“All at once the gust of the tornado was seen to pour on it like a long blast from some huge bellows, and up it flashed—the yellow flame blazed into the smoke, spread away behind the point, and the ruddy brown smoke blew whitening over it—when, almighty power! what did I see as it lengthened in, but part after part of the old Bob’s landmarks creep out ink-black before the flare and the streak of sky together—first the low line of ground, then the notch in the block, the two rocks like steps, and the sugar-loaf shape of the headland, to the very mop-headed knot of trees on its rise! No doubt Captain Williamson was steering for it; but it was far too much on our starboard bow, and in half an hour at this rate we should drive right into the surf you saw running along to the coast ahead—so I signed to Jacob for God’s sake to edge her off as nicely as was possible.
“Captain Williamson caught my motion. ‘Port! port, sirrah!’ he sang out sternly. ‘_Back_ with the helm, d’ye hear?’ and pulling out a pistol, he levelled it at me with one hand, while he held a second in the other. ‘Land! land!’ shouted he, and from the lee of the round-house it came more like a shriek than a shout. ‘I’ll be there though a thousand mutineers—’ His eye was like a wild beast’s. That moment the truth glanced across me—this was the _green leaf_, no doubt, the Scotch mate talked so mysteriously of. The man was mad! The land-fever was upon him, as I’d seen it before in men long off the African coast; and he stood eyeing me with one foot hard stamped before him. ’Twas no use trying to be heard, and the desperation of the moment gave me a thought of the sole thing to do. I took off my hat in the light of the binnacle, bowed, and looked him straight in the face with a smile; when his eye wavered, he slowly lowered his pistol, then _laughed_, waving his hand towards the land to leeward, as if, but for the gale, you’d have heard him cheer. At the instant I sprang behind him with the slack of a rope, and grappled his arms fast, though he’d got the furious power of a madman; and during half a minute ’twas wrestle for life with me. But the line was round him, arm and leg, and I made it fast, throwing him heavily on the deck just as one of the mates with some of the crew were struggling aft, by help of the belaying-pins, against the hurricane, having caught a glimpse of the thing by the binnacle light. They looked from me to the captain. The ugly top-man made a sign, as much as to say, ‘Knock the fellow down;’ but the whole lot hung back before the couple of pistol-barrels I handled. The Scotch mate seemed awfully puzzled; and others of the men, who knew from Jacobs what I was, came shoving along, evidently aware what a case we were in.