I noticed the three strange ones, shouldering together and standing apart from the others as they swayed to the lazy roll and dreamed with their pale, topaz eyes. And there was the Faun, stone deaf but observant, straining to understand what was taking place. Yes, and Mulligan Jacobs and Andy Fay were bitterly and eagerly side by side, and Ditman Olansen, crank-eyed, as if drawn by some affinity of bitterness, stood behind them, his head appearing between their heads. Farthest advanced of all was Charles Davis, the man who by all rights should long since be dead, his face with its wax-like pallor startlingly in contrast to the weathered faces of the rest.
I glanced back at Margaret, who was coolly steering, and she smiled to me, and love was in her eyes—she, too, of the perishing and lordly race of blonds, her place the high place, her heritage government and command and mastery over the stupid lowly of her kind and over the ruck and spawn of the dark-pigmented breeds.
“Where’s Sidney Waltham?” the mate snarled. “I want him. Bring him out. After that, the rest of you filth get back to work, or God have mercy on you.”
The men moved about restlessly, shuffling their feet on the deck.
“Sidney Waltham, I want you—come out!” Mr. Pike called, addressing himself beyond them to the murderer of the captain under whom once he had sailed.
The prodigious old hero! It never entered his head that he was not the master of the rabble there below him. He had but one idea, an idea of passion, and that was his desire for vengeance on the murderer of his old skipper.
“You old stiff!” Mulligan Jacobs snarled back.
“Shut up, Mulligan!” was Bert Rhine’s command, in receipt of which he received a venomous stare from the cripple.
“Oh, ho, my hearty,” Mr. Pike sneered at the gangster. “I’ll take care of your case, never fear. In the meantime, and right now, fetch out that dog.”
Whereupon he ignored the leader of the mutineers and began calling, “Waltham, you dog, come out! Come out, you sneaking cur! Come out!”
_Another lunatic_, was the thought that flashed through my mind; another lunatic, the slave of a single idea. He forgets the mutiny, his fidelity to the ship, in his personal thirst for vengeance.