One Chinaman slid down the ladder-rail whirling like an acrobat in the air before he landed, and another followed him, but they were the two last, and Buckrow and Long Jim started after them.  The first started for the forecastle and began to throw off the chains, standing between me and the deck, so that I could not see what was happening for a minute.  He worked frantically, jabbering all the while, and, as I thought, calling to his companion.

He couldn’t have been at work more than a minute, but to me it seemed an hour or more, and I prayed that he might succeed in opening the scuttle, and I wondered at his surprise if he should throw back the sliding-board and see me come out with upraised pistol.

But a pistol spoke close at hand, and the narrow slit in the board let in the sun again and I saw the Chinaman fall just outside.  Buckrow and Long Jim were running back to the bridge.  Thirkle yelled something to them and they nodded and went through the starboard passage.

The uproar of the escaping steam was dying out, and I told Riggs what I had witnessed.  The Filipino in the cap was the chief engineer, and we knew that he had led a last sortie against the pirates, determined to die in a last effort to defeat them rather than be shot down or left to drown.

“Sally Ann!” said Riggs.  “If that chinkie had cleared away the chains there we might have got out of here and put in a hand’s work, too.  He won’t have steerage way on her—­her engines have gone dead now.  Feel her swing with that current?”

“They’ve started again,” I said, feeling a tremor in the vessel.

“Here we go!” cried Riggs.  “They’ve opened her sea-valves!”

We listened and stared at each other for a minute while the water sucked and gurgled and the Kut Sang began to vibrate from the flood pouring into her.  Gradually her head began to swing to seaward away from the island, as the current caught her, and, as I looked out I saw Thirkle and Buckrow in the forward boat, lowering away.

“There they go!” I yelled, and we dashed below, hoping that we would have a shot at them as they got clear of the vessel, but, as the ship was swinging outward, and our ports were so far forward, we were kept swinging away from them, and all we had was a bare glimpse of the two boats pulling away from the ship, one of them being towed.

The island was close at hand, a half-mile or more, although it seemed almost within reach, but we lost sight of that in a minute as the head of the Kut Sang stood toward the open sea, and her stern began to settle.

“They had to get out of her when Pedro cut her engines out and lowered her boilers.  It rushed their game, because he wanted to hide her in behind the island, but it won’t make much difference now, Mr. Trenholm—­hear that?  She’s filling rapidly.”

We were drifting broadside in the current now, sweeping down the coast and sinking at the same time.