Mike, considering discretion the better part of valor, managed to creep along the weather rail and spring for the engine-room companion. He sprawled down the ladder head foremost. He rebounded at the grating. He snatched up a spanner and glared upward. He braced a foot in the pit, out of which flashed the slow-moving cranks of the cross-compound engines.
His chin described a quarter-circle. The companion-way was darkened by the form of a man. Micky, still fighting, dropped down and struck the grating. Red Landyard was hurled after the little skipper. Both seamen had been shorn of most of their clothes. Their faces were bleeding. Welts showed upon their shoulders.
“Gorblyme!” cried Micky. “Gorblyme—give me a hose! Give me hot water! Give me steam!”
“Go easy,” drawled the Yankee mate, squinting at the whiskered faces which blocked the entire companion. “There’s a few of them left. We didn’t kill them all.”
“We ought to!” spat Micky. “Bolsheviki? They’re red-’anded murderers—that’s wot they are!”
“That’s my opinion,” said Mike Monkey.
“You? You!” sputtered Micky. “Where were you when the fight started?”
“Ah came down here for a pinch bar. Ah was just going up when ye joined me—precipitously.”
Micky rubbed his bleeding knuckles. He turned a cold shoulder upon the engineer, then stared upward. He made faces at the Bolsheviki and shook his broken right fist.
“I’ll ’ave you know there’s a law on the seas!” he snapped. “I’ll report this outrage to the next British consul.”