It was just then that pandemonium broke out on deck—­a shot, a string of shots and a bedlam of howls and yells.  Overhead was bedlam, too.  The skipper’s tune changed instanter.  He had been singing out to Mister Lynch to “topsail haul,” and to the tradesmen to man the boat falls—­but now he was screaming to the latter in a voice shaken with excitement—­or panic—­to regain their posts, to get into the roundhouse and “turn loose on ’em—­pepper ’em!  And, for God’s sake, throw out the flares!”

Oh, the Great Eliminator was shocked most unpleasantly In that moment, I think—­to discover, when his trusty mate was overboard, that his mutinous crew had firearms!

I looked to Newman for orders, for he was now in command of our forlorn hope.  But he had his arm about the lady’s shoulders, and was speaking urgently into her ear.  My thought was of a place to hide.  I ran towards the cabin alleyway.  I had no intention of going out on that dangerous deck, my object was to see if the inner door to the sail-locker was unlocked.  In the sail-locker, I thought, we could hide, the three of us, until the fight died down.

But my design was frustrated.  Before I reached the sail-locker, the door to the deck, at the end of the alleyway, burst open, and the tradesman, Morton, pitched headlong over the base-board.  He scrambled to his hands and knees and scuttled towards me.  There was a whistling thud near my head.  I leaped back into the cabin, out of range, so quickly I tripped and sat down hard upon the deck.  For a shot fired after the fleeting Morton had just missed my skull.

Morton crawled into the saloon, and looked at me with a stupid wonder in his face.  He was wounded; he nursed his shoulder, and there was a spreading stain upon his white shirt.

“They have guns—­in the rigging,” says he.  Then he grunted, and collapsed, unconscious.

The heavy roar of shotguns, for which my ear was cocked, did not come.  There were two pistols in action overhead, and pistol shots rattled forward, and I could tell from the sounds that a free fight was raging somewhere on the main deck.  But the heavier discharges did not come.  For an instant I thought—­aye, and hoped!—­that the tradesmen had been cut off from the roundhouse.

Suddenly the saloon grew bright with a reflected glare.  I was on my feet again, and I peered into the alleyway, looking out through the door Morton had opened.  The roundhouse cut off any view of the main deck, but I could see that the whole deck, aye, the whole ship, was alight with a growing glare, a dazzling greenish-white light.

Then I knew what Captain Swope meant when he screamed for “flares.”  Distress flares, signal flares, such as a ship in trouble might use.  He had stocked the roundhouse with them.

Cunning, aye, deadly cunning.  This was something Boston and Blackie had not dreamed of.  A flare thrown on deck when the men came aft—­and slaughter made easy for the defenders of the roundhouse!