"Step aft, here, you
swab, or I'll drill you through, s'help me!"

The words brought a menacing growl from the squareheads; there was a
stir among them, and they seemed about to fling themselves upon the
trio. But Holy Joe checked the movement with a word.

"Steady, lads," said he. "No violence; obey your orders. Spread out,
there, boys, and let me through; I will speak with him."

That was what he said, but it was _how_ he said it that really
mattered. Aye, Holy Joe might have been the skipper, himself, from his
air. He spoke with authority, in a deep, commanding voice, and the
squareheads instantly gave him the obedience they had refused the mate.
They did not, indeed, tumble aft in the wake of the stiffs; but they
did spread out and make a lane through their midst down which Holy Joe
advanced with quick and firm step. Right up to Fitzgibbon he walked,
and stopped, and said to the bucko's face,

"Put away that weapon! Would you add another murder to your crimes?"

To me, to the mate and his henchmen, indeed, to all hands, it was a
most astounding situation. And perhaps the most surprising element in
it was the fact that Holy Joe was not immediately shot or felled with a
blow, and the additional fact that none of us expected him to be.

It was the stiff, not the officer, who commanded the deck that moment.
By some strange magic I could not as yet fathom, the little parson had
assumed the same heroic proportions Newman had assumed the day he
chased the skipper from the poop. Oh, it was no physical change that
took place; it was rather as if the man doffed a mask and revealed
himself to us in his true self. There he stood, a full head shorter
than his antagonist, with his head tilted back to meet the larger man's
eyes, and Bully Fitzgibbon quailed before his gaze.

I watched the little man, awe-stricken. I had been bred to worship
force, it was the only deity I knew, and Holy Joe was in my eyes the
symbol of force. He radiated force, and it was a strange and wonderful
force. I had glimpsed this power in Newman; now, for the first time in
my life I saw it fully revealed. The only kind of force I had known or
imagined was brute force, the kind of force Mister Fitzgibbon
epitomized; but now, in this duel of wills that was taking place before
my eyes, I saw another and superior power at work. It was a force of
the mind, or soul, that Holy Joe employed; it was a moral force that
poured out of the clean s