s--undiluted sulphuric acid, two gallons of it
from the carboy.

The gangster must have received the liquid fire in the face and eyes.
And, in the shock of pain, he must have released all holds and fallen
upon the coal at the bottom of the shaft. His cries and shrieks of
anguish were terrible, and I was reminded of the starving rats which had
squealed up that same shaft during the first months of the voyage. The
thing was sickening. I prefer that men be killed cleanly and easily.

The agony of the wretch I did not fully realize until the steward, his
bare fore-arms sprayed by the splash from the ventilator slats, suddenly
felt the bite of the acid through his tight, whole skin and made a mad
rush for the water-barrel at the corner of the house. And Bert Rhine,
the silent man of soundless laughter, screaming below there on the coal,
was enduring the bite of the acid in his eyes!

We covered the ventilator opening with our flour-device; the screams from
below ceased as the victim was evidently dragged for'ard across the coal
by his mates; and yet I confess to a miserable forenoon. As Carlyle has
said: "Death is easy; all men must die"; but to receive two gallons of
full-strength sulphuric acid full in the face is a vastly different and
vastly more horrible thing than merely to die. Fortunately, Margaret was
below at the time, and, after a few minutes, in which I recovered my
balance, I bullied and swore all our hands into keeping the happening
from her.

* * * * *

Oh, well, and we have got ours in retaliation. Off and on, through all
of yesterday, after the ventilator tragedy, there were noises beneath the
cabin floor or deck. We heard them under the dining-table, under the
steward's pantry, under Margaret's stateroom.

This deck is overlaid with wood, but under the wood is iron, or steel
rather, such as of which the whole _Elsinore_ is builded.

Margaret and I, followed by Louis, Wada, and the steward, walked about
from place to place, wherever the sounds arose of tappings and of cold-
chisels against iron. The tappings seemed to come from everywhere; but
we concluded that the concentration necessary on any spot to make an
opening large enough for a man's body would inevitably draw our attention
to that spot. And, as Margaret said:

"If they do manage to cut through, they must come up head-first, and, in
such emergence, what chance would they have against us?"

So I relieved Buckwheat from deck duty,