Pike had just relieved me yesterday afternoon, when
the second mate climbed the forecastle-head and sauntered to the very
eyes of the _Elsinore_, where he stood gazing overside.

"Take a crack at 'm," Mr. Pike said.

It was a long shot, and I was taking slow and careful aim, when he
touched my arm.

"No; don't," he said.

I lowered the little rifle and looked at him inquiringly.

"You might hit him," he explained. "And I want him for myself."

* * * * *

Life is never what we expect it to be. All our voyage from Baltimore
south to the Horn and around the Horn has been marked by violence and
death. And now that it has culminated in open mutiny there is no more
violence, much less death. We keep to ourselves aft, and the mutineers
keep to themselves for'ard. There is no more harshness, no more snarling
and bellowing of commands; and in this fine weather a general festival
obtains.

Aft, Mr. Pike and Margaret alternate with phonograph and piano; and
for'ard, although we cannot see them, a full-fledged "foo-foo" band makes
most of the day and night hideous. A squealing accordion that Tom Spink
says was the property of Mike Cipriani is played by Guido Bombini, who
sets the pace and seems the leader of the foo-foo. There are two broken-
reeded harmonicas. Someone plays a jew's-harp. Then there are home-made
fifes and whistles and drums, combs covered with paper, extemporized
triangles, and bones made from ribs of salt horse such as negro minstrels
use.

The whole crew seems to compose the band, and, like a lot of monkey-folk
rejoicing in rude rhythm, emphasizes the beat by hammering kerosene cans,
frying-pans, and all sorts of things metallic or reverberant. Some
genius has rigged a line to the clapper of the ship's bell on the
forecastle-head and clangs it horribly in the big foo-foo crises, though
Bombini can be heard censuring him severely on occasion. And to cap it
all, the fog-horn machine pumps in at the oddest moments in imitation of
a big bass viol.

And this is mutiny on the high seas! Almost every hour of my
deck-watches I listen to this infernal din, and am maddened into desire
to join with Mr. Pike in a night attack and put these rebellious and
inharmonious slaves to work.

Yet they are not entirely inharmonious. Guido Bombini has a respectable
though untrained tenor voice, and has surprised me by a variety of
selections, not only from Verdi, but from Wagner and Massenet. Bert
Rhine a