He fired with coolness, and six jets of flame flashed across the table and seared the faces before him. Russians went down as if poleaxed, others shouted in pain, and two backed away covering their faces with their arms.
Stirling reloaded the revolver with clumsy fingers. The action was new to him; the time was short. He wondered as he waited for coolness to return how it happened that the cartridges were in his breast, since the Kanaka had searched him in the after cabin. They had been overlooked.
Marr coughed in the acrid mist and shouted out through a porthole. He was answered by a Russian imprecation; a face peered in and a whale lance darted through the opening. It missed the skipper by inches.
He backed and touched Stirling's arm. "Kill them!" he cried. "Kill them, Stirling!"
The shout was a signal to the dock rats and sea scum who had crouched in the gloom of the cabin. They advanced with heads lowered and rude weapons snatched from the deck. One hurled a gin bottle into the face of a Russian who stood half in and half out of the door. This sign of defiance brought the wrath of the horde down upon the defenders. A jagged rock hurtled through the porthole and crashed against the electric dome in the ceiling. The falling glass tinkled upon the table, and darkness blotted out Stirling's view of what followed. It was a press of mad men who would not be denied, and he fired without knowing whether he struck Russians or the remnant of the Pole Star's crew.
He stepped back and felt about with his left hand. His fingers touched a wall, and following this he came to the end of a table where he stumbled over the body of a Kanaka. Rising, he worked forward and found the knob of a door which led into the cook's kitchen. This door was locked, and he bunched his shoulders for a crashing blow.
The Russians had advanced in the gloom of the shambles and were feeling about for Marr and the others of the crew who had escaped their onslaught. Now and then a loud cry marked a victim. A Russian thrust inward the smoking end of a torch made out of rope yarn. It flared and died to a glow.
Stirling stepped away from the door, lowered his shoulder, and lunged forward with all the weight of his well-nourished body behind the blow. He rebounded, crouched, lunged for a second time, and the door splintered on the port side and tore loose from its chamfer.
Hurtling through to the kitchen and stumbling over an assortment of clanging pans, Stirling found the second door which led to the deck. This, also, was locked. He crashed his foot against a lower panel, and the wood splintered, making an opening sufficient to pass through. He crawled out like a determined bear and stood erect, his great chest rising and falling as he gulped the air of the night.
Chaos ruled the after part of the ship, and heavy blows sounded forward where the invaders were mopping out the forecastle. Bodies were hurtled overside, the last cries of doomed men echoing and reëchoing among the rocks of the shore and awakening the sea birds nested there.