tic and
only three are our own breed. Somehow it reminds me of India and of
Clive and Hastings.

And the fine weather continues, and we wonder how long a time must elapse
ere our mutineers eat up their mysterious food and are starved back to
work.

We are almost due west of Valparaiso and quite a bit less than a thousand
miles off the west coast of South America. The light northerly breezes,
varying from north-east to west, would, according to Mr. Pike, work us in
nicely for Valparaiso if only we had sail on the _Elsinore_. As it is,
sailless, she drifts around and about and makes nowhere save for the
slight northerly drift each day.

* * * * *

Mr. Pike is beside himself. In the past two days he has displayed
increasing possession of himself by the one idea of vengeance on the
second mate. It is not the mutiny, irksome as it is and helpless as it
makes him; it is the presence of the murderer of his old-time and admired
skipper, Captain Somers.

The mate grins at the mutiny, calls it a snap, speaks gleefully of how
his wages are running up, and regrets that he is not ashore, where he
would be able to take a hand in gambling on the reinsurance. But the
sight of Sidney Waltham, calmly gazing at sea and sky from the forecastle-
head, or astride the far end of the bowsprit and fishing for sharks,
saddens him. Yesterday, coming to relieve me, he borrowed my rifle and
turned loose the stream of tiny pellets on the second mate, who coolly
made his line secure ere he scrambled in-board. Of course, it was only
one chance in a hundred that Mr. Pike might have hit him, but Sidney
Waltham did not care to encourage the chance.

And yet it is not like mutiny--not like the conventional mutiny I
absorbed as a boy, and which has become classic in the literature of the
sea. There is no hand-to-hand fighting, no crash of cannon and flash of
cutlass, no sailors drinking grog, no lighted matches held over open
powder-magazines. Heavens!--there isn't a single cutlass nor a powder-
magazine on board. And as for grog, not a man has had a drink since
Baltimore.

* * * * *

Well, it is mutiny after all. I shall never doubt it again. It may be
nineteen-thirteen mutiny on a coal-carrier, with feeblings and imbeciles
and criminals for mutineers; but at any rate mutiny it is, and at least
in the number of deaths it is reminiscent of the old days. For things
have happened since last I had opportunity to write up this log. Fo