t of South
America, bound from Baltimore to Seattle with a cargo of coal.

CHAPTER XLVIII

The situation is hopelessly grotesque. We in the high place command the
food of the _Elsinore_, but the mutineers have captured her
steering-gear. That is to say, they have captured it without coming into
possession of it. They cannot steer, neither can we. The poop, which is
the high place, is ours. The wheel is on the poop, yet we cannot touch
the wheel. From that slitted opening in the ventilator-shaft they are
able to shoot down any man who approaches the wheel. And with that steel
wall of the chart-house as a shield they laugh at us as from a conning
tower.

I have a plan, but it is not worth while putting into execution unless
its need becomes imperative. In the darkness of night it would be an
easy trick to disconnect the steering-gear from the short tiller on the
rudder-head, and then, by re-rigging the preventer tackles, steer from
both sides of the poop well enough for'ard to be out of the range of the
ventilator.

In the meantime, in this fine weather, the _Elsinore_ drifts as she
lists, or as the windage of her lists and the sea-movement of waves
lists. And she can well drift. Let the mutineers starve. They can best
be brought to their senses through their stomachs.

* * * * *

And what are wits for, if not for use? I am breaking the men's hungry
hearts. It is great fun in its way. The mollyhawks and albatrosses,
after their fashion, have followed the _Elsinore_ up out of their own
latitudes. This means that there are only so many of them and that their
numbers are not recruited. Syllogism: major premise, a definite and
limited amount of bird-meat; minor premise, the only food the mutineers
now have is bird-meat; conclusion, destroy the available food and the
mutineers will be compelled to come back to duty.

I have acted on this bit of logic. I began experimentally by tossing
small chunks of fat pork and crusts of stale bread overside. When the
birds descended for the feast I shot them. Every carcass thus left
floating on the surface of the sea was so much less meat for the
mutineers.

But I bettered the method. Yesterday I overhauled the medicine-chest,
and I dosed my chunks of fat pork and bread with the contents of every
bottle that bore a label of skull and cross-bones. I even added rough-on-
rats to the deadliness of the mixture--this on the suggestion of the
steward.

An