'It's our chance,' bawled the fellow who had sprung and fallen, now throwing himself back on to the deck. 'There mayn't come another for weeks. What's to happen then? Are we to drive about in this fired ocean till we ends as froze-up corpses? I'm for following her.'
'Take her bearings, bo'sun, while she's in sight,' shouted a seaman, and the huge sailor, as obedient as though the captain had given the command, rolled aft and put the sharp of his hand upon the compass bowl.
'Captain Burke,' exclaimed one of the seamen, in a voice startling with its sudden savage note of revolt, 'we've had enough of this. There's nothen that's a-going to be of any use to us in them booms.' He pointed behind him with his thumb. 'There's our chance. We'll run ourselves into her sight and she'll pick us up.'
'Hold your jaw, you Johnson!' said Captain Burke, who was as white as the deck in the face, though his eyes showed dangerously, like a madman's who watches his chance to leap upon you.
'Hold my jaw?' growled the seaman, a hairy scowling man in a yellow sou'-wester, dropping his head into an insolent butting posture. 'Why, so I will arter I've told yer that when them masts went we was quit of your blistered articles, and here's one as ain't for stopping one bloomin' minute longer to mess and muck about with jury-masts, pennorths of parasol to be blowed over the bows as soon as they're up. Mates,' he yelled, 'I'm after that ship whilst there's time. Who's for coming?'
As though there had been something quickening and thrilling as magnetism in the sailor's shout, the whole of the men made a jump for the boat, one of the first being the boatswain who was coming aft from the compass when the seaman bawled the invitation.
The smoke of the flare had flittered down into a curl of pale blue vapour, which blew over the rail feather-shaped to the sea. The captain stood this side of it, watching the men in a staring idle way whilst they went to work at the boat with gleaming knives, hacking and cutting at her fastenings—he seemed as though deprived of his reason—then he roared out:
'Leave that boat alone. Don't touch that boat. She belongs to the ship. She's my property. Overboard and swim for that vessel there if she's your chance, you dogs! But leave that boat alone.'
A few turned their heads to look at him and then went on passing their knives through the lashings, clearing away the booms and so forth.
'Stop him!' shrieked Mrs. Burke. 'Help, Mr. Owen! What can he do? What's the use of it? They'll kill him!' and I too screamed when I saw the captain rush upon the nearest of the men regardless of their naked knives; he struck out right and left, flooring two, but a third—none of them I observed offering to hit him back—crooked his leg at the poor man's heels, and he fell, fetching the iron-hard snow-coated plank a thump that left him motionless.