"Leggo me, cap'n! I say I'll break that spawn's neck! Let me down!"
"I can't let you risk your life this way, Mr. Harris. I can't, I say. Where will I have officers if ye get hurt down there? Let 'em stop for now."
"Leggo my arm!" shrieked Harris. "Cap'n, if ye don't leggo my arm I can't say what I'll do. I never let no man talk to me like that!"
"But, Mr. Harris! Ye know what it means! Ye know I can't work the ship!
Ye know what's below and what they want! Mr. Harris! Mr. Harris!"
"Now, will ye let go?" demanded Harris, and then he crashed down the wooden ladder. The forecastle was illumined by a flash, and Buckrow's pistol boomed, and then a second flash on the other side of the forecastle showed me the face of the Rev. Luther Meeker at the entrance to the forecastle behind a pistol which had sent a second bullet at the mate. And the Rev. Luther Meeker was the man who had been addressed as Thirkle, and who seemed to be in command of the others.
Something rolled into the smoke-laden hole and sprawled on the planks near me, and I could hear it gasping and choking.
"Leggo my coat, cap'n. Leggo my coat!" said the form, and I knew it was Harris wounded to death. In a minute he was still, and then the scuttle above rattled peremptorily.
"Mr. Harris! Be ye hurt, Mr. Harris? Oh, Mr. Harris!"
"We got him all right," whispered Buckrow. "That settles Mr. Matey, well and good. Hey, Thirkle?"
"Good, clean job," replied Thirkle. "Good, clean job, Bucky, and smart as could be the way you drew him down. See what you can do with the skipper now."