g you; or
will you swing at New York?"

I could see their whole performance in shadow, as they heard the hail.
One of them cocked a pistol, and the rest huddled more closely
together.

"Very well," continued the skipper, ironically deliberate. "You've got
a couple of planks between you and eternity. I'm going to fire through
that galley."

He raised his rifle at the word, and let go straight at the corner of
the light wood erection. A dull groan followed, and by the shadow on
the deck I saw one man fall forward amongst the others, who held him up
with their shoulders; but his blood ran in a thick stream out to the
top of the hatchway, and then ran back as the ship heaved to the seas.

For the fifth time the skipper hailed them.

"There's one down amongst you," he said; "and that's the beginning of
it; I'm going to blow that shanty to hell, and you with it."

He raised his rifle, but as he did so one of them answered for the
first time with his revolver, and the bullet sang above our heads. The
skipper's shot was quick in reply; and the wood of the shanty flew in
splinters as the bullet shivered it. A second man sprang to his feet
with a shout, and then fell across the deck, lying full to be seen in
the moonlight.

"That's two of you," continued the skipper, as calm as ever he was in
Portsmouth harbour; "we'll make it three for luck." But at the
suggestion they all made a run forward, and lay flat right out by the
cable. There we could hear them blubbering like children.

The skipper was of a mind to end the thing there and then. He sprang
down the ladder to the deck, and we followed him. They fired three
shots as we rushed on them; but the butt ends of the two muskets did
the rest. Three of them went down straight as felled poplars. The
others fell upon their knees and implored mercy; and they got it, but
not until the skipper, who now seemed roused to all the fury of great
anger, set to kicking them lustily, and with no discrimination--for
they all had their full share of it.

We had the other hands up by this, and, despite the tragedy and horror
of the thing, a smile came to me as the true men set to binding the
others at the skipper's order; for Piping Jack and Planks, and the
whole ten of them, fell into such a train of swearing as would have
done your heart good to hear. They got them below at the first break of
dawn, and the dead they covered; while Paolo, who lay groaning, we
carried to a cabin in the