“Is this your first strike, Captain?” I ventured.
“We don’t call it that at sea,” he said, “we call it mutiny!”
The word rather startled me, but I followed him out on deck, as did the others. No one could remain in the cabin with a thing like that going on outside. The men were about as we had left them—the bosen, Frenchy, somewhat in front of the others. He was a villain and a traitor, but he was not without bravado.
“We haf not been well treat!” he began, “we haf been deceive. We——”
He paused. The Captain had drawn a bead on him with the eye he most frequently used on me. With the other he took aim at the group behind, and every man of them felt himself singled out, and quailed. I could see them beginning to shrink and wither even before he said a word. He began by gently reminding them of the usual lightness of their employment and the continued excellence of their bill-of-fare; then in good sooth he opened up.
It was like the breaking loose at Manila. I had known that Biffer had a way with his English, but I never realized until that moment what he could do when he tried. They didn’t need any warm clothes, now. Everything he called them was red-hot and fitted as if they had grown to it. Why, they fairly shrivelled, and whenever anything he said hit the deck it smoked.
A cloud of what appeared to be genuine smoke came drifting across our bows just then, and the air had grown strangely hot, but nobody seemed to notice it. I think we unconsciously attributed these things to the Captain’s artillery. The men were huddled and Frenchy alone was still defiant. His case was desperate and he was a desperate man. He made a step forward—perhaps he thought the men would follow him—a movement that a second later would have been a spring at the Captain’s throat. One hand he held close to his side and in it something gleamed.
There was an instant of dead silence, then—just above our heads—
“_All hands aloft to shorten sail! The Pampeiro!_”
Everybody looked up. Officer Larkins had come on the bridge and his rich voice rang out like a clarion peal. Frenchy stopped. The men sprang into life. They were ready enough to obey, now, but it was too late!
“Then, somebody was clinging to me.”—Page 93. ]