The fellow who had knocked off the irons, and now answered me, was named Cornish, a man in my own watch.
"The ship's ourn—that's what we've done," he said.
"The skipper's dead as a nail up there, I doubt," exclaimed another, indicating the poop with a movement of the head; "and if you'll step on to the main-deck you'll see how we've handled Mister Duckling!"
"And what do you mean to do?" exclaimed a man, one of the four who had accompanied me to the wreck. "We're masters now, I suppose you know, and so I hope you aren't agin us."
At this moment the carpenter, followed by a few others, came shoving into the cuddy.
"Oh, there he is!" he cried.
He grasped me by the arm and led me out of the cabin, and bidding me stand at the end of the table, with my face looking aft, ran to the door, and bawled at the top of his voice, "Into the cuddy, all hands!"
Those who were on the poop came scuffling along, dragging something with them, and presently rose a cry of "one—two—three!" and there was a soft thud upon the main-deck—the body of the captain, in fact, pitched off the poop—and then the men came running in and stood in a crowd on either side the table.
This was a scene I am not likely ever to forget, nor the feelings excited in me by it.
The men were variously dressed, some in yellow sou'westers, some in tight-fitting caps, in coarse shirts, in suits of oil-skin, in liberally patched monkey-jackets. Some of them, with black beards and moustachios and burnt complexions, looked swarthy and sinister enough in the lamplight; some were pale with the devilish spirit that had been aroused in them; every face, not excepting the youngest of the ordinary seamen, wore a passionate, reckless, malignant look. They ran their eyes over the cuddy as strangers would, and one of them took a glass off a swinging tray, and held it high, saying grimly, "By the Lord! we'll have something fit to swaller now! No more starvation and stinking water!"