The black harpooner fought his way across the deck to Joel’s side. He left a trail of twisting bodies behind him. And he was grinning with a huge delight. “Now, sar, we’ll do ’em, sar,” he screamed. The sweat poured down his black cheeks; and his mouth was cut and bleeding. His shirt was torn away from one shoulder and arm....
“Good man,” said Joel, between his panting blows. “Good man!”
Across the deck, one who had run forward for a handspike swept it down on young Dick Morrel’s brown head. Morrell dodged, but the blow cracked his shoulder and swept him to the deck. The man who had fought beside him spraddled the prostrate body, and jerked an iron from the boat on the davits at his back and held it like a lance, to keep all men at a distance. A sheath knife sped, and twisted in the air, and struck him butt first above the eye, so that he fell limply and lay still....
Mark Shore had been forced against the rail near where Jim Finch was pinned. Big Finch was howling and weeping with fright; and a little man of the crew with a rat’s mean soul who hated Finch had found his hour. He was leaping about the mate, lashing him mercilessly with a heavy end of rope; and Finch screamed and twisted beneath the blows.
So swiftly had the tumult of the battle arisen that all these things had come to pass before the harpooners asleep in the steerage could wake and reach the deck. When they climbed the ladder, and looked about them, they saw Morrell and his ally prostrate at one side, Joel and the cook holding the galley door against a half dozen men; and big Mark’s towering head amidst a knot of half a dozen more. And one of the harpooners backed away toward the waist of the ship, watchful and wary, taking no part in the affair.
But the other ... He was a Cape Verder, black blood crossed with Spanish; and Mark Shore had tied him to a davit, once upon a time, and lashed him till he bled, for faults committed. He saw Mark now, and his eyes shone greedily.
This man crouched, and crossed to a boat—his own—and chose his own harpoon. He twisted off the wooden sheath that covered the point, and flung it across the deck; and he poised the heavy iron in his hands, and started slowly toward Mark, moving on tiptoe, lightly as a cat.
Mark saw him coming; and the big man shouted joyfully: “Why, Silva! Come, you....”
He flung aside the men encircling him. One among them held the handspike with which he had struck down Morrell; and Mark smote this man in the body, and when he doubled, wrenched the great club from his hands. He swung this, leaped to meet the harpooner.
They came together in mid-deck. The great handspike whistled through the air, and down. An egg-shell crunched beneath a heel.... Silva dropped.