“I’ll stay here,” cried I. “Don’t hold me, Oliver! What of Miss Milne?”
“Locked in her room or fled the house. I’ve not heard or seen her. They’ve been looting. Get away!”
I shook my head; his strong hands held me back against the wall; I must stand and watch, nor bear a hand to aid my grandfather. He needed none, for though they burst in with a rush after my uncle, they paused, and fell to silence, seeing the old man sitting grimly in his chair. Charles, slipping from them, held himself behind his father’s chair; the rogues crowding about the hearth approached no nearer.
My grandfather roared out in so full and strong a tone that for the shock of it they fell back from him, “What in the devil’s name is this? Have ye gone mad? Why d’ye come bursting into my room in the dead of night? Speak, some of ye! Charles, what is this?”
“I do assure you,” said my uncle clearly, “I have no part in this.”
“No part,” the woman Barwise jeered. “Ay, then, no share in what we’ve come for, and what we’ll surely have.” She thrust herself forward, her face enflamed; she pointed her skinny hand at my grandfather and cried:
“D’ye hear me? What we’re going to have! What we’ve waited for too long. What you took when you was pirate, and sunk English ships, and murdered—what you stole!”
He broke out with a bellow of anger, “Mutiny, hey? Mutiny! Thinking me dead or dying. Thinking now you’ll take what you never had the courage to take—ay, and you’ve all grown old waiting for. Mutiny! Hey, you dogs? Mark me, you dogs—am I broken? Am I broken yet?”
And then it seemed that the will of the man triumphed over the wreck of his body. Watching him from the wall, I saw him rise up from his chair, his hand gripping his pistol; I saw his eyes blaze and his face take colour; I saw the old rogues cower and break before him,—only the Barwise sons and the men who had never sailed with him yet held their ground; and Blunt watched unfaltering. He laughed upon them trembling before him; he pointed his pistol at Thrale, and the fellow quivered like a leaf, and seemed the palsied dotard, while the master was yet strong.
“Hey, Thrale,” my grandfather mocked him, “you were bold with drink when you came in; but you never had the heart of a man. You’d slit a throat in the dark; you’d no stomach for a red deck, and you’d vomit at the smoke of powder—rogue! Hey, Barwise,—hey, your woman took you, for you’d not the heart to refuse her. Ay, you’re drunk now, and you thought you were brave, but you sweat for terror. Mistress, you were a bold wench once, and you did many things in your thieves’ kitchen at Shadwell a man would shudder for the very thought of. Hey, you rogues, mutiny is it? Mutiny? You’d rob me—murder me—thinking me sick and weak? D’ye mind a night off Malabar? Roger Quirk it was—he’d a mind to be master of my ship. And he came sneaking into my cabin in the night, thinking to find me sleeping, and some of you were shuddering in the dark at his back, and ready to call him captain, and sail under him, if so be he murdered me. But Roger Quirk died; at midnight he died, and it’s midnight now. Hey, Roger Quirk led you then; who leads you now?”