"What's that?" said he sharply to the sailor, who sat leaning against the bulkhead, but the man made no answer.
Rucker shook him sharply, and at the same time scented the odor of liquor about the fellow.
"Wake up. What have you been drinking? What noise is that?"
But receiving only unintelligible replies, and having to return immediately to his watch on deck, he reported the circumstances to the captain, who broke into a storm of invective. Rucker discreetly withdrew.
Shortly thereafter Duff heard from his stateroom an uproar in the gangway. Looking out, he saw the captain standing over the prostrate form of the sentry, whom he had knocked down with the man's own gun. One of the storeroom doors was open.
"I see now!" foamed Gary, nearly beside himself. "You fellows on watch have been tapping this rum barrel night and day, I reckon, and mischief going on right under your feet. But I'll even you up. Where is the bo's'n?"
Receiving no answer to this last shouted demand, Gary sprang up the stairway, leaving the insensible sentry stretched upon the floor.
Duff, still watching from his stateroom through the open cabin door, saw a gaunt, dusky face thrust itself from the storeroom and peer wildly round. Other faces joined it, and in an instant a dozen naked black forms were crowding the gangway.
They saw Duff. Several made for him, brandishing short chains from their fetters, which they had managed somehow to loosen and sever. Others beat the sentry's brains out, and overthrew the howitzer.
The noise thus made, and Duff's loud calls to alarm the ship, caused Rucker and one or two seamen to run hastily down the companionway. Being unarmed they were forced into the cabin or back up the gangway, by a horde of frantic savages, who were being continually reinforced from the hold by way of the two holes, which they had somehow cut through the bulkhead into the storeroom, where among other things, was the barrel of rum.