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"It's a case of mutiny first, most probably; and then, murder," said the second lieutenant, gravely, stepping over the coaming of the hatchway on to the deck of the poop as he emerged from the companion way.
But, determined to make quite sure, I swung my legs over the coaming and quietly dropped down into the close, pungent-smelling place.
The mate sat down on the hatch coaming, lit his pipe, and gave himself up to meditation for fully five minutes, at the end of which time McGuffey was aware that his imagination was about to come to the front once more. "How'll yer do it?" inquired McGuffey politely. "How'll I do it? Easy as fallin' through an open hatch.
After that, you can take the helm; I'm played out." The man shouted something to his companion and then seized the halyards, and the sloop drove on again, furiously, with an increased spread of canvas, while Carroll stood holding on by the coaming until the boat dropped back.
I was down on the main deck, sitting on the planks, with my back propping up the front of the poop, my arms crossed, and my chin on my chest, dhreaming that I was back at school in dear old Dublin, when I was startled broad awake by a shock that sent me sprawling as far for'ard as the coaming of the after- hatch, to the accompaniment of the most awful crunching, ripping, and crashing sounds, as the Joan sawed her way steadily into the vitals of the craft that we had struck.
The worst of the surf was abreast of their quarter now, and less-troubled water stretched away ahead. Carroll had hardly noticed this, however, when there was a second heavy crash and the sloop stopped suddenly. The comber to windward that should have lifted her up, broke all over her, flinging the boat on deck upon the saloon skylight and pouring inches deep over the coaming into the well.
Tematau and Tepi each fired two or three shots in quick succession, but missed, and then a very heavy bullet struck the side of the coaming of the steering-well in which I was seated, glanced off and ploughed along the deck, and the second boat now began firing into us with breechloading rifles of some sort. "Let me try," I said to Tematau, clambering out of the well into the cabin.
"Then, come along o' me," the good-natured salt said, and lifting the scuttle communicating with the hold forwards, he told us to get down into the forepeak, showing us how to swing by our hands from the coaming round the hole in the deck, as there was no ladder-way.
One o'clock came, then two; the captain gloomed and chafed, as he held to the coaming of the house, and if ever I saw dormant murder in man's eye, it was in his. God help the hand that should have disobeyed him. Of a sudden, he turned towards the mate, who was doing his trick at the wheel. "Two points on the port bow," I heard him say. And he took the wheel himself.
On the second night after leaving the presidio, Kit sat on the coaming of a small steam launch that lurched across the long undulations rolling in from the Caribbean. It had been blowing fresh, and although the wind had dropped the swell ran high.
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