Page:The Naval Officer (1829), vol. 2.djvu/234

 exhausted: I kept myself disengaged from him, when swimming round him; supported him occasionally whenever he was sinking; but, finding at last that he was irrecoverably gone— for though I had a firm hold of him, he was going lower and lower—and, looking up, perceiving I was so deep that the water was dark over my head, I clapped my knees on his shoulders, and, giving myself a little impetus from the resistance, rose to the surface. So much was I exhausted, that I could not have floated half a minute more, when the boat came and picked me up.

The delay in heaving the ship to, I attributed to the scene I had witnessed the night before; and in this, I was confirmed by the testimony of the officers. Having lost two men by his unseamanlike conduct. he would have added deliberate murder of a third, to save himself from the punishment which he knew awaited him. He continued the same tyrannical conduct, and I had resolved that the moment