Chand, was at the wheel and Schmidt on watch. By chance, Schmidt, happened to turn just as Tarzan entered, and seeing him, reached for his gun, at the same time shouting a warning to Chand. Tarzan sprang forward, swift as Ara, the lightning, and struck up Schmidt's hand just as he squeezed the trigger. The bullet lodged in the ceiling, and an instant later, Schmidt was disarmed. In the meantime, Tibbet had covered Chand and disarmed him.
'Take the wheel,' said Tarzan, 'and give me the other gun. Keep a look-out behind you and shoot anyone who tries to take over. You two get down to the cages,' he said to Schmidt and Chand. He followed them down the ladder to the deck and herded them to the cage where Krause and Asoka were confined.
'Open that up, Janette,' he said; 'I have two more animals for our menagerie.'
'This is mutiny,' blustered Schmidt, 'and when I get you to Berlin , you'll be beheaded for it.'
'Get in there,' said Tarzan, and pushed Schmidt so violently, that when he collided with Krause, both men went down.
Above the din of the storm they heard a shot from below, and Tarzan hurried in the direction from which the sound had come. As he descended the ladder, he heard two more shots and the voices of men cursing and screams of pain.
As he came upon the scene of the fight, he saw that his men had been taken from the rear by armed Lascars, but there seemed to have been more noise than damage. One of the Lascars had been wounded. It was he who was screaming. But aside from the single casualty, no damage seemed to have been done on either side. Three of the four Lascars remained on their feet, and they were firing wildly and indiscriminately, as Tarzan came up behind them carrying a gun in each hand.
'Drop your pistols,' he said, 'or I kill.'
The three men swung around then, almost simultaneously. Looking into the muzzles of Tarzan's two pistols, two of the Lascars dropped theirs, but the third took deliberate aim and fired. Tarzan fired at the same instant, and the Lascar clutched at his chest and lurched forward upon his face.
The rest was easy. De Groote found the pistols, rifles, and ammunition taken from the Naiad in Schmidt's cabin, and with all the rest of the party disarmed, Oubanovitch and the remaining Lascars put up no resistance. The Chinese and the impressed members of the Naiad's crew had never offered any, being more than glad to be relieved of service under a madman.
The ship safely in his hands, Tarzan gathered his party into the ship's little saloon. Penelope Leigh still regarded him with disgust not unmixed with terror; to her he was still a wild man, a cannibal who had eaten the Captain and the Swede and would doubtless, sooner or later, eat all of them. The others, however, were appreciative of the strength and courage and intelligence which had released them from a dangerous situation.
' Bolton ,' said Tarzan to the captain of the Naiad, 'you will take command of the ship; de Groote will be your first mate, Tibbet your second. De Groote tells me there are only two cabins on the Saigon . Colonel and Mrs. Leigh will take the Captain's cabin, the two girls will take that which was occupied by the mates.'
'He is actually giving orders to us,' Penelope Leigh whispered to her husband; 'you should do something about it, William; you should be in command.'
'Don't be silly, Auntie,' snapped Patricia Leigh-Burden, in a whisper; 'we owe everything to this man. He was magnificent. If you had seen him spread those bars as though they were made of lead!'
'I can't help it,' said Mrs. Leigh; 'I am not accustomed to being ordered about by naked wild men; why doesn't somebody loan him some trousers?'
'Come, come, Penelope,' said the Colonel, 'if you feel that way about it I'll loan him mine—haw!!—then I won't have any—haw! haw!'
'Don't be vulgar, William,' snapped Mrs. Leigh.
Tarzan went to the bridge and explained to de Groote the arrangements that he had made. 'I'm glad you didn't put me in command,' said the Dutchman; 'I haven't had enough experience. Bolton should be a good man. He used to be in the Royal Navy. How about Oubanovitch?'
'I have sent for him,' replied Tarzan, 'he should be here in a moment.'
'He's against everybody,' said de Groote, 'a died-in-the-wool Communist. Here he comes now.'
Oubanovitch slouched in, sullen and suspicious. 'What are you two doing up here?' he demanded; 'where's Schmidt?'
'He is where you are going if you don't want to carry on with us,' replied Tarzan.
'Where's that?' asked Oubanovitch.
'In a cage with Krause and a couple of Lascars,' replied the ape-man. 'I don't know whether you had anything to do with the mutiny or not, Oubanovitch, but if you care to continue on as engineer, nobody is going to ask any questions.'
The scowling Russian nodded. ' All right,' he said; 'you can't be no worse than that crazy Schmidt.'
'Captain Bolton is in command. Report to him and tell him that you are the engineer. Do you know what has become of the Arab? I haven't seen him for several days.'
'He's always in the engine room keeping warm.'
'Tell him to report to me here on the bridge and ask Captain Bolton to send us a couple of men.'
The two men strained their eyes out into the darkness ahead. They saw the ship's nose plow into a great sea from which she staggered sluggishly. 'It's getting worse,' remarked de Groote.
'Can she weather much more?' asked Tarzan.
'I think so,' said de Groote, 'as long as I can keep it on her quarter, we can keep enough speed to give her steerageway.'
A shot sounded from behind them, and the glass in the window in front of them shattered. Both men wheeled about to see Abdullah Abu Nejm standing at the top of the ladder with a smoking pistol in his hand.
Chapter IX
The Arab fired again, but the plunging and the pitching of the Saigon spoiled his aim and he missed just as Tarzan sprang for him.
The impact of the ape-man's body carried Abdullah backward from the ladder, and both men crashed heavily to the deck below, the Arab beneath—a stunned, inert mass.
The two sailors, whom Captain Bolton was sending to the bridge, came on deck just in time to see what had happened; and they both ran forward, thinking to find a couple of broken, unconscious men, but there was only one in that condition.
Tarzan sprang to his feet, but Abdullah Abu Nejm lay where he had fallen. 'One of you men go below and ask Miss Laon for the keys to the cages,' Tarzan directed; then he seized the Arab by the arms and dragged him back to the cage in which Krause and Schmidt were confined, and when the key was brought, he opened the door and tossed the Arab in. Whether the man were alive or dead, Tarzan did not know or care.
The storm increased in fury, and shortly before daylight the steamer fell into the trough of the sea, rolling on its beam-ends and hanging there for an instant, as though about to capsize; then it would roll back the other way and for another harrowing moment the end seemed inevitable. The change in the motion of the ship awakened Tarzan instantly, and he made his way to the bridge—a feat that was not too difficult for a man who had been raised in a forest by apes and swung through the trees for the greater part of his life, for he climbed to the bridge more often than he walked. He found the two sailors clinging to the wheel, and the Captain to a stanchion.
'What's happened?' he asked.
'The rudder's carried away,' said Bolton . 'If we could rig a sea anchor, we might have a chance of riding it out; but that is impossible in this sea. How the devil did you get up here, with the ship standing on her beam-ends as fast as she can roll from one side to the other?'
'I climbed,' said Tarzan.
Bolton grumbled something that sounded like, 'most extraordinary;' then he said, 'I think it's letting up; if she can take this, we ought to be able to pull through, though even then we're going to be in a pretty bad fix, as I understand from one of these men, that that fellow, Schmidt, destroyed the radio.'
As though to prove what she could do or couldn't do, the Saigon rolled over until her decks were vertical—and hung there. 'My God!' cried one of the sailors; 'she's going over!'
