"You'd let him die among you—for fear of an old man and his wretched revolver?"
She faced Henshaw.
"Go into the wireless house, Captain Henshaw, and I will go in alone with you. If you don't trust me, you can keep your revolver at my breast while I dress your wound—but see!—you will bleed to death in a short time!"
He laughed again, saying: "Girl, there's nothing between heaven and hell that can make me die by anything but fire—fire at sea—blue fire."
She whitened at sight of his frenzied, yellow face, and then she saw Harrigan slipping around to take the captain from the rear. He saw the shadow of the Irishman just too late, and whirled with a curse at the same time that Harrigan's iron hand seized the gun. For an instant he struggled, but those mighty arms gathered him as easily as a woman lifts a stubborn child, and he was carried into the wireless house and placed on Sloan's bunk. As soon as he discovered that he was helpless in their hands, he ceased struggling and lay without a motion while they tore away his coat and shirt and Kate started to dress the deep, ugly wound.
She had scarcely finished when a shout, or rather a scream, from fifty throats brought them running out of the wireless house. Again and again that cry was repeated from the main cabin, and they could not tell whether it was despair or agony that inspired it.
Neither of these emotions caused it. All that time Hovey had been kneeling in front of the captain's safe working at the combination, for he had seen Henshaw open it several times and thought that he could imitate the captain's motions. But he failed. Around him packed the sailors in both cabins, a serried mass of intent faces and burning eyes. But at last Hovey stood up and announced his failure—he could not work the combination. Then came that yell which those in the wireless house heard, a cry of mingled rage and disappointment. Gold in untold quantities was here just within their reach—and yet just beyond it. A few inches of steel kept the gold safe.
Men beat it with their bare hands in a senseless fury, till Garry
Cochrane slipped through the dense mass of sailors.
"I know something about locks. What do I get, lads, if I open this one?"
"Five shares!"