t mutineers had their will of us that very night. In the
darkness we could hear the work aloft going on as yards were run down,
sheets let go, and sails dewed up and gasketed. I did try a few random
shots, and all my reward was to hear the whine and creak of ropes through
sheaves and to receive an equally random fire of revolver-shots.

It is a most curious situation. We of the high place are masters of the
steering of the _Elsinore_, while those for'ard are masters of the motor
power. The only sail that is wholly ours is the spanker. They control
absolutely--sheets, halyards, clewlines, buntlines, braces, and
down-hauls--every sail on the fore and main. We control the braces on
the mizzen, although they control the canvas on the mizzen. For that
matter, Margaret and I fail to comprehend why they do not go aloft any
dark night and sever the mizzen-braces at the yard-ends. All that
prevents this, we are decided, is laziness. For if they did sever the
braces that lead aft into our hands, they would be compelled to rig new
braces for'ard in some fashion, else, in the rolling, would the
mizzenmast be stripped of every spar.

And still the mutiny we are enduring is ridiculous and grotesque. There
was never a mutiny like it. It violates all standards and precedents. In
the old classic mutinies, long ere this, attacking like tigers, the
seamen should have swarmed over the poop and killed most of us or been
most of them killed.

Wherefore I sneer at our gallant mutineers, and recommend trained nurses
for them, quite in the manner of Mr. Pike. But Margaret shakes her head
and insists that human nature is human nature, and that under similar
circumstances human nature will express itself similarly. In short, she
points to the number of deaths that have already occurred, and declares
that on some dark night, sooner or later, whenever the pinch of hunger
sufficiently sharpens, we shall see our rascals storming aft.

And in the meantime, except for the tenseness of it, and for the
incessant watchfulness which Margaret and I alone maintain, it is more
like a mild adventure, more like a page out of some book of romance which
ends happily.

It is surely romance, watch and watch for a man and a woman who love, to
relieve each other's watches. Each such relief is a love passage and
unforgettable. Never was there wooing like it--the muttered surmises of
wind and weather, the whispered councils, the kissed commands in p