p,
the mutineers hauled all their lines safely inboard ere they towed aft
within striking distance of my grapnels.

Still I improved. As long as I kept the _Elsinore_ before the wind they
could not fish. I experimented. Once before it, by means of a winged-
out spanker coupled with patient and careful steering, I could keep her
before it. This I did, hour by hour one of my men relieving another at
the wheel. As a result all fishing ceased.

Margaret was holding the first dog-watch, four to six. Henry was at the
wheel steering. Wada and Louis were below cooking the evening meal over
the big coal-stove and the oil-burners. I had just come up from below
and was standing beside the sounding-machine, not half a dozen feet from
Henry at the wheel. Some obscure sound from the ventilator must have
attracted me, for I was gazing at it when the thing happened.

But first, the ventilator. This is a steel shaft that leads up from the
coal-carrying bowels of the ship beneath the lazarette and that wins to
the outside-world via the after-wall of the chart-house. In fact, it
occupies the hollow inside of the double walls of the afterwall of the
chart-house. Its opening, at the height of a man's head, is screened
with iron bars so closely set that no mature-bodied rat can squeeze
between. Also, this opening commands the wheel, which is a scant fifteen
feet away and directly across the booby-hatch. Some mutineer, crawling
along the space between the coal and the deck of the lower hold, had
climbed the ventilator shaft and was able to take aim through the slits
between the bars.

Practically simultaneously, I saw the out-rush of smoke and heard the
report. I heard a grunt from Henry, and, turning my head, saw him cling
to the spokes and turn the wheel half a revolution as he sank to the
deck. It must have been a lucky shot. The boy was perforated through
the heart or very near to the heart--we have no time for post-mortems on
the _Elsinore_.

Tom Spink and the second sail-maker, Uchino, sprang to Henry's side. The
revolver continued to go off through the ventilator slits, and the
bullets thudded into the front of the half wheel-house all about them.
Fortunately they were not hit, and they immediately scrambled out of
range. The boy quivered for the space of a few seconds, and ceased to
move; and one more cadet of the perishing breed perished as he did his
day's work at the wheel of the _Elsinore_ off the west coas