hting, are they, Jerry?"

"Like devils, Captain, your rogues and the rogues as my Lord Dering
'listed and brought here yesterday--O love my liver--look at yon!" As
he spoke was a crash of splintered glass and a broken chair hurtled
through the wide lattice.

"So!" says Adam, striding towards the inn, and I saw a pistol in his
hand. Following hard on his heels I entered the inn with him and so to
the scene of the riot.

A long, low room, full of swirling dust, and amid this choking cloud a
huddle of men who fought and struggled fiercely, roaring blasphemy and
curses. Two or three lay twisted among overturned chairs and tables,
others had crawled into corners to look to their hurts, while to and
fro the battle raged the fiercer. Leaning in the doorway Penfeather
surveyed the combatants with his quick keen glance, and then the hubbub
was drowned by the roar of his long pistol; the thunderous report
seemed to stun the combatants to silence, who, falling apart, turned
one and all to glare at the intruder. And, in this moment of
comparative silence while all men panted and stared, from Penfeather's
grim lips there burst a string of blistering sea-oaths such as even I
had scarce heard till now; for a long minute he reviled them, the smoke
curling from his pistol, his black brows knit across glittering eyes,
his thin nostrils a-quiver, the scar glowing on his pallid cheek, his
face indeed so changed and evil that I scarce knew him.

"... ye filthy scum, ye lousy sons o' dogs!" he ended. "Ha, will ye
fight agin my orders, then--mutiny is it?"

"And who a plague are you and be cursed to ye!" panted a great fellow,
flourishing a broken chair-leg threateningly and scowling in murderous
fashion.

"He'll tell ye--there, behind ye, fool!" snarled Penfeather, pointing
sinewy finger. The big man turned, Penfeather sprang with uplifted
pistol and smote him, stunned and bleeding, to the floor, then
bestriding the prostrate carcass, fronted the rest with head viciously
out-thrust.

"And who's next--come!" says he softly, scowling from one to other of
the shrinking company. "You, Amos Penarth, and you, Richard Farnaby,
aye and half a dozen others o' ye, you've sailed wi' me ere now and you
know when I say a thing I mean it. And you'd fight, would ye, my last
words to you being 'see to it there be no quarrelling or riot.'"

"Why, Cap'n," says one, "'tis all along o' these new 'listed rogues--"

"Aye, master," says another,