The yacht was going away from me fast--faster; good swimmer though I was, it was impossible for me to catch up to her--she was making her own length to every stroke I took, and as she drew away he stood there, one hand on the tiller, the other in his pocket (I have often wondered if it was fingering a revolver in there!), his eyes turned steadily on me.

And I began first to beg and entreat him to save me, and then to shout out and curse him--and at that, and seeing that we were becoming further and further separated, he deliberately put the yacht still more before the freshening wind, and went swiftly away, and looked at me no more.
So he left me to drown.
We had been talking a lot about swimming during the afternoon, and I had told him that though I had been a swimmer ever since boyhood, I had never done more than a mile at a stretch, and then only in the river.

He knew, therefore, that he was leaving me a good fourteen miles from land with not a sail in sight, not a chance of being picked up.

Was it likely that I could make land ?--was there ever a probability of anything coming along that would sight me?
There was small likelihood, anyway; the likelihood was that long before the darkness had come on I should be exhausted, give up, and go down.
You may conceive with what anger, and with what fierce resentment, I watched this man and his yacht going fast away from me--and with what despair too.

But even in that moment I was conscious of two facts--I now knew that yonder was the probable murderer of both Phillips and Crone, and that he was leaving me to die because I was the one person living who could throw some light on those matters, and, though I had kept silence up to then, might be tempted, or induced, or obliged to do so--he would silence me while he had so good a chance.