“Sometimes. But that ’s nothing, and it ’s over and done with.”

The two captains sat silent for a while, Captain Coffin gazing out of the cabin window.

“I aimed,” he said at last, “to wreck her, if nothing better turned up, when we got where there were some people, and my chance would be as good as the next man’s. I guess Drew knew it, and thought he ’d better get rid of me. I had the Keelings in mind, or Sunda Strait”—he called it Sunday—“or some parts thereabouts, if the weather turned favorable for wrecking. Pretty bad gales at the Keelings in the season. Well—that ’s all, I guess. I ’d like to come across the Battles again. Maybe I ’ll be able to get some fast little schooner, and some kind of a crew, at Batavia, and go after her. I ’d spend my last cent on it.”

Captain Nelson grunted again. “I ’d give you a berth here if I had one. Better make up your mind to stay on this ship, Fred, and we ’ll see what turns up. I ’ll ship your two men. We ’re two men short.” Then he told about Smith.

“Good!” cried Captain Coffin. “Good! Just right, and just like you, Cap’n. I ’d have given something to have the chance on the Battles, but there was never a suspicion. Drew was too smart. He ’s a damned smart man.”

“H’m!” Captain Nelson was noncommittal. “Now that we ’re here, we may as well lay in some wood. I ’ll have the men take down that shirt of yours.”

Then he turned to me, and told me that I might as well go on deck, for they would not need my services right away. I took the hint, and went. After all, stories of mutinies are much alike; they differ only in details. But the two captains sat there a couple of hours longer, with the fresh pitcher of hot rum and water which I had brought just before I came up.

Something turned up sooner than they could have expected. We were only a day at Amsterdam laying in wood, for we did not really need wood. Our anchor was up the next afternoon and we sailed to the northeast, bound either to Sunda Strait, or for a cruise along the south coast of Java, as circumstances might determine. We had been out about a week, and were getting into more comfortable weather, when I was awakened, very early one morning, by a rumpus on deck. There were shouts, a tramping of feet, and a heavy report, like that of a Spencer gun. My heart jumped up into my throat, I was completely awake, there was that prickling sensation at the roots of my hair, my breath came short and hard, and I found that I was smiling. It was no use, I was always taken that way when any kind of a fight promised. I could no more help it than I could help breathing; not so easily. I scrambled into some clothes and ran up the ladder.

I came out into the gray, melancholy half-light of early dawn. I was conscious of it and of the whispering sea about us. If I had ever contemplated suicide, I am sure it would have been at just that time of day, for that is the time when a man’s fortitude is at the lowest ebb, every­thing looks black, and the future holds no promise. The darkest night is not nearly so bad. That gray loneliness of early dawn is an equally fitting time to choose for going insane, and Mr. Snow seemed to have chosen it for that purpose. He was standing in the same spot that Captain Nelson occupied when he dropped Smith from the yard, and was living over that experience, with himself in the captain’s place. A Spencer was in his right hand, the barrel in the hollow of his left arm, and a long, sharp lance leaned against the after house. Now and then he bellowed an order at an imaginary man on the yard, and that was apparently what he had shot at. Spencer bullets, however, are not imaginary, and nothing was to be seen of the men of the watch. They had run forward and taken refuge behind the foremast, the try-works, and anything that offered shelter. I caught a glimpse of one poor fellow who had taken refuge behind the mainmast, almost directly in front of Mr. Snow, and who was trying his level best to make himself small. Mr. Snow did not notice him; did not see him. All his attention was directed to that foretopsail yard.

Less than half a minute had gone since the report of the Spencer had startled me into full wakefulness. I had my trousers on, but I had not stopped to button them, trusting to one suspender to hold them in place. I had come up the booby-hatch, a very few feet behind Mr. Snow, and although I was barefoot, I must have made considerable noise; but he was so taken up with his bellowing and flourishing that he did not hear me. I think I might have come through the deck at his very feet and run into him without his being aware of it. I heard quiet stirrings on the cabin ladder and down the booby-hatch, and I knew that the mates and boatsteerers would be on hand in a few seconds; and noises in the cabin told me that Captain Nelson would not be far behind. Mr. Snow’s attention had at last been attracted by a movement behind the mainmast—the man there was so scared that he could not keep still—and he raised his rifle. It was like shooting point-blank at the side of a barn. He might easily hit the man, who had not sense enough to keep behind the mast, but kept popping out. I was upon him in one jump, had him about the body from behind, and was grabbing for the rifle.