“Perdosa,” I repeated, “drop that knife.”

The crisis had come, but my resolution was fully prepared for it.  I should not have cared greatly if I had had to shoot the man—­as I certainly should have done had he disobeyed.  There would then have been one less to deal with in the final accounting, which strangely enough I now for a moment never doubted would come.  I had not before aimed at a man’s life, so you can see to what tensity the baffling mystery had strung me.

Perdosa hesitated a fraction of an instant.  I really think he might have chanced it, but Handy Solomon, who had been watching me closely, growled at him.

“Drop it, you fool!” he said.

Perdosa let fall the knife.

“Now, get at that cable,” I commanded, still at white heat.  I stood over him until he was well at work, then turned back to set tasks for the other men.  Handy Solomon met me halfway.

“Begging your pardon, Mr. Eagen,” said he, “I want a word with you.”

“I have nothing to say to you,” I snapped, still excited.

“It ain’t reasonable not to hear a man’s say,” he advised in his most conciliatory manner, “I’m talking for all of us.”

He paused a moment, took my silence for consent, and went ahead.

“Begging your pardon, Mr. Eagen,” said he, “we ain’t going to do any more useless work.  There ain’t no laziness about us, but we ain’t going to be busy at nothing.  All the camp work and the haulin’ and cuttin’ and cleanin’ and the rest of it, we’ll do gladly.  But we ain’t goin’ to pound any more cable, and you can kiss the Book on that.”

“You mean to mutiny?” I asked.

He made a deprecatory gesture.

“Put us aboard ship, sir, and let us hear the Old Man give his orders, and you’ll find no mutiny in us.  But here ashore it’s different.  Did the Old Man give orders to pound the cable?”

“I represent the captain,” I stammered.

He caught the evasion.  “I thought so.  Well, if you got any kick on us, please, sir, go get the Old Man.  If he says to our face, pound cable, why pound cable it is.  Ain’t that right, boys?”

They murmured something.  Perdosa deliberately dropped his hammer and joined the group.  My hand strayed again toward the sawed-off Colt’s 45.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said Handy Solomon, almost kindly.  “You couldn’t kill us all.  And w’at good would it do?  I asks you that.  I can cut down a chicken with my knife at twenty feet.  You must surely see, sir, that I could have killed you too easy while you were covering Pancho there.  This ain’t got to be a war, Mr. Eagen, just because we don’t want to work without any sense to it.”

There was more of the same sort.  I had plenty of time to see my dilemma.  Either I would have to abandon my attempt to keep the men busy, or I would have to invoke the authority of Captain Selover.  To do the latter would be to destroy it.  The master had become a stuffed figure, a bogie with which to frighten, an empty bladder that a prick would collapse.  With what grace I could muster, I had to give in.