For the moment I could not draw breath, but the pistol missed fire.
"Flashed in the pan!" Roger cried, and tugged at his own pistol, which had caught inside his shirt where he had carried it out of sight. "That's not all—that's flashed in the pan!"
"Now then, you fools," Kipping shrieked. "Go for 'em! Go for'em! The bell's struck! Now's the time!"
So far it all had happened so suddenly and so extraordinarily swiftly, with one event fairly leaping at the heels of another, that the men were completely dazed.
Captain Falk sat on the deck with his hand pressed against his injured shoulder and with his pistol lying beside him where he had dropped it when he fell. Kipping, the red bruise showing across his face, confronted us with one pistol smoking, the other raised; Blodgett, having thrown the lead, was drawing his knife from the sheath; Roger was pulling desperately at his own pistol; and for my part I was in a state of such complete confusion that to this day I don't know what I did or said. In the moments that followed we were to learn once and for all the allegiance of every man aboard the Island Princess.
One of the men from Boston, evidently picking me out as the least formidable of the trio, shot a quick glance back at Kipping as if to be sure of his approval, and springing at me, knocked me flat on my back. I felt sure he was going to kill me when he reached for my throat. But I heard behind me a thunderous roar, "Heah Ah is! Heah Ah is!" And out of the corner of my eye I saw the cook, the meat-cleaver in his hand, leaping to my rescue, with Roger, one hand still inside his shirt, scarcely a foot behind him.
The man from Boston scrambled off me and fled.
"Ah's with you-all foh one," the cook cried, swinging his cleaver. "Ah ain't gwine see no po' sailor man done to death and me not say 'What foh!'"
"You fool! You black fool!" Chips shrieked, shaking his fist, "Stand by and share up! Stand by and share up!"
Neddie Benson jumped over beside the cook. "Me too!" he called shrilly.
"Bad luck or good luck, old Bill he done his best and was fair murdered."