Munson replied by holding his fist under Forsythe's nose.
"Get up on the bridge," he said. "And you, Riley, to your engines."
Riley obeyed the call of the exigency; but Forsythe resisted. He struck Munson's fist away, but received it immediately full in the face. Staggering back, he pulled his revolver; and, before Munson could meet this new antagonism, he aimed and fired. Munson lurched headlong, and lay still.
Then an uproar began. The others charged on Forsythe, who retreated, with his weapon at arm's length. He held them off until, at his command, all but one had placed his pistol back in the scabbard. The dilatory one was old Kelly; and him Forsythe shot through the heart. Then the pistols were redrawn, and the shooting became general.
How Forsythe, single-handed against the eight remaining men, won in that gun fight can only be explained by the fact that the eight were too wildly excited to aim, or leave each other free to attempt aiming; while Forsythe, a single target, only needed to shoot at the compact body of men to make a hit.
It ended soon with Hawkes, Davis, and Daniels writhing on the deck, and Forsythe hiding, uninjured, behind the forward funnel; while Riley, King, and Dwyer, the three engineers, were retreating into their engine room.
"Now, if you've had enough," shouted Forsythe, "start the engine when I give you the bells." Then he mounted to the bridge and took the wheel.
But, though the starting of the engines at full speed indicated that the engineers had had enough, there was one man left who had not. It was Billings, who danced around the dead and the wounded, shrieking and laughing with the emotions of his disordered brain. But he did not fire on Forsythe, and seemed to have forgotten the animus of the recent friction.
He drifted aft, muttering to himself, until suddenly he stopped, and fixed his eyes on Denman, who, with gritting teeth, had watched the deadly fracas at the companion.
"I told you so. I told you so," rang out the crazed voice of Billings. "A woman aboard ship—a woman aboard ship. Always makes trouble. There, take it!"