“Pipe all hands aft, Mr. Cooper,” he says to the boatswain.
The crew straggle aft. They offer a circling score of brutal faces; in each the dominant expression is defiance.
“The man Mungo!” says Captain Jack Paul. “Where is he?”
At the word, a gigantic black slouches out from among his mates. Sloping shoulders, barrel body, long, swinging arms like a gorilla’s, bandy legs, huge hands and feet, head the size and shape of a cocoanut, small, black serpent eyes, no soul unless a fiend’s soul, Mungo is at once tyrant, pride and leader of the forecastle. Rumor declares that he has sailed pirate in his time, and should be sun-drying in chains on the gibbet at Corso Castle.
As he stands before Captain Jack Paul, Mungo’s features are in a black snarl of fury. It is in his heart to do murderously more for his captain than he did for first officer Sands. He waits only the occasion before making a spring. Captain Jack Paul looks him over with a grim stare as he slouches before him.
“Mr. Cooper,” says Captain Jack Paul after a moment, during which he reads the black Mungo like a page of print, “fetch the irons!”
The boatswain is back on deck with a pair of steel wristlets in briefest space. He passes them to Captain Jack Paul. At this, Mungo glowers, while the mutinous faces in the background put on a dull sullenness. There are a brace of pistols in the belt of Captain Jack Paul, of which the sullen dull ones do not like the look. Mungo, a black berserk, cares little for the pistols, seeing he is in a white-hot rage, the hotter for being held in present check. Captain Jack Paul, on his part, is in no wise asleep; he notes the rolling, roving, bloodshot eye, like the eye of a wild beast at bay, and is prepared.
“Hold out your hands!” comes the curt command.
Plainly it is the signal for which Mungo waited. With a growling roar, bear-like in its guttural ferocity, he rushes upon Captain Jack Paul. The roaring rush is of the suddenest, but the latter is on the alert. Quick as is Mungo, Captain Jack Paul is quicker. Seizing a belaying-pin, he brings it crashing down on the skull of the roaring, charging black. The heavy, clublike pin is splintered; Mungo drops to the deck, a shivering heap. The great hands close and open; the muscles clutch and knot under the black skin; there is a choking gurgle. Then the mighty limbs relax; the face tarns from black to a sickly tallow. Mouth agape, eyes wide and staring, Mungo lies still.
Captain Jack Paul surveys the prostrate black. Then he tosses the irons to Boatswain Cooper.