"Take me away. Let me leave the place. Throw those bombs out of the window—I say, throw them away. They'll explode; they'll kill me. They'll tear me to pieces."
The wretch foamed at the mouth, his attention concentrated all the while on those two clock faces. His eyes were bloodshot now, his nails digging like talons into the table.
"Then they are really bombs? You actually meant to wreck the vessel?" asked Andrew.
But the rascal cowering in a frenzy of terror at the table hardly seemed to hear his words, much less to heed them. He was bending lower now, ducking his head, and yet looking upward from beneath his brows at the hands on those two dials. They were near the quarter. In ten seconds they would reach the point at which he had set the trigger. And then——
"Take me away!" he screamed, foaming at the mouth, and looking hideous in his terror. "Kill me now. Shoot me. Don't let me be blown to pieces by these bombs. Ah! I will kill myself."
He made a desperate effort to seize a knife from the table, and no doubt would have done himself some severe injury. But the Commander seized his arm.
"No," he said sternly. "This is your trial, a trial of your own making. Learn now what it is to set bombs to slaughter other people. Endure to the full the torment that others were to suffer."
The strain was too great for the magnate. A gurgling cry escaped him, and a moment later he was stretched full length on the carpet.
"Call in the others," commanded Joe curtly. "Let us go on with our dinner. And by the way, Sergeant, tell Mr. Dick and his friend that there's no danger."
"No danger!" shouted the midshipman. "None! Why, I've been hanging on to my chair hard expecting to be blown to pieces."