By August 3rd, it is only the captain, the mate, and the "thin man" aboard, although the captain still has seen no sign of the latter. The captain takes over steering the ship from the mate, who goes under the deck, and hears the mate, later, in the hold, with the large boxes of earth. The mate screams once and then falls silent. The captain wonders if the mate has survived, if the thin man is real, and if he will ever get the ship to England.
The captain realizes that the mate, too, has jumped overboard after his screaming fit down in the hold; the fog around the ship grows even thicker, as the ship approaches England's coast. In his last log entry, on the 4th of August, the captain says that he must go down with the ship, that he will lash himself to the vessel in order to steer it to port, and that, if he dies, at least he will have died like a man. The log ends.
Mina adds to the bottom of the account, in her journal, that it is unclear who this "thin man" might be, and that the ship's fate might remain another "mystery of the sea." But the town of Whitby is atwitter with the strange goings-on of the ship and the harbor.
Mina's Journal. August 10. Lucy and Mina attend the funeral service of the captain of the Demeter, held in the cemetery high in the rocks where Lucy and Mina used to talk to Swales. Mina reports, with fright, that Swales was found dead, in the cemetery, just before the captain's funeral; Swales' neck had been broken, and he had a look of fear in his face. Mina also says that dogs near the captain's funeral appear frighten by some kind of unseen spirit, although Mina is not sure what that might be.