chunk: Still on deck, Leggatt explains that he was the First Mate of the other ship, but under arrest for murdering a crew member. The victim was a disobedient bully. During a storm which nearly sank their ship on their voyage here, Leggatt was physically wrestling with the man to make him to pull a rope when a freak wave threw them both against a bulwark and the man was killed. Leggatt, a "stranger" on the other ship just as our captain was on this, would certainly face the gallows on landing. However, he had escaped his locked cabin and had swum between islands to reach the narrator's ship.