It may have been that a breath of bracing salt air drifted in from the sea at his back, but Hammer felt unaccountably stubborn on a sudden. He closed his fists, and was aware of the silver ring setting a bit tightly around his little finger.
"I feel the same way about it, exactly," was his dry response, and there was danger in his level grey eyes. "I asked you what you were going to do about Jenson, doctor, and I'm waiting for my answer."
He saw the burly hand tighten on the revolver, and the ribbon of muscle deepened with the flush that swept across the face of Krausz at his words; he saw the figure under the table change its position slightly; he saw one of the German seamen painstakingly explain to a group of natives how to handle their picks properly; but all the while he was gazing steadily into the black eyes of the scientist, waiting for the latter's decision.
Then the affair was taken out of his hands.
For, being trained thus to see many things while looking only at one thing, the American caught a glint of something bright beneath the table.
With his nerves on edge as they were, he shied at the thing as a horse shies at a newspaper, and well it was for him that he did so.
Barely had he shifted his position when a splash of red ripped out in the shadow of the table, something sang viciously an inch from his ear and whined up through the grass thatch, and he realized that Adolf Jenson had made answer for himself.
Hammer never attempted to excuse what happened next, though he was never very sorry over it. Comprehending in a flash that Jenson had fired at him, and that Dr. Krausz stood waiting, revolver in hand, he tackled the more dangerous opponent first, even without provocation.
The scientist's face was dawning with surprise, for he had evidently not been expecting Jenson's move, when Hammer's fist caught him squarely in the chin.
Hammer had no time to waste blows, and Krausz went down without a word. Almost in the same movement the American jerked up the table with his knee, exposing Jenson, and stamped hard on the wrist which was pulling up the revolver once more.