"Throw that cussed light away," said Harris. "Throw it away, cap'n, or they'll wing us sure. Cuss it all, cap'n, they'll blow yer head off if ye pack that 'round with ye. Throw it, can't ye?"
"I can't see!" wailed Riggs, who seemed to be confused. "I can't see,
Harris."
"'Course ye can't see with it shinin' in yer eyes! Throw it away, will ye? Here—now keep after me."
Harris wrenched the lantern from Riggs's hand and hurled it into the sea, and, as the briny spume closed over it, it went out with a spiteful, protesting hiss.
"'Ere's w'ere we bloody well get the two of 'em," said Long Jim, who was within a dozen paces of me. "Give 'em the knives as they come along in the black, Bucky."
"No knife-play for me with Harris—he's got a gun," said Buckrow. "Come along below, Jim, and let 'em go for now. Quick, or the mate'll have ye. Thirkle said he'd have the fo'c's'le by now. He run the chinks out, him and Petrak. Scuttled 'em aft. Come below."
"Not till Mr. Mate 'as this in 'is ribs," said Long Jim.
"Ye fool—here they be, on us, and Harris with a couple of guns. Run for it, Jim, I tell ye," and Buckrow rose up out of the dark within reach of my hand and thrust back the slide of the forecastle-hood and swung below.
Long Jim came after him, chuckling with the joy of battle. I wanted to do something, to have some hand in the fight, to capture one of the murderers, and so prove to Riggs that I was not in league with them. This impulse to aid the captain's side of the fight came to me swiftly, and I put it into action at once by jumping directly in Long Jim's path at the head of the forecastle ladder. I planned to grab his arms and hurl him back, yelling at the same time to Harris not to shoot, that it was I, Trenholm, and that I was holding Long Jim.
It was a foolish enough thing to do, for in the excitement of the minute Harris would have undoubtedly shot me and Long Jim, too, and with good reason, for he would have suspected a trap if I had asked him to hold his fire and approach us in the dark.