The ship had lost way considerably, and was now heeling over so much that it was difficult to walk on the sloping decks.
Bloem was swaying drunkenly towards the door.
“The gold!” he blubbered. “The gold! . . . It’ll sink! . . . Bittle, make them get the gold into the boats!”
“You’re a fool!”
Bittle pushed the man back—he was easily the calmest of them all. His rage had simmered down, now, out of visibility, but it gleamed behind his small pale blue eyes like the molten lava which oozes down the sides of a volcano when the eruption has died down. Both his guns went up.
“You beat me in the end, Templar!” he shouted. “But I can see that you never enjoy it.” Like one possessed, he kicked aside a man who stood in his line of fire. “Laugh now, Templar!” he babbled. “It’s your last laugh!”
And the Saint chuckled, throwing back his head joyously, for he had seen the final shock which he had allowed for dovetail in according to schedule.
“Put up your hands, Bittle!”
The voice cracked into the room like a bared sabre.
Bittle turned and saw the man who had appeared in the doorway, and his revolvers thudded to the carpet from his nerveless fingers.