might have scattered before this blazing, fighting pump-man in the full
lust of his power but for the carpenter, who poised a hammer to throw.
"What! you would!" yelled Kieran. A leap, a pass, and his fist smashed
into the lowering face. Over keeled the carpenter, a tall man, like a
falling spar.

"Put that man in irons!" Noyes jumped at the voice. The captain was
leaning over the rail beside him.

IV

"Irons?" The pump-man's head went into the air. For a moment he stood
poised on the hatch like a statue. "Irons?" His face paled and hardened
and his arms stiffened; but instantaneously, as half a dozen reached out
to seize him, he ducked and twisted and side-stepped, and two, who could
not be avoided, he knocked swiftly out of his way. He cracked a fist
into one face, then the other. There was no malice in it; they simply
barred his way to freedom. He leaped from combing to combing of the open
hatches. It was thirty feet to the bottom of any one of these empty
tanks, and those who followed did so at creeping speed.

He was clear of the mob. A light bound and he was on the ship's rail
beside the after-rigging.

The captain, leaning as far out as the chart deck would allow, shook a
raging arm at Kieran. "You'll assault, you'll batter my men right and
left, will you, you crazy mutineer?"

"Don't call me a mutineer, captain--I've disobeyed no order."

"You are a mutineer. I declare you one now. And you'll go into irons."

"You'll never put me in irons."

"You'll go into irons or you'll go over the side."

[Illustration: "Don't call me a mutineer, captain--I've disobeyed no
order"]

"Well, maybe I'll go over the side. But before I go, if I have to go,
I'll have a word to say. You've been trying to break my nerve from the
beginning. I know your kind that bully and starve your crew, and won't
have a man on your ship that you can't bully and starve. And so you set
your bully bosun to do me--do me to death, if he had to. And when he's
not clever enough nor able enough, you'd put me in irons--in irons here
on the high seas--out here where no law can get you!"

The first officer was now on the deck beneath the pump-man. "You'd
better come down, Kieran. It will be the safest way in the end."

"Mr. Brown, you're a good officer, and I don't want to cross you, but
you're not going to put me in irons."

The ship was rolling gently. Kieran rested one hand lightly, by way of
balance, on a stay, and kicked his shoes over