In incoherent echo his followers stormed: "Throw him to the sharks, for cubs become wolves—cut him into pieces—cast him into the ovens!"
"Attention!" called the young man.
Something, perhaps innate animal respect for bravery, called for obedience. Silence and expectancy fell over them.
"You pretend to despise all your officers. I am the youngest and least among them, yet I dare the best among you to fight me here, I with this light rapier against your heavy cutlass."
The boastful leader pushed forward. Around the villain's head swung his cutlass flaming and glancing in the tropic sun.
"Aha! Aha! young sprig!" in half-drunken glee. "Hear the whistling air divide before my cutlass's edge. I'll strip you from your skin, inch by inch, and dry it on your cabin door. Come now, point to point, you young patrician fool!"
He struck a cleaving blow at the figure before him. The lieutenant's rapier caught the descending blade, wound itself in serpentine curves around it and drew away. The cutlass hurtled to the floor a half dozen paces distant. Numbness seized the mutineer's arm from wrist to shoulder. He examined the member in search of a wound, but found none.
The pack of insubordinates, impelled by their wolf-nature, would follow the leader if he conquered, or rend him if he fell.
Murmurs like the first swell of an angry sea rose among the mob, then burst into yells of derision.
"A schoolboy makes our mighty leader play the fool!"