As I passed a powder charge to the after starboard gun, I turned and looked across the deck at Robinson and his crew.
Instead of running his gun out and laying it towards the enemy, he and his men quickly shifted the tackles and, slewing it around, trained it down the port broadside through the line of gun crews. As he did so, some thirty men—among whom I recognized the big bald ruffian and his comrades of the ship-yard—rushed down the starboard side, and came aft, yelling and swearing and with their cutlasses swinging in their hands.
They took their places around and behind Robinson’s gun, while one man stepped out and coolly rammed a bag of musket-balls down the muzzle.
“What are you doing?” roared the officer of the deck from the break of the poop.
“Watch me,” said Robinson, quietly; and with that he let off the heavy gun, double charged, along the deck.
The discharge swept the gangway clear of living men, the poor, surprised fellows going down in groups like grass before a scythe-blade. Then, with a roaring yell, the ruffians left the spar-deck to the gun crews and rushed aft in a body, with Robinson and the bald-headed giant at their front.
It was all so sudden no one realized what was taking place. The ship was off before the wind, racing along to the northward through the gloom.
The lanterns of the port battery were smashed or blown out, and the shrieks and groans of the wounded men added to the confusion and terror of the scene. Those men left alive and unhurt on the port side were tailing on to the waring braces.
The officers forward bawled and swore at the bewildered sailors, trying to get them to realize their position, and while they did so the villains were taking the quarter-deck.
It was a short, desperate fight aft, but they had laid their plans so well that every officer was taken off his guard and cut down before even preparing to make a defence. Then the ruffians were masters of the quarter-deck.