ck at Mr. Pike, who, holding the automatic in
both hands, was taking careful aim. The Maltese Cockney, disdaining the
ladder, leaped through the air to the main deck. But the Colt merely
clicked. It was the last bullet in it that had fetched down Bill
Quigley.

And the poop was ours.

Events still crowded so closely that I missed much. I saw the steward,
belligerent and cautious, his long knife poised for a slash, emerge from
the chart-house. Margaret followed him, and behind her came Wada, who
carried my .22 Winchester automatic rifle. As he told me afterwards, he
had brought it up under instructions from her.

Mr. Pike was glancing with cool haste at his Colt to see whether it was
jammed or empty, when Margaret asked him the course.

"By the wind," he shouted to her, as he bounded for'ard. "Put your helm
hard up or we'll be all aback."

Ah!--yeoman and henchman of the race, he could not fail in his fidelity
to the ship under his command. The iron of all his years of iron
training was there manifest. While mutiny spread red, and death was on
the wing, he could not forget his charge, the ship, the _Elsinore_, the
insensate fabric compounded of steel and hemp and woven cotton that was
to him glorious with personality.

Margaret waved Wada in my direction as she ran to the wheel. As Mr. Pike
passed the corner of the chart-house, simultaneously there was a report
from amidships and the ping of a bullet against the steel wall. I saw
the man who fired the shot. It was the cowboy, Steve Roberts.

As for the mate, he ducked in behind the sheltering jiggermast, and even
as he ducked his left hand dipped into his side coat-pocket, so that when
he had gained shelter it was coming out with a fresh clip of cartridges.
The empty clip fell to the deck, the loader clip slipped up the hollow
butt, and he was good for eight more shots.

Wada turned the little automatic rifle over to me, where I still stood
under the weather cloth at the break of the poop.

"All ready," he said. "You take off safety."

"Get Roberts," Mr. Pike called to me. "He's the best shot for'ard. If
you can't get 'm, jolt the fear of God into him anyway."

It was the first time I had a human target, and let me say, here and now,
that I am convinced I am immune to buck fever. There he was before me,
less than a hundred feet distant, in the gangway between the door to
Davis' room and the starboard-rail, manoeuvring for another shot at Mr.