er physique reasserted itself.

"Some one slipping this way in the shadows, Captain Blythe," spoke up
Morgan, who was on guard.

Sam had been reloading his revolver. At once he stepped to the door.

"Who goes there? Hands up! I have you covered. Move forward into the
light. Oh, it's you, Smith! What do you want?"

"I've come to give myself up, sir. I'm sick of it. Very likely you won't
believe me, sir, but I joined under compulsion to save my life. I didn't
dare leave them so long as Captain Bothwell----"

"_Mr._ Bothwell," corrected Blythe sharply.

"Mr. Bothwell, sir, I meant. He watched me as if I were a prisoner."

"I think I noticed you on my bridge with a revolver in your hand," the
Englishman told him dryly.

"Yes, sir. But I fired in the air, except once when I shot the fireman
who was killing Mr. Sedgwick over the wheel."

I turned in astonishment to Blythe.

"That explains it. Some one certainly saved me. If you didn't it must
have been Smith."

"That's one point to your credit," Blythe admitted. "So now you want to
be an honest man?"

"I always have been at heart, sir. I had no chance to come before. They
kept me unarmed except during the fighting."

His head bandaged with a blood-soaked bandanna, his face unshaven and
bloodstained, Smith was a sorry enough sight. But his eye met the
captain's fairly. I don't think it occurred to any of us seriously to
doubt him.

Sam laughed grimly.

"You look the worse for the wars, my friend."

Smith put his hand to the bound head and looked at the captain
reproachfully.

"Your cutlas did it at the pilot-house, sir."

"You should be more careful of the company you keep, my man."

"Yes, sir. I did try to slip away once, but they brought me back."

"Let me look at your head. Perhaps I can do something for it," Evelyn
suggested to the sailor.

While she prepared the dressings I put the question to Smith.

"Jimmie. Oh, yes, sir. He's down in the f'c'sle. Gallagher ran across
him and took him down there."

This was good news, the best I had heard since the mutiny began. It
seemed that the boy had slipped out to get a shot at the enemy, and that
his escape had been cut off by the men returning from the attack.

Judging from what Smith said the men were very down-hearted and in
vicious spirits. They were ready to bite at the first hand in reach,
after the manner of trapped coyotes.

"How many of them are there?" I asked.

"Let's see. There's the