The swimming head kept falling backward toward the ground.  And for Kieran, as he felt his enemy weaken, the purple lights were flashing again.  The call of battle was ringing in his ears; came back to him the memory of more careless days, when he lived for this kind of thing.  After all, what was life but a means whereby to give one’s spirit play?  And yet again—­and yet—­was he no more than a brute himself?  What was the use?  What good would it all do?  And suddenly he loosed his grip, and the inert body of the bosun rolled down the tarpaulined hatch and onto the steel deck.

Noyes found himself gasping, almost as if he were in the fight himself.  Then he noted that Kieran had raised his hand and was addressing the crew.  “Holdup!  You said the fight would settle it.  Mind your words now—­fair play for one against you all.  Fair play, I say,” and they might have scattered before this blazing, fighting pump-man in the full lust of his power but for the carpenter, who poised a hammer to throw.  “What! you would!” yelled Kieran.  A leap, a pass, and his fist smashed into the lowering face.  Over keeled the carpenter, a tall man, like a falling spar.

“Put that man in irons!” Noyes jumped at the voice.  The captain was leaning over the rail beside him.

IV

“Irons?” The pump-man’s head went into the air.  For a moment he stood poised on the hatch like a statue.  “Irons?” His face paled and hardened and his arms stiffened; but instantaneously, as half a dozen reached out to seize him, he ducked and twisted and side-stepped, and two, who could not be avoided, he knocked swiftly out of his way.  He cracked a fist into one face, then the other.  There was no malice in it; they simply barred his way to freedom.  He leaped from combing to combing of the open hatches.  It was thirty feet to the bottom of any one of these empty tanks, and those who followed did so at creeping speed.

He was clear of the mob.  A light bound and he was on the ship’s rail beside the after-rigging.

The captain, leaning as far out as the chart deck would allow, shook a raging arm at Kieran.  “You’ll assault, you’ll batter my men right and left, will you, you crazy mutineer?”

“Don’t call me a mutineer, captain—­I’ve disobeyed no order.”

“You are a mutineer.  I declare you one now.  And you’ll go into irons.”

“You’ll never put me in irons.”

“You’ll go into irons or you’ll go over the side.”

[Illustration:  “Don’t call me a mutineer, captain—­I’ve disobeyed no order”]

“Well, maybe I’ll go over the side.  But before I go, if I have to go, I’ll have a word to say.  You’ve been trying to break my nerve from the beginning.  I know your kind that bully and starve your crew, and won’t have a man on your ship that you can’t bully and starve.  And so you set your bully bosun to do me—­do me to death, if he had to.  And when he’s not clever enough nor able enough, you’d put me in irons—­in irons here on the high seas—­out here where no law can get you!”