"You?"
"Yea, I."
The mate drew back a step, as a man does when another puts his face too near. He was on the point of speaking; but before his lips had phrased a word the Old One raised his hand and the man behind the mate drove six inches of blue steel into the mate's back, between his ribs and through his heart.
He died in the Old One's arms, for the Old One caught him before he fell, and held him thus.
"Well done," the Old One said to his man.
"Not so well as one could wish," the man replied, wiping his knife on the mate's coat. "He perished quietly enough, but the knife bit into a rib and the feeling of a sharp knife dragging upon bone sets my teeth on edge."
The Old One laughed. "Thy stomach is exceeding queasy," he said. "Come, let us heave him over the side."
All this, remember, had happened quickly and very quietly. There were the three men standing by the quarter-deck ladder—the Old One and his man and the mate—and by all appearances the Old One merely put out his hands in a friendly manner to the other, for the knife thrust was hidden by a cloak. But now the mate's head fell forward in a queer, lackadaisical way and four of the Old One's men, perceiving what they looked for, slipped past him through the door to the steerage room, where they clapped down the hatch to the main deck. One stood on the hatch; two stood by the door of the great cabin; and the fourth, stepping up to the man at the helm, flashed a knife from his sleeve and cut the fellow down.
It was a deft blow, but not so sure as the thrust that had killed the mate. The helmsman dropped the whipstaff and, falling, gave forth a yell and struck at his assailant, who again let drive at him with the knife and finished the work, so that the fellow lay with bloody froth at his lips and with fingers that twitched a little and then were still.
The man who had killed him took the whipstaff and called softly, "Holla, master! We hold the helm!" then from his place he heard a sailor cry out, "The mate is falling! Lend him aid!"