McGovern had been fascinated by the massacre. He almost forgot his own doom ahead. And then the Skipper howled inarticulately through the split plank and McGovern heard his cabin door crash wide.
McGovern crashed through his own only an instant after him, yelling from pure instinct and looking for somebody to shoot at. There was no one in sight. The guard at his cabin door was over on the batil fighting lustily and howling with joy. So was every other man on the Kingston except the engine and fire room crews.
The Skipper’s fat legs twinkled as he went rumbling and racing forward. McGovern followed him out of instinct. The Skipper heaved himself up the bridge-ladder, unseen because all attention was focussed on the pearler. He bellowed over his shoulder to McGovern, balanced himself precariously, and plunged his full weight at the wheelhouse door.
McGovern joined him in the rush, and the two of them went hurtling into the wheelroom on top of the remnants of the splintered door. The Skipper went crashing down to the floor as the man at the wheel swung about and started shooting. McGovern dropped him handily, sneezed from the powder smoke, and helped the Skipper up.
“Now what?” he asked anxiously. “I didna think it could be done, sir, but you knew best. Now I’ll hold down the stokehold crew while we run the old ship——”
The Skipper boomed a raging negative. He seized the wheel of the Kingston. Her head was paying off from the one moment of the wheel’s freedom. He brought her back, squinted carefully, and with the purple complexion of a man on the verge of apoplexy from rage, sent her into a wallowing roll.
She came up, shuddering, with many tons of water on her fore-deck. McGovern gasped.
“Skipper! Ye’ll sink us both!”
The squat bow of the Kingston wavered, wabbled, and settled with a rending crash against the blunt bow of the batil. More, one of the Kingston’s anchors, only indifferently stowed away, caught its fluke into the tangle of cordage and chainwork about the batil’s bowsprit.