salvage in the doing, and
wanted to cry out in sheer enthusiasm when it was done. Then, in the
light from the furnace doors, she saw the face of the chief actor: it
was the face of the man with the stubble beard.

The night was summer warm, but she shrank back and shivered as if a cold
wind had breathed upon her. Why must he make it still harder for her by
posing as the defender of the wretched negro? She would look on no
longer; she would.... The harsh voice of the mate, dominating the noise
of the machinery and the churning of the paddle-wheels, drew her
irresistibly to the rail. She could not hear what M'Grath was saying,
but she could read hot wrath in his gestures, and in the way the men
fell back out of his reach. All but one: the stubble-bearded white man
was facing him fearlessly, and he appeared to be trying to explain.

Griswold was trying to explain, but the bullying first officer would not
let him. It was a small matter: with the money gone, and the probability
that capture and arrest were deferred only from landing to landing, a
little abuse, more or less, counted as nothing. But he was grimly
determined to keep M'Grath from laying violent hands upon the negro who
had twisted his ankle in jumping from the uptilted landing-stage.

"No; this is one time when you don't skin anybody alive!" he retorted,
when a break in the stream of abuse gave him a chance. "You let the man
alone. He couldn't help it. Do you suppose he sprained an ankle
purposely to give you a chance to curse him out?"

The mate's reply was a brutal kick at the crippled negro. Griswold came
closer.

"Don't try that again!" he warned, angrily. "If you've got to take it
out on somebody, I'm your man."

This was mutiny, and M'Grath's remedy for that distemper was ever
heroic. In a flash his big fist shot out and the crew looked to see its
lighter champion go backward into the river at the impact. But the blow
did not land. Griswold saw it coming and swerved the necessary
body-breadth. The result was a demonstration of a simple theorem in
dynamics. M'Grath reeled under the impetus of his own unresisted effort,
stumbled forward against the low edge-line bulwark, clawed wildly at the
fickle air and dropped overboard like a stone.

At the splashing plunge Griswold saw, planned, and acted in the same
instant. The _Belle Julie_ was forging ahead at full speed, and if the
mate did not drown at once, the projecting paddle-wheel would batter the
l