“He won’t!” I raged, testing the weight of the belaying-pin.  “I’ll batter my way out of here and take him by the throat if it’s the last act of my life!  If you won’t fight, I will!”

I braced my feet on the plunging deck of the forecastle and shook my head like a maddened animal.  The seas outside assailed our bows, and their fury thrilled me, and seemed a part of my desire to slay.  I tore off my jacket and started for the scuttle with the belaying-pin gripped in my hand, bent on battering down the barrier which kept us from the upper deck.

“Not that,” said Riggs, seizing me.  “You’ll have them down upon us, or they’ll turn the firehose down the scuttle and drown us like rats.  I’ve broken too many mutinies, Mr. Trenholm.  You can’t do that.”

“But let’s do something,” I pleaded.  “We might as well be planning something as to be sitting here weeping over what has happened.”

We stopped to listen as the hammering between decks grew louder.  The pirates were smashing the chests that held the gold, and to us in our prison the noise of their work was ominous—­as if they were building a gallows and we were condemned men.

“They’ve got it,” said Riggs.  “When they’ve stowed the boats with it they’ll open her sea-valves, and down we’ll go.  If there was a chance in the world, Mr. Trenholm, I’d fight; but, being a landsman, you don’t understand how these things work out.  They are probably driving her toward the coast now—­we’ve been making an easting, as I can tell from her roll, and, as they’ll be well off the steamer-lanes by daylight, they may wait until they can see where they will make their landing.

“But, if we give them trouble, they’ll make sure of putting us out of the way before they abandon ship.  Take it calm, and we may see a way out of it; but there is nothing to gain by opening the fight again, fixed as we are.”

“It’s a dismal outlook,” I confessed, impressed by his coolness in spite of his surrender to the situation.

“You may be right, but if you will put your wits to work you may see a way.”

“If I had any cartridges—­”

“Cartridges!  Have you a pistol?”

He drew a heavy revolver from his pocket and dropped the empty cylinder into his palm, and I gave a roar of joy at the sight of it, for I knew that it would take the bullets I had found in Harris’s pocket.

“A forty-four!  Here!  These will fit!” and I plucked a handful of the precious cartridges which were suddenly transformed from so much useless lead and powder into deadly missiles which might yet save our lives and the ship.

“Our luck has turned!” I cried, slapping him on the back and putting six of the greasy slugs into the cylinder and snapping it back into position.

“We can fight them now, captain.  Only let me get sight on one of those murderers and I’ll drill him—­Thirkle and Buckrow and the whole lot of ’em!”