"Aha!" Again Kipping laughed mildly. "Aha! Can't work, eh? I'll teach you a lesson."
Bill staggered against the deck-house and clumsily fell, pressing his hands against his side and moaning.
"Hgh!" Kipping grunted. "Hgh!"
At that moment the day flashed upon my memory when I had sat on one side of that very corner while Kipping attempted to bully Bill on the other side of it—the day when Bill had turned on his tormentor. I now understood some of Kipping's veiled references, and a great contempt for the man who would use the power and security of his office to revenge himself on a fellow seaman who merely had stood up bravely for his rights swept over me. But what could I or the others do? Kipping now was mate, and to strike him would be open mutiny. Although thus far, in spite of the dislike with which he and Captain Falk regarded me, my good behavior and my family connections had protected me from abuse, I gladly would have forfeited such security to help Bill; but mutiny was quite another affair.
We all stood silent, while Kipping berated Bill with many oaths, though poor Bill was so white and miserable that it was almost more than we could endure. I, for one, thought of his little girl in Newburyport, and I remember that I hoped she might never know of what her loving, stupid old father was suffering.
Enraged to fury by nothing more or less than Bill's yielding to his attacks, Kipping turned suddenly and reached for the carpenter's mallet, which lay where Chips had been working nearby. With a round oath, he yelled, "I'll make you grovel and ask me to stop."
Kipping had moved quickly, but old Bill moved more quickly still. Springing to his feet like a flash, with a look of anguish on his face such as I hope I never shall see again, he warded off a blow of the mallet with his hand and, running to the side, scrambled clean over the bulwark into the sea.
We stood there like men in a waxwork for a good minute at the very least; and if you think a minute is not a long time, try it with your eyes shut. Kipping's angry snarl was frozen on his mean features,—it would have been ludicrous if the scene had not been so tragic,—and his outstretched hand still held the mallet at the end of the blow. The carpenter's mouth was open in amazement. Neddie Benson, the first to move or break the silence, had spread his hands as if he were about to clutch at a butterfly or a beetle; dropping them to his side, he gasped huskily, "She said there'd be a light man and a dark man—I—oh, Lord!"
It was the cook, as black as midnight and as inscrutable as a figurehead, who brought us to our senses. Silently observing all that had happened, he had stood by the galley, without lifting his hand or changing the expression of a single feature; but now, taking his pipe from his mouth, he roared, "Man ovehboa'd!" Then, snatching up the carpenter's bench with one hand and gathering his great body for the effort, he gave a heave of his shoulders and tossed the bench far out on the water.
As if waking from a dream, Mr. Kipping turned aft, smiling scornfully, and said with a deliberation that seemed to me criminal, "Put down the helm!"