Jack, Broncho, Sam, and Curly came sliding down backstays, leaving Bedrock Ben still with the dead man in his arms.
By this time the old man was half mad with fury, and dancing a regular war-jig aft. Words poured in a torrent from his mouth, cut off, distorted, and half senseless as they burst from his stuttering lips.
Certainly the facts of the case were enough to try the temper of any man as full of bile and ginger as a down-east skipper. His ship aback; a crew of lunatics running wildly about the deck, letting go sheets, lifts, spilling-lines, anything in their craziness; two dead men aloft, and with them his only remaining officers; last, but not least, two half-bent fair-weather topsails flogging angrily in the strengthening breeze, with every chance of splitting from top to bottom.
"Carpenter!" he yelled. "Carpenter, get them headsheets over! Sakes alive—bust me purple—what er mess! Hyeh, y' ravin' idiots, what y' doin'? Get on ter thet fore-brace. Come down, bosun. Jeerusalem, look at them t'p'sls! Hell an' damnation, who let go that sheet? Carpenter, ye mouldy wood-sawyer, can't yew thump 'em? Beat 'em, kill 'em, jump on 'em, man. Wal, I swow! What the blazin' flames o' hell d'yew think y' doin', yew bean-swillin', lop-eared Dutch swab——" and so he raged on.
What with the old man's scathing remarks and his own confused brain, the carpenter got in such a flurry that he hardly knew what he was doing.
Slowly things were straightened out, with the headsheets over to windward. On the advent of Jack and his gang from aloft, the foreyard was swung, and gradually the ship began to pay off under the influence of the backed headyards.
With the appearance of the huge bosun, calm and collected in the midst of the chaos, something like order began to prevail on deck. The Higgins was got on to her course, the yards trimmed, and whilst some of the hands were sent aloft to finish bending the two topsails, Ben Sluice and the body of the second mate were lowered to the deck in the bosun's chair.
The captain's bullet proved to have only grazed the forehead of the dago and stunned him, upon discovering which the mate had the senseless man roughly lowered down in a running bowline from the gantline block.
As Black Davis reached the deck, the old man, who was still fuming like a smouldering volcano, turned upon him with a withering glare.
"Hm, mister mate, an' a nice bunglin' yew made of it up aloft, lettin' a miserable little deck-swab of er Chilanean make a fool er yew like that. Ain't yew ever put the bracelets on a man before? Y'll have ter hustle round considerable mor'n this, or yew won't suit Cappen Bob Riley"; and with a final snort the irate skipper disappeared down the companion.