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It came from one of the squareheads, from Lindquist, a sober, bearded, middle-aged man, the one man among them who could manage a few words of English conversation. "Koom vrom mine town," he said, indicating the tossing form in the bunk. His blue eyes had a worried, puzzled expression, and his voice bespoke puzzled wrath.
The stiffs tumbled over themselves in their eagerness to obey; but not a squarehead budged. They still stood between the mate and his victim. So he drew the revolver out of his pocket, and pointed it at Lindquist. "Lay aft or I'll splatter lead among you!" he said. He meant it.
When he was through, he looked Lindquist in the eyes, and shook his head. "So?" said Lindquist. His eyes, so stupid and dull a while before, were blazing now. Aye, it was evident his law-abiding mind had arrived at a lawless decision; his lowering face boded no good for the brute who had maltreated his young friend. "Gott, if he die!" he said.
The wheel and lookout had been relieved, but the mate did not summon his watch to labor, as was his custom; he kept to the poop, and we heard not a peep from him. The squareheads had taken a lamp from the lamp-locker and a sack of coal from the peak, and Lindquist had the body of Nils upon the forehatch preparing it for sea-burial. He stitched away in silence, his mates watched him in silence.
He would have shot Lindquist, I am sure, for winging a man, or worse, meant little to the mate of the Golden Bough, and the squarehead bravely stood his ground. But the threat to shoot into the men who were shielding him had the effect of drawing the parson out of the foc'sle. He suddenly appeared in the lighted doorway.
Oscar was still too frightened to muster his scant English, but Lindquist talked for him. "He say like dis, sir, Nils ban at da wheel when he koom aft, oond den he yump vrom der wheel oond run for'ard yust like da time da captain thoomp him." "Rot!" says Lynch. "My man, have you permitted a ghost stand your trick at the wheel?" This last to Newman. "Hardly a ghost, sir," answered Newman.
As Lindquist said to me, his blue eyes filled with pain and rage, "I know his mudder. When Nils ban so high, I yump him by mine knee." So it was that rage over the pitiful fate of their dear friend fanned into flame a spark of rebellion in the squarehead's disciplined souls, and caused them, eventually, to leap the barriers of race and caste prejudice and make common cause with the stiffs.
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