ands recoiled before this, and the Jew reeled across to the rail,
his right hand clutching at his wound, and between the fingers I could
see the blood welling darkly. Bert Rhine abandoned his inspection of the
booby-hatch, and, with the second mate, the latter still carrying his
empty Smith & Wesson, sprang into the press about the chart-house door.

O wise, clever, cautious, old Chinese steward! He made no emergence. The
door swung emptily back and forth to the rolling of the _Elsinore_, and
no man knew but what, just inside, with that heavy, hacking knife
upraised, lurked the steward. And while they hesitated and stared at the
aperture that alternately closed and opened with the swinging of the
door, the booby-hatch, situated between chart-house and wheel, erupted.
It was Mr. Pike, with his .44 automatic Colt.

There were shots fired, other than by him. I know I heard them, like
"red-heads" at an old-time Fourth of July; but I do not know who
discharged them. All was mess and confusion. Many shots were being
fired, and through the uproar I heard the reiterant, monotonous
explosions from the Colt's .44

I saw the Italian, Mike Cipriani, clutch savagely at his abdomen and sink
slowly to the deck. Shorty, the Japanese half-caste, clown that he was,
dancing and grinning on the outskirts of the struggle, with a final
grimace and hysterical giggle led the retreat across the poop and down
the poop-ladder. Never had I seen a finer exemplification of mob
psychology. Shorty, the most unstable-minded of the individuals who
composed this mob, by his own instability precipitated the retreat in
which the mob joined. When he broke before the steady discharge of the
automatic in the hand of the mate, on the instant the rest broke with
him. Least-balanced, his balance was the balance of all of them.

Chantz, bleeding prodigiously, was one of the first on Shorty's heels. I
saw Nosey Murphy pause long enough to throw his knife at the mate. The
missile went wide, with a metallic clang struck the brass tip of one of
the spokes of the _Elsinore's_ wheel, and clattered on the deck. The
second mate, with his empty revolver, and Bert Rhine with his
sheath-knife, fled past me side by side.

Mr. Pike emerged from the booby-hatch and with an unaimed shot brought
down Bill Quigley, one of the "bricklayers," who fell at my feet. The
last man off the poop was the Maltese Cockney, and at the top of the
ladder he paused to look ba