The Mutiny of the Elsinore

through the uproar I heard the reiterant, monotonous explosions from the Colt’s .44

I saw the Italian, Mike Cipriani, clutch savagely at his abdomen and sink slowly to the deck.  Shorty, the Japanese half-caste, clown that he was, dancing and grinning on the outskirts of the struggle, with a final grimace and hysterical giggle led the retreat across the poop and down the poop-ladder.  Never had I seen a finer exemplification of mob psychology.  Shorty, the most unstable-minded of the individuals who composed this mob, by his own instability precipitated the retreat in which the mob joined.  When he broke before the steady discharge of the automatic in the hand of the mate, on the instant the rest broke with him.  Least-balanced, his balance was the balance of all of them.

Chantz, bleeding prodigiously, was one of the first on Shorty’s heels.  I saw Nosey Murphy pause long enough to throw his knife at the mate.  The missile went wide, with a metallic clang struck the brass tip of one of the spokes of the Elsinore’s wheel, and clattered on the deck.  The second mate, with his empty revolver, and Bert Rhine with his sheath-knife, fled past me side by side.

Mr. Pike emerged from the booby-hatch and with an unaimed shot brought down Bill Quigley, one of the “bricklayers,” who fell at my feet.  The last man off the poop was the Maltese Cockney, and at the top of the ladder he paused to look back at Mr. Pike, who, holding the automatic in both hands, was taking careful aim.  The Maltese Cockney, disdaining the ladder, leaped through the air to the main deck.  But the Colt merely clicked.  It was the last bullet in it that had fetched down Bill Quigley.

And the poop was ours.

Events still crowded so closely that I missed much.  I saw the steward, belligerent and cautious, his long knife poised for a slash, emerge from the chart-house.  Margaret followed him, and behind her came Wada, who carried my .22 Winchester automatic rifle.  As he told me afterwards, he had brought it up under instructions from her.

Mr. Pike was glancing with cool haste at his Colt to see whether it was jammed or empty, when Margaret asked him the course.

“By the wind,” he shouted to her, as he bounded for’ard.  “Put your helm hard up or we’ll be all aback.”

Ah!—yeoman and henchman of the race, he could not fail in his fidelity to the ship under his command.  The iron of all his years of iron training was there manifest.  While mutiny spread red, and death was on the wing, he could not forget his charge, the ship, the Elsinore , the insensate fabric compounded of steel and hemp and woven cotton that was to him glorious with personality.

Margaret waved Wada in my direction as she ran to the wheel.  As Mr. Pike passed the corner of the chart- house, simultaneously there was a report from amidships and the ping of a bullet against the steel wall.  I saw the man who fired the shot.  It was the cowboy, Steve Roberts.

As for the mate, he ducked in behind the sheltering jiggermast, and even as he ducked his left hand dipped into his side coat-pocket, so that when he had gained shelter it was coming out with a fresh clip of cartridges.  The empty clip fell to the deck, the loader clip slipped up the hollow butt, and he was good for eight more shots.

Wada turned the little automatic rifle over to me, where I still stood under the weather cloth at the break of the poop.

“All ready,” he said.  “You take off safety.”

“Get Roberts,” Mr. Pike called to me.  “He’s the best shot for’ard.  If you can’t get ’m, jolt the fear of God into him anyway.”

It was the first time I had a human target, and let me say, here and now, that I am convinced I am immune to buck fever.  There he was before me, less than a hundred feet distant, in the gangway between the door to Davis ’ room and the starboard-rail, manoeuvring for another shot at Mr. Pike.

I must have missed Steve Roberts that first time, but I came so near him that he jumped.  The next instant he had located me and turned his revolver on me.  But he had no chance.  My little automatic was discharging as fast as I could tickle the trigger with my fore-finger.  The cowboy’s first shot went wild of me, because my bullet arrived ere he got his swift aim.  He swayed and stumbled backward, but the bullets—ten of them—poured from the muzzle of my Winchester like water from a garden hose.  It was a stream of lead I played upon him.  I shall never know how many times I hit him, but I am confident that after he had begun his long staggering fall at least three additional bullets entered him ere he impacted on the deck.  And even as he was falling, aimlessly and mechanically, stricken then with death, he managed twice again to discharge his weapon.

