He backed to the ladder and let himself down, rung by rung, grunting more terrifically than before.
The girl leaped to her feet. She held her clenched fists above her head. Her white teeth showed beneath the crimson of her parted lips. She drove her hands down at her sides.
“Oh!” she had gasped, when her hands were above her head. When she drove them down her woman’s soul spoke its anger and horror. “Damn the name of gold!” she cried; and I would not have indorsed a milder phrase even from her.
For weeks my head had been full of seething particles of schemes relating to my central idea. I reckon it needed a shock—needed the desperate occasion of instant action—to make those particles cohere into resolve. For a moment I was stunned by the prospect of this new danger; and then a course of action came to me in a flash of inspiration—it was the result of all the thinking I had been doing, without making up my mind to act.
I hobbled to find Captain Holstrom in his state-room. I had to push him back when he had heard a dozen words of what I had reported. He had grabbed his pistols and was rushing to kill off a few prospective mutineers as an example to the others.
“You have got to do what I advise in this matter, Captain. I’ve been making plans. We’ve got not only this crew to consider, but Keedy and those he is bringing down here. He is coming. We may as well make up our minds to that. I want you to go down on the main deck as quickly as you can and order the crew to get out planks and start in making strong boxes. Privately, you and I will overhaul the junk for scrap iron, for chains and cable. Get after the men. Hustle them. Make it a hurry-up job. Busy men won’t have time to talk mutiny. And say to one of the mates, when you are giving off orders, that you are going to pack the treasure into boxes suitable for handling. Say that loud enough so that all the men will hear.”
“I’ll be joheifered if I don’t believe I’ve got to handle a lunatic as well as a mutiny,” flamed Captain Holstrom. “Are you advising me to pack up that gold so that it will be easy lugging for the crew?”
“As soon as they believe that it is going to be packed so as to be easy lugging there’ll be no mutiny until those boxes have been made. You’ve got to do as I say. You ought to have had your lesson by this time that I know what I’m talking about.”
He shuttled his eyes when I looked at him. He was remembering those past matters in which he had made a fool of himself in resisting me. I was willing to explain my plan to him, for I was not trying to humiliate Captain Holstrom. But just then I had a feeling that every moment counted. One instant more and I knew what the pricking of my mental thumbs had meant. Mate Number-two Jones came clattering along the deck from below. He shoved a red and greatly troubled face in at the door.
“Get your guns, Cap’n Holstrom,” he panted. “They’re grumbling and mumbling. It means mutiny.”