placed him on watch over the
cabin floor, to be relieved by the steward in Margaret's watches.

In the late afternoon, after prodigious hammerings and clangings in a
score of places, all noises ceased. Neither in the first and second dog-
watches, nor in the first watch of the night, were the noises resumed.
When I took charge of the poop at midnight Buckwheat relieved the steward
in the vigil over the cabin floor; and as I leaned on the rail at the
break of the poop, while my four hours dragged slowly by, least of all
did I apprehend danger from the cabin--especially when I considered the
two-gallon pail of raw sulphuric acid ready to hand for the first head
that might arise through an opening in the floor not yet made. Our
rascals for'ard might scale the poop; or cross aloft from mizzenmast to
jigger and descend upon our heads; but how they could invade us through
the floor was beyond me.

But they did invade. A modern ship is a complex affair. How was I to
guess the manner of the invasion?

It was two in the morning, and for an hour I had been puzzling my head
with watching the smoke arise from the after-division of the
for'ard-house and with wondering why the mutineers should have up steam
in the donkey-engine at such an ungodly hour. Not on the whole voyage
had the donkey-engine been used. Four bells had just struck, and I was
leaning on the rail at the break of the poop when I heard a prodigious
coughing and choking from aft. Next, Wada ran across the deck to me.

"Big trouble with Buckwheat," he blurted at me. "You go quick."

I shoved him my rifle and left him on guard while I raced around the
chart-house. A lighted match, in the hands of Tom Spink, directed me.
Between the booby-hatch and the wheel, sitting up and rocking back and
forth with wringings of hands and wavings of arms, tears of agony
bursting from his eyes, was Buckwheat. My first thought was that in some
stupid way he had got the acid into his own eyes. But the terrible
fashion in which he coughed and strangled would quickly have undeceived
me, had not Louis, bending over the booby-companion, uttered a startled
exclamation.

I joined him, and one whiff of the air that came up from below made me
catch my breath and gasp. I had inhaled sulphur. On the instant I
forgot the _Elsinore_, the mutineers for'ard, everything save one thing.

The next I know, I was down the booby-ladder and reeling dizzily about
the big after-room as the