"it was a lucky blow in the dark. He couldn't do it in the
daylight."

"Self-convicted," said Sampson, quietly.

Then, for a matter of ten minutes, the air in the close compartment
might have smelled sulphurous to one strange to forecastle discourse.
Forsythe, his back toward them, listened quietly while they called him
all the names, printable and unprintable, which angry and disgusted men
may think of.

But when it had ended--when the last voice had silenced and the last man
gone to the water faucet for a drink before turning in, Forsythe said:

"I'll even things up with you fellows if I get on deck again."

Only a few grunts answered him, and soon all were asleep.

They wakened, one by one, in the afternoon, to find the electric bulbs
glowing, and the boat rolling heavily, while splashes of rain came in
through the weather deadlights. These they closed; and, better humored
after their sleep, and hungry as well, they attacked the barrel of bread
and the water faucet.

"He's started the dynamo," remarked Riley, one of the engineers. "Why
don't he start the engine and keep her head to the sea?"

"Because he knows too much," came a hoarse whisper, and they turned to
Jenkins, who was sitting up, regarding them disapprovingly.

"Because he knows too much," he repeated, in the same hoarse whisper.
"This is a so-called seagoing destroyer; but no one but a fool would
buck one into a head sea; and that's what's coming, with a big blow,
too. Remember the English boat that broke her back in the North Sea?"

"Hello, Jenkins--you alive?" answered one, and others asked of his
health.

"I'm pretty near all right," he said to them. "I've been able to move
and speak a little for twenty-four hours, but I saved my energy. I
wasn't sure of myself, though, or I'd ha' nabbed Denman when he came in
here for the pistols."

"Has he got them?" queried a few, and they examined the empty bunk.

"He sure has," they continued. "Got 'em all. Oh, we're in for it."

"Not necessarily," said Jenkins. "I've listened to all this powwow, and
I gather that you got drunk to the last man, and he gathered you in."

"That's about it, Jenkins," assented Sampson. "We all got gloriously
drunk."

"And before you got drunk you made this pin-headed, educated rat"--he
jerked his thumb toward Forsythe--"your commander."

"Well--we needed a navigator, and you were out of commission, Jenkins."

"I'm in commission now, though, and when we get on deck