"Are the sharks here?" he roared, "are they come?"
And as he spoke his eye lighted on him who had fallen dead, and he turned him over with his foot to see if he were truly so.
"A pretty mutineer," then says he, "a pretty mutineer! Well, he is dead, so over with him--he assoils his Majesty's deck; over with him."
In a minute that dead body was cast over the bows and went splashing into the sea. Then we saw the waves all tumbled and tossed as though a seaquake had taken place, or a whale had disturbed them in its passage; we saw the ripples made by the fins of the brute down there, and the silver glisten of those fins--we saw the water tinge from green to pale pink and then to red, until, at last, the dead man's blood had overmastered the sea's natural colour.
Meanwhile still the rebellious ones shouted and bawled; while some who were older cursed and blasphemed, another wept, and still another--the first one whom Phips had beat down--tried, all bound as he was, to rush at him and strike him with his manacled hands, or bite at him.
But now the captain paused, though ever with his eye on this fellow, and spake and said:
"Well, my hearts, how like you mutineering against the King's Grace, eh? and against me who stand here for the King? 'Tis profitable, is it not--far more so than hunting for the plate-ship, with three good meals of jerked pork and drink into you every day? What say you?"
All but that mad and furious one shouted still for mercy--he standing apart glowering--and clasped their hands and said that, if he would but spare them, never more would they think of aught but their duty to the King and him--"only, only," they wailed, "not the sharks, not the sharks!"
"Well," says he, at last, "since you are but beaten hounds and know it, it shall not be the sharks this time--only, henceforth, beware! For if ever again one of you so much as mutter a word of disaffection, so surely shall your blood tinge the waters round as the blood of that mutineer tinges it now. You hear?"
They said they heard, and that there was no fear that ever would they offend more, no, not if the Algier Rose stayed there a century, so then Phips spake again, while 'twas noticed by us officers that never did he include the first man--whose name was Brooks--in his address, nor did he cast his eyes once towards him now.