I thought, and was silent.

“What’s holdin’ you back?” demanded Boston.  “I know you ain’t afraid.  Look here, Shreve, you know you can’t hold the crowd back.  You and Blackie and me could all be against it, and still they’d go aft.  They’re goin’ to get Swope before Swope gets more o’ them.  And if it’s Big ’Un you’re worryin’ about—­why, we got to do this to save him.  Look here—­let me give you a tip, if the Big ’Un hasn’t:  When Big ’Un come on board this ship he found out somethin’ from the skipper’s Moll that he wanted to find out, and now, if he gets ashore alive with what he found out, there’ll be a sheriff’s necktie party for Yankee Swope.  That’s what all this bloody business has been about.  You can lay your last cent that Swope will get Big ’Un, if we don’t get Swope.”

“Boston, give me that gun,” I said.

He took a look at my face, and smiled, satisfied.  He drew the weapon from under his clothes, a long-barreled, heavy caliber service Colt’s, and passed it to me.  I thrust it out of sight, beneath my own waist-band.

“Now, I’m boss,” I said.  “I’ll give the word.”

His smile widened.  This was what he wanted, as I well knew.  Boston and Blackie could plan and instigate.  But they could not lead that crowd.  The sailors despised them, the stiffs hated and feared them second only to the afterguard.  They needed me as leader.  They flattered themselves, I dare say, that they could control me—­or extinguish me when the time came.

For my part, I had made my decision.  It was a desperate, a terrible decision.  It was necessary that I pretend to fall in with Boston’s plans if I were to execute my decision.

“When it gets dark, I am going aft—­alone,” I told him.  “You and Blackie keep the crowd quiet, and forward of the house, until I return.”

“What you goin’ to do?” he asked.

“Make sure that Newman will be safe when we make the attack,” I explained.  “We must make sure of that—­he’s our navigator.”

“That’s so,” he agreed.  “But how’ll you do it?”

“I’ll kill Captain Swope,” I said.

CHAPTER XIX

I was in earnest.  I meant to do the murder.  Aye, murder is what the law of man would call it, and murder is the right term.  I planned the deed, not in cold blood perhaps, but certainly with coolness and foresight.  I intended to creep aft in the night and shoot down the captain.

But you must understand my motive before you judge.  More than that, you must bear in mind my environment, my character and its background, and the dilemma which faced me.  I intended to become an assassin—­but not for hate, or greed, or, indeed, any personal satisfaction or gain.

I was, remember, a nineteen-year-old barbarian, The impressionable, formative years of my youth had been spent in deepwater foc’sles, among men who obeyed but one law—­fear.  The watch, the gang, was my social unit; loyalty to a shipmate was the one virtue I thoroughly understood and respected.  And it was loyalty to Newman that determined me to kill.