How It All Goes Down
A young man has found himself promoted to captain on board a ship sailing in the Southeastern Pacific Ocean. He knows that his crew doesn't really trust his judgment, since he's pretty new to this stuff and no one on the boat knows him. So as you can imagine, he feels kind of lonely being out at sea with no friends. It's like being the new kid in class, except you're actually the teacher.
While performing the night watch, the young captain looks over the side of his boat and sees a naked man in the ocean.
Huh?
The man looks like he's been swimming for a long time. Turns out that he's from a ship that's anchored a few miles away. He's escaped from the ship because he murdered one of his crewmates during a horrible storm. Sounds like just the kind of guy you'd want to bring aboard, right?
The captain feels like this dude is the only guy who can ever understand him and his loneliness, so he brings him onboard and hides him in his private room. Over the next few days, there are all kinds of near misses as men from the ship come close to seeing this guy (whose name is Leggatt, by the way). The crew from the nearby ship even comes aboard to search for him, but Leggatt avoids them every time.
Once the searchers have left, Leggatt says he'll have to leave the ship. The captain-narrator is sad to hear this, since Leggatt has become his close (and only) friend on these lonely seas. Nonetheless, the captain orders his men to steer their ship toward some nearby islands in the middle of the night so Leggatt can jump and swim a short distance to shore. Coming close to the islands nearly wrecks the ship, but the captain pulls them away at the last second and saves them all. His crew thinks he's a total lunatic, but at least he knows he's done everything he can to save his best, most murderous friend.