These peremptory orders were promptly obeyed. Reuben Yoxall himself came running to the break of the poop with a deck-lamp and let the Jacob's-ladder down. But Captain Dove's boat was well ahead of the others, although for all company in it he had only Jasper Slyne and three white-robed Arabs, who, as they ran alongside, shipped their oars smartly to clutch at the ladder, up which Captain Dove scrambled swaying, with only one hand at his service. Slyne followed him, hot, dusty, dishevelled, still bleeding from a deep cut in one cheek, and then the Arabs, the Emir El Farish first, and the last with a turn of the boat's painter about his wrist in seaman-like fashion.
"Shift her forward now," Captain Dove commanded, "and up with the ladder again."
Which also was done, in a hurry, so that when the other boats arrived they had to bring-to under the bare wet side of the steamer wallowing in the swell. Sallie, herself unseen, saw that there were only three or four men in each, and a sudden, sick understanding of Captain Dove's successful expedient for ridding the ship of the rest of the mutineers flashed through her mind. But she would not allow herself to surmise what the Emir's visit might mean.
Captain Dove, safe on board, surveyed for a space, in silence and very much at his leisure, the men in the boats. But not one of them was able or willing to meet his malevolent glance. A more cowed, unhappy, hang-dog lot he had never seen, and he told them so, at some length.
"Get on to your feet, you, Hobson," he snapped, and the second mate stood up in his place, as if with a galvanic effort of will. Captain Dove regarded him fixedly for some moments.
"You're the worst that's left," he said then, in a steely voice, "and—I don't quite know what to do with you. I've asked Far—the Emir here if he'll have you as a gift, along with the others I left ashore, but he won't. And I don't want you on the Olive Branch; there's no room on board for a man like you—you might stir up another mutiny! Seems to me the very best thing you can do for yourself now is to jump right overboard before I have that boat swung and lay hands on you. For, if you set foot on my ship again, I'll have you hove head-first into one of the furnaces. D'ye hear?
"But take your choice—one way or the other, it's all the same to me.
"The rest of you mutinous swine can come aboard now. You've had your lesson, I think, eh? Then stand by to pick Mr. Hobson up if he follows you, and carry him down to the stokehold.
"Let the ladder over again, there."
The doomed wretch, staring wide-eyed at Captain Dove in the lamplight, seemed to know that no appeal from that most monstrous penalty of his scarcely less monstrous crime would serve any purpose at all, and looked hopelessly about him while the others in the boat clambered, cringing, up the ship's side. He shuddered convulsively as he caught sight of a stealthy black fin in the water, within a few feet of him. His slack, twisted lips were moving like those of a man with paralysis.