And after he struck the deck he never moved.  I do believe he died in the air.

As I held up my gun and gazed at the abruptly-deserted main-deck I was aware of Wada’s touch on my arm.  I looked.  In his hand were a dozen little .22 long, soft-nosed, smokeless cartridges.  He wanted me to reload.  I threw on the safety, opened the magazine, and tilted the rifle so that he could let the fresh cartridges of themselves slide into place.

“Get some more,” I told him.

Scarcely had he departed on the errand when Bill Quigley, who lay at my feet, created a diversion.  I jumped—yes, and I freely confess that I yelled—with startle and surprise, when I felt his paws clutch my ankles and his teeth shut down on the calf of my leg.

It was Mr. Pike to the rescue.  I understand now the Western hyperbole of “hitting the high places.”  The mate did not seem in contact with the deck.  My impression was that he soared through the air to me, landing beside me, and, in the instant of landing, kicking out with one of those big feet of his.  Bill Quigley was kicked clear away from me, and the next moment he was flying overboard.  It was a clean throw.  He never touched the rail.

Whether Mike Cipriani, who, till then, had lain in a welter, began crawling aft in quest of safety, or whether he intended harm to Margaret at the wheel, we shall never know; for there was no opportunity given him to show his purpose.  As swiftly as Mr. Pike could cross the deck with those giant bounds, just that swiftly was the Italian in the air and following Bill Quigley overside.

The mate missed nothing with those eagle eyes of his as he returned along the poop.  Nobody was to be seen on the main deck.  Even the lookout had deserted the forecastle-head, and the Elsinore , steered by Margaret, slipped a lazy two knots through the quiet sea.  Mr. Pike was apprehensive of a shot from ambush, and it was not until after a scrutiny of several minutes that he put his pistol into his side coat-pocket and snarled for’ard:

“Come out, you rats!  Show your ugly faces!  I want to talk with you!”

Guido Bombini, gesticulating peaceable intentions and evidently thrust out by Bert Rhine, was the first to appear.  When it was observed that Mr. Pike did not fire, the rest began to dribble into view.  This continued till all were there save the cook, the two sail-makers, and the second mate.  The last to come out were Tom Spink, the boy Buckwheat, and Herman Lunkenheimer, the good-natured but simple-minded German; and these three came out only after repeated threats from Bert Rhine, who, with Nosey Murphy and Kid Twist, was patently in charge.  Also, like a faithful dog, Guido Bombini fawned close to him.

“That will do—stop where you are,” Mr. Pike commanded, when the crew was scattered abreast, to starboard and to port, of Number Three hatch.

It was a striking scene.  Mutiny on the high seas !  That phrase, learned in boyhood from my Marryatt and Cooper, recrudesced in my brain.  This was it—mutiny on the high seas in the year nineteen thirteen—and I was part of it, a perishing blond whose lot was cast with the perishing but lordly blonds, and I had already killed a man.

Mr. Pike, in the high place, aged and indomitable; leaned his arm on the rail at the break of the poop and gazed down at the mutineers, the like of which I’ll wager had never been assembled in mutiny before.  There were the three gangsters and ex-jailbirds, anything but seamen, yet in control of this affair that was peculiarly an affair of the sea.  With them was the Italian hound, Bombini, and beside them were such strangely assorted men as Anton Sorensen, Lars Jacobsen, Frank Fitzgibbon, and Richard Giller—also Arthur Deacon the white slaver, John Hackey the San Francisco hoodlum, the Maltese Cockney, and Tony the suicidal Greek.

I noticed the three strange ones, shouldering together and standing apart from the others as they swayed to the lazy roll and dreamed with their pale, topaz eyes.  And there was the Faun, stone deaf but observant, straining to understand what was taking place.  Yes, and Mulligan Jacobs and Andy Fay were bitterly and eagerly side by side, and Ditman Olansen, crank-eyed, as if drawn by some affinity of bitterness, stood behind them, his head appearing between their heads.  Farthest advanced of all was Charles Davis, the man who by all rights should long since be dead, his face with its wax-like pallor startlingly in contrast to the weathered faces of the rest.