"One o' dem lubbers fell off de royal yard!" bellowed Mendez at the skipper. He did not think it necessary to explain that, as a good joke, he had sent one of the drink-dazed white hands up to the royal, grinning delightedly as the poor devil shivered and clung in fright above the swimming waste of water. But another of the white men forward had seen.
"It was him done it!" yelled the man angrily, pointing at Mendez. "He shifted the helm to——"
Boatswain Joe's fist stopped the utterance, sent the man rolling into the scuppers.
"Get out that for'ard boat, Bo'sun!" shouted Captain Pontifex, his voice piercing the wind as steel pierces paper. "Lively, now—lively!"
Tom Dennis stood at the top of the companionway, his arm about Florence. Beside him stood the Missus, rocklike and silent. Dennis had caught those words from forward, and seen Ericksen's blow; he stood grimly watching, his lips compressed.
Mr. Leman, with uncanny swiftness, joined Boatswain Joe at the forward whaleboat. It was quickly swung out and lowered, the Kanakas tumbling into it, Leman and Ericksen following. Behind, somewhere in the tossing sea crests, was the black dot of a man's head. Before the boat was half-way to it, the head had vanished. The man was gone.
"Be a little more careful with those men, Mr. Mendez," said Pontifex, watching the whaleboat put about and return. "We'll need 'em."
That was all. No anger, no inquiry, no more concern over the death of a man—the needless brutal murder of a man—than if that man had been a wandering sea-gull. Tom Dennis drew Florence below, hoping that she had not understood. But when he looked into her eyes, he knew that she had understood.
"Tom, I—can't believe it!" she said faintly, horror in her wide brown eyes. "He spoke as though—it didn't matter."
Dennis made light of the affair. "Never mind, dear. We don't know all the circumstances, and of course the skipper can't blame his mate in public. It would hurt discipline. Just try and forget it, and not refer to it."