chinese. We sat for a few moments as if suddenly frozen, listening with every faculty, and hardly breathing. Then, ghost-like, You Sing rose, and, taking the two of us by the arms, gently persuaded us into one of the state-rooms at hand, and signed to us to keep close while he went to investigate. Noiselessly he glided away from us and was gone, leaving us a prey to the most harrowing sensations in the belief that all our cruel forebodings were about to be proved true. For some time not a sound could be heard in our hiding-place except the soothing creak of the timbers or the wash of the caressing waves outside the hull. Yet I remember curiously how even in that agony of suspense I noticed that the motion of the ship was changed. She no longer seemed to swing buoyantly from wave to wave, but solemnly, stolidly, she rolled, as if the sea had taken possession of her, and bereft her of her own grace of mastery.
 
A confused thudding sound reached us from above, as if caused by the pattering of bare feet on deck;85 but there were no voices, nor, indeed, any other noises to give us a clue as to what was going on. Very soon even that slight sound ceased, and we were left again to the dumbness of our surroundings. The child went to sleep; and I, after perhaps half an hour of strained listening, felt that I could bear this condition of things no longer, for it had seemed like a whole day to my excited imaginings. So, as silently as had You Sing long ago, I stole from the little state-room and across the saloon. With all my terrors weighing me down, I crawled, worm-like, up the companion-ladder, and wriggled on to the deck on all-fours. The sea, and the sky, and the barren deck all lay in perfect silence, which pressed upon me like one of those nightmares in which you feel that unless you can scream you must die. After two or three attempts, I moistened my parched mouth and called, “You Sing!” There was no voice of any one that answered. But that I think the limit of my capacity for being terrified had been reached some time before, I believe this irresponsiveness, with its accompanying sensation of being utterly alone, would have made me an idiot. As it was, I only felt numbed and tired. Slowly I stood up upon my feet, and went forrard to the break of the poop, learning at once the reason of You Sing’s silence; for by the side of the after-hatch lay three Chinese, naked and dead, bearing on their bodies the grim evidences of the method of their ending. Close to the cabin door, as if he had dragged himself away from his late antagonists in the vain hope of reaching his friends again, lay You Sing. As I looked down upon him he86 moved slightly. In a moment, forgetting everything else, I was by his side, and lifted his head upon my knee. He opened his glazing eyes and looked up into my face with his old sweet smile, now with something of highest satisfaction in it. His dry lips opened, and he murmured, “’Ullo, Tommy; all litee.” Then the intelligence faded out of his eyes, and he left me.
 
It must have been hours afterwards when I again realized my surroundings. Elsie was sitting by the piece of yellow clay that had been You Sing, perfectly still, but with an occasional tearing sob. She must have been crying for a long time. Gradually the whole of the past came back to me, and I saw how our dead friend had indeed paid in full what he considered to be his debt to us; although how that mild and gentle creature, in whom I never saw even so much as a shade of vexation, much less anger, could have risen to such a height of fighting valour as to slay three men in our defence was utterly beyond my powers of comprehension. For, without attempting any eloquence of panegyric, that was precisely what he had done, and with his opponent’s own weapons, too. To say that I had not really felt lone............