THE CRUISE OF THE CORWIN
door of the cabin to warn the Captain against the people of every village that we were approaching as likely to kill us, and then he would hide himself below deck or climb for greater safety into the rigging.
On the twenty-fifth, when we were lying at anchor off St. Lawrence Island, he offered his rifle, which he greatly prized, to one of the officers, saying that inasmuch as he would soon die he would not need it. He also sent word to the Captain that he would soon be "mucky," but came to the cabin door shortly afterward, with nothing unusual apparent in his face or behavior, and began a discussion concerning the region back of St. Michael as a location for a flock of reindeer. He thought they would do well there, he said, and that his father would give him some young ones to make a beginning, which he could take over in some schooner, and that they would get plenty of good moss to eat on the tundra, and multiply fast until they became a big herd like his father's, so big that nobody could count them.
In three or four hours after this he threw himself overboard, but was picked up and brought on deck. Some of the sailors stripped off his wet furs, and then the discovery was made that before throwing himself into the sea the poor fellow had stabbed himself in the left 98
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