the men not to mutiny. They'll listen to you, especially when
you tell them the Old Man is dead. They don't want to mutiny,
ma'am--anyway, the squareheads don't--but they're afraid not to. If
you tell them I've killed him, and appeal to them, the sailors will
keep quiet, I know; and they'll make the stiffs keep quiet, too. It
will save some lives, ma'am--for the crowd is coming aft to-night, like
the Old Man plans, and the tradesmen are in the roundhouse, with guns,
waiting for them."

There was anguish in her whispered reply. "Coming aft? No, no, they
must not! It would mean--his death----"

She stopped. We listened. We heard Swope again, out in the saloon.
He was damning Wong for a sluggard, and demanding a lighted lantern
that instant or sooner, or "I'll take a strip off your yellow hide, you
heathen!"

"No, not Newman's death," I answered the lady. I turned, and laid my
hand upon the door knob. My weapon was ready. This was the moment I
must act.

Before I could open the door, I felt the lady's cool fingers upon my
wrist.

"No, no, not that! Not murder!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Boy, you would
not take life--you would not do that!"

I turned and faced her, astonished. Her eyes were but a few inches
distant from mine, now, and to my amazement I read in their expression
not approbation but startled horror. And I could not mistake the
meaning in her voice. She disapproved of my killing Captain Swope.

I was as shocked as she. Here I had been happy in the consciousness I
was playing the hero, I had believed myself cutting a very pretty
figure indeed in the lady's eyes, and, instead--well, my bubble was
pricked. As I looked into the lady's eyes, I could feel my grand
dimensions dwindling in my own eyes. More than that, I began to feel
ashamed. Just why that look in her eyes should shame me, I didn't
know. My education had not progressed to the self-analytic stage. But
shame me it did. I felt mean, vile. I felt, without consciously
reasoning about it, that murdering Yankee Swope would, perhaps, be not
such a noble deed after all. I confronted something that was superior
to the barbarous moral code of my brutal world. I discovered it in the
lady's wide open eyes. It vanquished me. It took from me the feeling
I was doing right.

But I could not surrender thus tamely. Indeed, the need for the deed
remained as urgent.

"But, ma'am, you know I must!" I said. "You know--he will kill him!"