Smiling broadly and turning his black rat-like eyes this way and that, the chief of our wild allies, who held a naked kris from which drops of blood were falling, stood beside Roger. Blodgett was at the wheel, nervously fingering the spokes; Neddie Benson stood behind him, obviously ill at ease, and Davie Paine, who had got from the cabin what few of his things were left there, to take them forward, was a little at one side. But the natives were swarming everywhere, aloft and alow, and we knew only too well that no small movable object would escape their thieving fingers.
"Ef on'y dem yeh heathen don't took to butcherin'!" the cook muttered.
The prophetic words were scarcely spoken when what we most feared came to pass. One of the islanders, by accident or design, bumped into Blodgett,— always erratic, never to be relied on in a crisis,—who, turning without a thought of the consequences, struck the man with his fist a blow that floored him, and flashed out his knife.
That single spark threatened an explosion that would annihilate us. Spears enclosed us from all sides; krises leaped at our throats.
"Come on, lads! Stand together," Blodgett shrieked.
With a yell of terror the cook sprang to join the others, and bellowing in panic, swung his cleaver wildly.
The man from Boston and Neddie Benson shrank back against the taffrail as a multitude of moving brown figures seemed to swarm about us. Then I saw Roger leap forward, his arms high in air, his hands extended.
"Get back!" he cried, glancing at us over his shoulders.
As all stopped and stared at him, he coolly turned to the chief and handed him his pistol, butt foremost. Was Roger mad, I wondered? He was the sanest man of all our crew. The chief gravely took the proffered weapon and looked at Blodgett, whose face was contorted with fear, and at the Malay, who by now was sitting up on deck blinking about him in a dazed way. Then he smiled and raised his hand and the points of the weapons fell.
In truth I was nearly mad myself, for now it all struck me as funny and I laughed until I cried, and all the others looked at me, and soon the natives began to point and laugh themselves. I suppose I was hysterical, but it created a diversion and helped to save the day; and Neddie Benson and the man from Boston, whom Roger had sent below, returned soon with bolts of cloth and knives and pistols and threw them in a heap on the quarter-deck.