"They don't know any more than the law allows. Besides, they are members. Didn't they vote for you? Didn't they know beans?" continued Pelham, in the most tantalizing of tones.
"Do you mean to insult me?" demanded Shuffles, unable to control his rage.
"Not I. I respect you too much. You are the captain—that is to be—of the ship," laughed Pelham. "The captain, the second lieutenant, and all the flunkies, voted for you? and, of course, I couldn't be so deficient in politeness as to insult one who——"
At that moment Pelham removed his hand from the sheet, and Shuffles, irritated beyond control at the badinage of his companion, gave him a sudden push, and the fourth lieutenant went down into the surges, under the bow of the ship.
As Pelham disappeared beneath the waves, Shuffles was appalled at his own act; for even he had not sunk so low as to contemplate murder. The deed was not premeditated. It was done on the spur of angry excitement, which dethroned his reason. The chief conspirator had so often and so lightly used the language of the League, about "falling overboard acci dentally," that he had become familiar with the idea; and, perhaps, the deed seemed less terrible to him than it really was. When the act was done, on the impulse of the moment, he realized his own situation, and that of his victim. He would have given anything at that instant, as he looked down upon the dark waves, to have recalled the deed; but it was too late. Self-reproach and terror overwhelmed him.
"Man overboard!" he shouted with desperation, as he threw off his pea-jacket, and dived, head foremost, from the forecastle into the sea.
His first impulse had been to do a foul deed; his next, to undo it. Shuffles was a powerful swimmer. The ocean was his element. He struck the water hardly an instant after Pelham; and the ship, which was under all sail, making nine knots, hurried on her course, leaving the rivals to buffet the waves unaided.
"Man overboard!" cried officers and seamen, on all parts of the ship's deck.
"Hard down the helm, quartermaster! Let go the life-buoys!" shouted Kendall, who was the officer of the deck.
"Hard down, sir. Buoy overboard," replied Bennington the quartermaster at the helm.