That was what I believed in that startling moment--but as I went head first overboard I was aware that his fall was confined to a sprawl into the scuppers.

Overboard I went!--but he remained where he was.

And my weight--I was weighing a good thirteen stone at that time, being a big and hefty youngster--carried me down and down into the green water, for I had been shot over the side with considerable impetus.

And when I came up, a couple of boat's-lengths from the yacht, expecting to find that he was bringing her up so that I could scramble aboard, I saw with amazed and incredulous affright that he was doing nothing of the sort; instead, working at it as hard as he could go, he was letting out a couple of reefs which he had taken up in the mainsail an hour before--in another minute they were out, the yacht moved more swiftly, and, springing to the tiller, he deliberately steered her clear away from me.
I suppose I saw his purpose all at once.

Perhaps it drove me wild, mad, frenzied.