“Dry up about the paw,” said a voice.  “Lucky for ye it’s not yer neck in a rope.  Can’t break the chain, can I, ‘thout givin’ ye a twist, ye fool!  There it is now—­right aft and on deck, Red, and follow me close!  We’ll git ’em off right enough when ye git above decks.  What’s matter if yer flippers are clear?”

Something rushed toward me in the dark, and again I heard the musical tinkle that made me think of chain-armour.  I pressed my body against the boarding to be clear of the ladder, and made out the figure of a man, crouched down and feeling his way along the passage.  He stumbled up the ladder, and then I heard Petrak close behind him, panting and cursing, and the broken chains on his hands rasping along the bulkhead.

“Wait for me, can’t ye?  Bucky, wait for me!  Stop a bit and give me a hand up—­”

“Oh, come along and stow the gab,” called Buckrow from the head of the companion, but in suppressed tones.  “Keep yer lip shut, the afterguards are on deck here and I don’t know where Thirkle is.  Slip along and give us a hand with a knife or a gun.  Looks like we’ll settle the business quick now.”

Petrak went up the ladder, his progress over each iron step plain to me by the jingle of the chains dangling from his wrists, and before I had settled in my mind what had happened the pair of them were gone.  Buckrow had rescued the little red-headed man from the ship’s brig.

I crawled up the ladder, still holding the crucifix, for it was the only thing in the form of a weapon I possessed, and the manner in which I gripped it improvised it into a hilted dagger, although I remember keeping it more for evidence against Meeker than for any other purpose.  If the sly rascal was still making a fool of Riggs, or denied that he had been below, I felt that his crucifix would be proof against him which he could not deny.

When I emerged from the hood of the companionway I found a high wind was drenching the deck with spray and everything was black and wet and slippery.  The vessel was labouring, and, although there was nothing that could be called a storm, she was bucking into head-swells that rattled her from stem to stern, and the gusts of wind whipped the tips of the waves across her fore-deck spitefully and without warning.

There were probably twenty feet of open well-deck between me and the foot of the ladder leading to the saloon-deck, and, then, I had the dark passageway to traverse for another thirty or forty feet aft before I could gain my room.

I braced myself between the hood of the companion and a thrumming ventilator and listened for some hostile sound.  I was conscious of dim forms all about me, although I could not see them, and I felt as if I had blundered into a desperate game of hide-and-seek.

Thrusting my hands before me into the darkness, I stumbled toward the ladder.  As I was about to grasp it I encountered a wet jacket, and the next instant I found myself gripped in a pair of arms.  The fingers of my enemy shut on the light fabric of my pajama-jacket.  I struck at him with the point of the crucifix and landed a glancing blow in his face, for the knuckles of my hand brushed his jaw.