“And that is—?”
“That you alter your course, and steer straight away to the nearest land—the Falkland Isles—at once.”
“I refuse. Back, you mutinous dog! back! I say. Would you dare to stab your captain? Your blood be,”—here the captain’s revolver rang sharp and clear, and Durdley fell to the deck—“on your own cowardly head.”
There was a wild yell and a rush now, and though the captain fired again and again, he was speedily overpowered.
The revolver was snatched from his hand, and he was borne down by force of numbers.
But assistance was at hand.
“Now, lads, give it to them! Hurrah!”
It was Tandy himself, with the four good men and true, who had run aft between decks to inform the mate of the mutiny.
All were armed with rifles, but these they only clubbed. So fiercely did they fight, that the mutineers speedily dropped their knives and iron marline-spikes, and were driven below, yelling for mercy like the cowards they were.
The captain, though bruised, was otherwise intact. Nor was Durdley dead, though he had lost much blood from a wound—the revolver bullet having crashed through the arm above the elbow, and through the outside of the chest as well. But two Finns lay stark and stiff beside the winch.