"What are you doing on deck?" he asked the serang quietly. "Your place is in the stokehold."
The man started to make an impudent reply, but before he had uttered two words the Captain had snatched him off his feet as easily as if he had been a child and flung him bodily into the crowd of astonished men, knocking several of them over. Then, as the serang landed against a steam-winch with a terrible crash, Calamity snatched up a capstan bar and dashed into the crowd.
Then the mate, standing on the bridge, witnessed such a spectacle as he had never seen before and devoutly hoped he would never see again. Swinging the heavy iron bar above his head as though it were a flail, the Captain smashed left and right among the men, hitting them how and where he could—on the head, body, limbs—no matter where so long as he hit them. Two or three drew their knives and made a desperate rush at him, but there was no getting through the swinging circle of iron. In two minutes the forward deck bore a horrible resemblance to a shambles, for it was littered with injured men and blood was trickling down the white planks into the scuppers. Groans, shrieks, and curses resounded on all sides; the men scurried for shelter in every direction like rats, and two or three, reaching the forecastle, locked themselves in. But a couple of blows from the iron bar smashed the door to splinters and then cries rang out again and with them the sound of the terrible weapon as it crashed against a bulkhead or smashed a bunk to splinters. One man managed to escape out of the forecastle and was running for his life towards the poop when Calamity, his face distorted with demoniac fury, flung the bar at him. It caught the man on the back of the head and he pitched forward on the deck, where he lay weltering in his own blood.
Then, without so much as a glance at the fearful havoc he had wrought, the Captain returned to the bridge.
"What were you saying before I left, Mr. Dykes?" he inquired calmly.
"Er—I was saying that it looked as if the wind would change round to the nor' west before long, sir," answered the mate in a subdued and extremely respectful tone.
CHAPTER IV
THE CASTAWAYS
The following morning, at eight bells, those of the crew not on duty or on the sick-list were assembled upon the forward hatch. Many of them had heads or limbs in bandages, and they were as meek as little lambs. As the ship's bells were struck, Calamity mounted the bridge, accompanied by the mate, and walked up to the rail.