Australian Tales - Setis

“Well, sir, we had come home from Jamaica, and were lying off the
West India Docks, ready to go in the next tide. Gouge had been on shore
for an hour or two that morning without leave; and when he came on
board again, I could see he was half drunk. Knowing his foul tongue, I
did not say anything to him, until I saw him take the axe on his shoulder
and prepare to go up the main rigging; when, thinking it was unsafe for
him to go aloft in liquor, I said to him, ‘What are you going aloft for,
Chips?’
“ ‘To knock the stun sail boom irons off the yard arm,’ said he, surlily.
“ ‘You had better find a job on deck,’ said I, ‘for you are not fit to go
aloft just now.’ With that he began to curse and swear like Satan himself,
and vowed ‘he had not drank a sup that day.’
“ ‘That's right, my man,’ said I, ‘out with all the dirty language that's
fouling your heart; you will never be sweet till you get that nasty stuff
out of your limbers. That's right, Chips, bouse it all out at once; it's
horrible rubbish.’
“At that he began to swear worse than ever, and up he went, in the
spirit of defiance, on to the main yard, and began to knock the boom iron
off the starboard yard arm. The iron was rusted on, and was rather hard
to move, so Gouge kept striking with his axe, and cursing at every blow,
on purpose to annoy me. I had logged down a few of his sayings, and
intended to have had a reckoning with him the next day, when he was
sober; but I was spared that duty in an awfully sudden manner. After
many hard knocks Gouge had started the iron, and was slipping it over
the end of the yard, when I called out to him, ‘Make a rope's end fast to
that boom iron, Chips, or it will capsize you.’ Whether he understood my
order or not I am not quite sure, but I heard him utter a fearful oath, and
at the same time he slipped the iron off the yard, when its sudden weight
overbalanced his tipsy brain, and down he fell like a shot seagull. The
yards were braced sharp up, so he fell with his back across the poop rail.
I heard the horrible crunching of his bones, then overboard he went, and
the thick waters closed over his miserable body. Of course I gave the
alarm, and all hands were aft in a minute, but it was impossible to save
poor Gouge. A few bubbles rose to the surface of the turbid stream, and
as I looked at them, I shudderingly wondered whether they were curses.
A few days afterwards his body was picked up in the mud off
Greenwich; and upon examination it was found that his back was broken.
This was the wretched end of the poor swearing carpenter.”