While the mother-whale expressing her bereavement in terms of violence and destruction, was withdrawing the necessary distance for another charge, all hands of the Mary Turner gathered about the starboard boat swung outboard ready for lowering.  A respectable hill of case goods, water-kegs, and personal dunnage was piled on the deck alongside.  A glance at this, and at the many men of fore and aft, demonstrated that it was to be a perilously overloaded boat.

“We want the sailors with us, at any rate—­they can row,” said Simon Nishikanta.

“But do we want you?” Grimshaw queried gloomily.  “You take up too much room, for your size, and you’re a beast anyway.”

“I guess I’ll be wanted,” the pawnbroker observed, as he jerked open his shirt, tearing out the four buttons in his impetuousness and showing a Colt’s .44 automatic, strapped in its holster against the bare skin of his side under his left arm, the butt of the weapon most readily accessible to any hasty dip of his right hand.  “I guess I’ll be wanted.  But just the same we can dispense with the undesirables.”

“If you will have your will,” the wheat-farmer conceded sardonically, although his big hand clenched involuntarily as if throttling a throat.  “Besides, if we should run short of food you will prove desirable—­for the quantity of you, I mean, and not otherwise.  Now just who would you consider undesirable?—­the black nigger?  He ain’t got a gun.”

But his pleasantries were cut short by the whale’s next attack—­another smash at the stern that carried away the rudder and destroyed the steering gear.

“How much water?” Captain Doane queried of the mate.

“Three feet, sir—­I just sounded,” came the answer.  “I think, sir, it would be advisable to part-load the boat; then, right after the next time the whale hits us, lower away on the run, chuck the rest of the dunnage in, and ourselves, and get clear.”

Captain Doane nodded.

“It will be lively work,” he said.  “Stand ready, all of you.  Steward, you jump aboard first and I’ll pass the chronometer to you.”

Nishikanta bellicosely shouldered his vast bulk up to the captain, opened his shirt, and exposed his revolver.

“There’s too many for the boat,” he said, “and the steward’s one of ’em that don’t go along.  Get that.  Hold it in your head.  The steward’s one of ’em that don’t go along.”

Captain Doane coolly surveyed the big automatic, while at the fore of his consciousness burned a vision of his flat buildings in San Francisco.

He shrugged his shoulders.  “The boat would be overloaded, with all this truck, anyway.  Go ahead, if you want to make it your party, but just bear in mind that I’m the navigator, and that, if you ever want to lay eyes on your string of pawnshops, you’d better see that gentle care is taken of me.—­Steward!”

Daughtry stepped close.