Hal blundered out into the passageway, and, panting with rage, started to descend the stairs.
Old Ezra, crawling on hands and knees, tried to follow.
“Hal! Master Hal, come back! I got money! I’ll—I’ll pay!”
The captain lifted him, held him with an arm of steel.
“Silence, Ezra! Remember, we’re not children. We’re old deep-water sailormen, you and I. This is mutiny. The boy has chosen. It’s all over.”
Ezra sank into a chair, covered his face and burst into convulsive sobs, rocking himself to and fro in the excess of his grief.
Alpheus Briggs walked to the top of the stairs, and silently watched Hal descend. At the bottom, Dr. Filhiol confronted the swearing, murderous fellow. He, too, kept silence. Only he stood back a little, avoiding Hal as if the very breath of him were poison.
Hal flung a sneer at him with bared teeth, and paused a moment at the door leading into the cabin. A thought came to his brain, crazed with whisky, rage and the obscure hereditary curse that lay upon him. Something seemed whispering a command to him, irrational enough, yet wholly compelling.
To the fireplace Hal strode, snatched down the kris, opened one of the suit-cases, and threw the weapon in. He locked the case again, and slouched out on to the piazza, defiantly and viciously.
“Might come handy, that knife, if the fists didn’t get away with the goods,” he muttered. “Take it along, anyhow!”