Chapter XLVII
Margaret was right. The mutiny is not violating standards and
precedents. We have had our hands full for days and nights. Ditman
Olansen, the crank-eyed Berserker, has been killed by Wada, and the
training-ship boy, the one lone cadet of our breed, has gone overside
with the regulation sack of coal at his feet. The poop has been rushed. My illuminating invention has proved a success. The men are getting hungry, and we still sit in command in the high place.
First of all the attack on the poop, two nights ago, in Margaret's watch. No; first, I have made another invention. Assisted by the old steward, who knows, as a Chinese ought, a deal about fireworks, and getting my materials from our signal rockets and Roman candles, I manufactured half a dozen bombs. I don't really think they are very deadly, and I know our extemporized fuses are slower than our voyage is at the present time; but nevertheless the bombs have served the purpose, as you shall see.
And now to the attempt to rush the poop. It was in Margaret's watch, from midnight till four in the morning, when the attack was made. Sleeping on the deck by the cabin skylight, I was very close to her when her revolver went off, and continued to go off.
My first spring was to the tripping-lines on my illuminators. The
igniting and releasing devices worked cleverly. I pulled two of the
tripping-lines, and two of the contraptions exploded into light and noise
and at the same time ran automatically down the jigger-trysail-stays, and
automatically fetched up at the ends of their lines. The illumination
was instantaneous and gorgeous. Henry, the two sail-makers, and the
steward--at least three of them awakened from sound sleep, I am sure--ran
to join us along the break of the poop. All the advantage lay with us, for we were in the dark, while our foes were outlined against the light behind them.
But such light! The powder crackled, fizzed, and spluttered and spilled
out the excess of gasolene from the flaming oakum balls so that streams
of fire dripped down on the main deck beneath. And the stuff of the
signal-flares dripped red light and blue and green.
There was not much of a fight, for the mutineers were shocked by our
fireworks. Margaret fired her revolver haphazardly, while I held my
rifle for any that gained the poop. But the attack faded away as quickly
as it had come. I did see Margaret overshoot some man, scaling the poop
from the port-rail, and the next moment I saw Wada, charging like a
buffalo, jab him in the chest with the spear he had made and thrust the
boarder back and down.
That was all. The rest retreated for'ard on the dead run, while the
three trysails, furled at the foot of the stays next to the mizzen and
set on fire by the dripping gasolene, went up in flame and burned
entirely away and out without setting the rest of the ship on fire. That
is one of the virtues of a ship steel-masted and steel-stayed.
And on the deck beneath us, crumpled, twisted, face hidden so that we
could not identify him, lay the man whom Wada had speared.
And now I come to a phase of adventure that is new to me. I have never
found it in the books. In short, it is carelessness coupled with
laziness, or vice versa. I had used two of my illuminators. Only one
remained. An hour later, convinced of the movement aft of men along the
deck, I let go the third and last and with its brightness sent them
scurrying for'ard. Whether they were attacking the poop tentatively to
learn whether or not I had exhausted my illuminators, or whether or not
they were trying to rescue Ditman Olansen, we shall never know. The
point is: they did come aft; they were compelled to retreat by my
illuminator; and it was my last illuminator. And yet I did not start in, there and then, to manufacture fresh ones. This was carelessness. It was laziness. And I hazarded our lives, perhaps, if you please, on a psychological guess that I had convinced our mutineers that we had an inexhaustible stock of illuminators in reserve.
The rest of Margaret's watch, which I shared with her, was undisturbed. At four I insisted that she go below and turn in, but she compromised by taking my own bed behind the skylight.