XXII
When Brander, at Dan'l's command, went forward to quiet the men in the fo'c's'le, he found two or three of the crew on deck about the scuttle, watching the tumult below.... When they heard him and saw him, they backed away. The light from the fo'c's'le lamp dimly illumined their faces; and Brander thought there was something murderous and at the same time furtive in their eyes.
More than that, he caught the smell of alcohol.... So there was whiskey loose below him.
A man boiled up the ladder past him to the deck, saw him and slid away into the dark. Another.... Six or eight were still fighting below.
Brander had that sixth sense which men must have who would command other men; he felt, now, the peril in the air. His duty was down there among those fighting men; to get down, he would ordinarily have used the ladder. But to do so would be to engage his hands and his feet, and he might well have need of both these members.... He put his hands on the edge of the fo'c's'le scuttle and dropped lightly to the floor of the fo'c's'le, without touching the ladder. He landed on his toes, poised, ready....
The narrow, crowded, triangular den was thick with the smell of hot men, of whiskey, of burning oil; the air was heavy with smoke. A single swinging lamp lighted the place.... Beneath this lamp, four or five men were involved in a battle from which legs and arms were waved awkwardly as their owners struggled. Two other men crouched at opposite sides of the fo'c's'le.... Watching.... One was Mauger; the other Slatter. Brander cried:
"Drop it, now...."
The character of the struggle changed; the fighting men straightened.... Then some one hit the lamp and sent it whirling into darkness; and at the same moment, Brander heard Slatter scream murderously.... He slipped to one side, backed into a corner, held hands before him, ready to meet an attack....
Slatter's charge, if he were attacking Brander, should have carried the man past the mate's hiding place. But Brander, in the dark, heard a thump of two bodies together, and heard Slatter bellowing profanity, and heard heels thumping upon the floor. Then two or three men made a rush up the ladder to the deck.... Another.... Brander stepped forward, tripped over a whirling leg, and dropped upon a smother of two bodies which writhed beneath him. An arm was flying; he gripped for it and felt the prick of a knife in his wrist. So.... Death in the air, then....
He dragged that arm down to his face and bit at the wrist and the back of the hand, till he felt the knife drop from the man's fingers.... The three of them were writhing and striking and kicking and strangling.... But the knife was gone.... So much the better. He began to fumble with his right hand, seeking marks for his fists.... He did not strike blindly, but when he struck, his blows went home.... On some one's ribs, and back, and once on the neck at the base of the ear....