Stirling flushed and backed to the rail. He heard Eagan drop to the deck beside him, and the seaman was followed by the two sailors who had made the trip to East Cape.
"I did!"
"Don't you know that this crew is trying to make an honest living? Don't you know that every brave man aboard gets a two hundredth lay of the bone we trade or capture? Why didn't you try the natives with a little whisky bait? You'd have found bone hidden in every igloo."
"Go yourself!" said Stirling. "I won't do your dirty work!"
Marr turned to the half-moon of menacing men. "You heard that," he said. "That's the kind of man this pilot is—all for himself. I told you we'd have to look out for him. We can't go on any further until he is taken care of."
The crew had reached some sort of agreement before Stirling arrived from East Cape; this much he saw with widening eyes, glancing from face to face. The Kanakas had been chosen for their loyalty to the little skipper. The boat steerers were Frisco dock rats who had the run of the steerage—an elevated position to them. The rest of the crew had scant hopes for anything save plunder and spoils in this life. They would have willingly followed Marr through the entire group of rookeries, starting at Disko Island and winding up at the Pribilofs.
Stirling reached and rested his hand on the pinrail, where were a dozen brass belaying pins. He lifted his hand, wound his fingers about the nearest, and raised it an inch or more. A tenseness of desperate right steeled his muscles; his jaw muscles hardened to balls, and his lips closed in a grim line.
Marr reached backward and clapped his palm over his right hip. The motion was a signal. The crew snarled in a running line of anger, advanced in a half-circle, and closed about Stirling. One held a sheath knife openly displayed in his hand.
"Kill the squealer!" he exclaimed. "Kill him! He's preventing us from getting what's coming on this voyage. Darn, says I, if I'll go to Frisco broke. What d'ye say, mates?"
"Hold on!" cried Stirling, raising his ponderous right fist. "The first man who tries anything gets this!"