ing scowl upon his face, he would never have addressed him
at such an unpropitious moment. But imagining that his question had not
been heard, the youth repeated it.

Newman turned, and seeing the lad standing in an attitude of expectancy,
asked him in savage tones what he was doing there.

"Nothing, sir; I only----"

"I'll teach you that a man doing nothing doesn't suit me when I'm
in charge of the deck of this ship!" and he struck the boatsteerer a
terrific blow in the mouth, which knocked him off the poop on to the
main deck.

When Ned Rodman came to, he found his head supported by his brother and
young Wray, and the rest of the hands on deck standing around him in
sympathetic silence. Newman was the most liked of all the officers,
and the lad whom he had struck down had been rather a favourite of his,
principally, it was supposed, because the two Rodmans came from the same
town as himself; and when the disturbance had arisen with the cooper,
and the two brothers had been put in irons, Newman had several times
expressed his sorrow to them when he had visited them in their prison.
His sudden outburst of violence to Ned Rodman was therefore a surprise
to the men generally; and several of them glanced threateningly at the
figure of the fourth mate, who was now striding to and fro on the poop,
occasionally hailing the look-outs in angry tones, and asking if any
more boat-lights were visible.

Gerald Rodman, though no words escaped his lips as he wiped away the
blood which welled from a terrible cut on his brother's temple, had in
his eyes a red light of passion that boded ill for the fourth mate when
the time came. He was five years older than his brother, and, although
both were boatsteerers, and had made many cruises in the Pacific, this
was the first time they had been shipmates. Unlike Ned, he was a man of
a passionate and revengeful nature, and the second mate, to whose boat
he belonged, had warned the cooper of the _Shawnee_ never to meet Gerald
Rodman ashore alone.

"He is a man who will never forgive an injury, and I would not care to
be in your shoes if he gets you by yourself one day."

And, as a matter of fact, Gerald Rodman had sworn to himself, when he
lay in irons, in the sail-locker, to have his revenge upon both the
cooper and Captain Lucy, should he ever meet either of them ashore at
any of the islands the barque was likely to touch at during her cruise.
He was a man of great physical strength, a