and a trigger-like
arrangement by which, pulling on a string, the caps are exploded in the
gunpowder and fire set to the gasoline-soaked oakum and to the flares and
candles. It will be brain as well as brawn against mere brawn.

* * * * *

I have worked like a Trojan all day, and the idea is realized. Margaret
helped me out with suggestions, and Tom Spink did the sailorizing. Over
our head, from the jiggermast, the steel stays that carry the three
jigger-trysails descend high above the break of the poop and across the
main deck to the mizzenmast. A light line has been thrown over each
stay, and been thrown repeatedly around so as to form an unslipping knot.
Tom Spink waited till dark, when he went aloft and attached loose rings
of stiff wire around the stays below the knots. Also he bent on hoisting-
gear and connected permanent fastenings with the sliding rings. And
further, between rings and fastenings, is a slack of fifty feet of light
line.

This is the idea: after dark each night we shall hoist our three metal
wash-basins, loaded with inflammables, up to the stays. The arrangement
is such that at the first alarm of a rush, by pulling a cord the trigger
is pulled that ignites the powder, and the very same pull operates a trip-
device that lets the rings slide down the steel stays. Of course,
suspended from the rings, are the illuminators, and when they have run
down the stays fifty feet the lines will automatically bring them to
rest. Then all the main deck between the poop and the mizzen-mast will
be flooded with light, while we shall be in comparative darkness.

Of course each morning before daylight we shall lower all this apparatus
to the deck, so that the men for'ard will not guess what we have up our
sleeve, or, rather, what we have up on the trysail-stays. Even to-day
the little of our gear that has to be left standing aroused their
curiosity. Head after head showed over the edge of the for'ard-house as
they peeped and peered and tried to make out what we were up to. Why, I
find myself almost looking forward to an attack in order to see the
device work.

CHAPTER XLV

And what has happened to Mr. Pike remains a mystery. For that matter,
what has happened to the second mate? In the past three days we have by
our eyes taken the census of the mutineers. Every man has been seen by
us with the sole exception of Mr. Mellaire, or Sidney Waltham, as I
assume I must correctly name him. H