“Overboard with the swine!” shouted Briggs. “Overboard with ’em, to the sharks!”
“This here one ain’t done for yet, sir,” began Prass, pointing. “He’s only—”
“Overboard, I said!” roared Briggs. “You’ll go, too, by God, if you give me any lip!”
As men laid hands on the Malays to drag them to the rail, Briggs dropped on his knees beside Crevay. He pulled away the man’s hands from the gaping neck-wound, whence the life was irretrievably spurting.
“Judas priest!” he stammered, for here was his right-hand man as good as dead. “Doctor! Where the devil is Mr. Filhiol?”
Prass had already dived below. The doctor was haled up again, with his bag. A kind of hard exultation blazed in the captain’s face. He seemed not to hear the shouts of war, the spattering fusillade from the canoes. His high-arched chest rose and fell, pantingly. His hands, reddened with the blood of Crevay, dripped horribly. Filhiol, hustled on deck, stared in amazement.
“A job for you, sir!” cried Briggs. “Prove yourself!”
Filhiol leaned over Crevay. But he made no move to open his kit-bag. One look had told him the truth.
The man, already unconscious, had grown waxen. His breathing had become a stertorous hiccough. The deck beneath him was terrible to look upon.
“No use, sir,” said the doctor briefly. “He’s gone.”
“Do something!” blazed the captain. “Something!”
“For a dead man?” retorted Filhiol. As he spoke, even the hiccough ceased.
Briggs stared with eyes of rage. He got to his feet, hulking, savage, with swaying red fists.
“They’ve killed my best man,” he snarled. “If we didn’t need the dogs, we’d feed ’em all to the sharks, so help me!”
“You’re wounded, sir!” the doctor cried, pointing at the blood-wet slash in the captain’s trouser-leg.
“Oh, to hell with that!” Briggs retorted. “You, and you,” he added, jabbing a finger at two sailors, “carry Mr. Crevay down to the cabin—then back to your rifles at the rail!”
They obeyed, their burden sagging limply. Already the dead and wounded Malays had been bundled over the rail. The fusillade from the war-canoes was strengthening, and the shouts had risen to a barbaric chorus. The patter of bullets and slugs into the sea or against the planking of the _Silver Fleece_ formed a ragged accompaniment to the whine of missiles through the air. A few holes opened in the clipper’s canvas. One of the men who had thrown the Malays overboard cursed suddenly and grabbed his left elbow, shattered.