ps
with the captain. There was another flash from Swope's revolver, in
Newman's very face. It was a miss, for Newman's hands--helpless lumps
of flesh but a few moments before--closed upon Swope's neck. I saw
Newman's face. It was a terrible face, the face of an enraged and
smiting god. The great scar stood out like a dark line painted upon
his forehead.

He lifted Swope from his feet with that throat grip. He whirled him
like a flail, and smashed him down upon the deck, and let him go. And
there Yankee Swope lay, sprawled, and still, his head bent back at a
fatal angle. A broken neck, as a glance at the lolling head would
inform; and, as we discovered later, a broken back as well. It was
death that Newman's bare hands dealt in that furious second.

Newman did not waste so much as a glance at the work of his hands. He
had turned to the lady, with a cry in his throat, a low cry of pain and
grief--which changed at once to a shout of gladness. For the lady was
stirring, getting to her feet, or trying to.

Newman gathered her slight form into his great arms. I heard him
exclaim, "Where, Mary? Did it--" And she answered, dazedly, "I am all
right--not hit." He took a step towards me, towards the companion.
The swelling murmur from the deck arrested him.

He walked to the break of the poop, with the woman in his arms. She
seemed like a child held to his breast. He spoke to the men below in a
hushed, solemn voice.

"It is ended," he said. "Swope is dead."

As he stood there, the flares commenced to go out. One by one they
guttered and extinguished, and the black night swept down like a
falling curtain.

Five bells chimed in the cabin.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was the end, even as Newman said. The end of the mutiny, the end of
hate and dissension in that ship, the end, for us, of Newman, himself,
and the lady. Peace came to the _Golden Bough_ that night, for the
first time, I suppose, in her bitter, blood-stained history. A peace
that was bought with suffering and death, as we discovered when we
reckoned the cost of the night's work.

Swope was dead--for which there was a prayer of thanks in every man's
heart. Fitzgibbon was gone, and the Nigger. Boston was dead at my
hand; his partner, Blackie, lay stark in the scuppers, as did also the
stiff named Green, each with a bashed in skull, the handiwork of Mister
Lynch.

Such was the death list for that night's work. It was no heavier I
think--