The captain stood above deck. He'd been drinking again and had crawled up into the crow's nest. The water was still. The whole boat was quiet. The captain had hit the night-watch over the head with a can of beans so now the whole ship was sleeping soundly. The moon was nowhere in sight, but some ghost light from some unknown source lit the water to a soft glow. The warm summer air seemed out of place with the stillness of the sea.
The captain decided it would be a good idea to go ice-skating. He took another sip from his bottle to keep warm. It was finally going down smooth. The captain laughed at himself. Why had he searched so long for that can of beans when he'd had an empty bottle of whiskey in his coat pocket the entire evening? It took at least two bottles to get the captain to feeling good. He'd polished off three and was working on the fourth. Why had he knocked out the night-watch? Why had he gone to the trouble of ensuring his solitude? The captain thought and thought and thought and thought and thought and thought as he disrobed and dropped each article of clothing into the darkness below. While he held the mouth of the bottle in his teeth
the final piece disappeared out of sight. With his cap gone, bottle in hand, he was no longer a captain. He was a piece of the wind, a drop in the sea, a famous olympian ice skater.

The last time the captain was seen was the day before by his nephew. He had closed himself up in his cabin after receiving a letter.
No one saw the contents of that letter. It was never found, and it was assumed that the severity of the letter's contents was what sent him
into his cabin to drink.

The captain had taken the letter with him as he jumped out of the crow's nest into the sea. The only waves for the next several days were the result of his body hitting the water. The night-watch, who ended up being the captain's nephew according to the papers, had been killed by a can of beans, but not before writing in his journal that his uncle, the captain, had locked himself up in his cabin.
The nephew was the only other individual on the boat besides the man in charge. Also according to the papers, the crows nest was an unnecessary addition to the small vessel that the uncle and nephew had spent all spring building.

The captain's body was never found, the contents of his stomach were never emptied and the letter never pieced back together. If it had, the captain would've been remembered as a murderous nutcase instead of a hero. After the police went over the entire boat bow to stern, they found a hand-addressed, empty envelope, no return address, on the captain's table in the cabin and some ashes and a couple empty fifths of scotch in a bucket by the window. The blood found on the main deck matched the captain's blood type and trailed back to the kitchen where the knife was found.
The captain's blood was also found on the railing next to the nephew's body. The nephew's and captain's relatives swore on the perfection of the two's relationship, none of them recognized the knife, the nephew's journal never said anything about any disagreements, and due to the fact there was a life raft missing from the ship and a sea-faring convict missing from the local lock-up, the police assumed the small family had taken on a passenger who'd cornered and stabbed the captain in the kitchen. While dropping
the body over the railing on the main deck, the escapee was discovered by the nephew, there was a light scuffle, the intruder used the nephew's dinner to strike him over the head, then escaped in the life raft.
This was plausible, because the life raft had a motor on it.

The captain was the main source of inspiration for his grandson, who became a well-known sailor and fisherman because of what he called his " grandfather's unwavering passion for the sea," during an interview for the local paper about the incident's influence on his life.

According to himself, the incident influenced the grandson exorbitantly. The grandson believed that his beloved grandfather, the captain who he'd never gotten to know, had gone out to sea with the purpose of burning a letter the captain's wife had sent the captain suggesting divorce. She claimed that this letter was what the captain, her husband, had burned---sending his marriage reservations to sleep with the fish in symbolic, sailor fashion. Although he was mourning his misfortune of love lost, the good captain took on a strange passenger who needed to reach some town on the other end of the shoreline. This unknown seaman killed the captain because the captain's kindness and love for the sail outmatched his own by many knots. The stranger hated his grandfather's good-naturedness and passion and murdered both he and his nephew because he was jealous.

The grandson turned out to be a man of the people. Symbolizing the good tidings he inherited from the captain to his community , the grandson proudly wore his grandfather's cap that had been found underneath the crow's nest of the captain's fateful ship. He wore the cap boldly, and told many people how great his grandfather was, and how his grandfather's good works were the reason for his own --- even though his grandfather, the captain, lost his mind after receiving a hand addressed piece of political junk mail which he ate, burned a stack of porno magazines, dumped the only life raft on board into the sea, got drunk, cut his hand on a knife trying to shave the hair off the back of his fingers because he thought the audience watching him at the olympics would think it unsightly during a skate performance, murdered his nephew, climbed the crows nest, stripped naked, jumped into the water, and drowned.

The letter that inspired his grandson to a life of servitude had never reached the captain because the grandmother had forgotten to raise the mailbox flag and accidentally threw her letter out with the junk mail she received the following day.