And so he smiled, and said musingly, and distinctly, to Newman, “A miss is as good as a mile, eh?  But it is a long passage!” The cool insolence of it!  God’s truth, it chilled me, this careless confession of the deed, and threat of what the future held.  And then, as though to remove the last possible doubt in our minds that the slipping of the brace was an accident, that the whole job of striking sail was but a pretext to get Newman aloft, Swope turned to the second mate.

“I think she’ll stand it, Mister,” he said.  “You may as well shake out the t’gan’s’l’s again!”

CHAPTER XII

I went below after that watch with the thought of mutiny stirring in the back of my mind.  But in the back, not the front, mind you.  For mutiny on a ship is a dreadful business, as I, a sailor, well knew.  A neck-stretching business!  Yet there the thought was, and it stuck, and pecked ever more insistently at my consciousness as the days passed.

Of course, I was wild with rage at Swope’s attempt.  And I was anxious on Newman’s account.  You see, I looked upon him as my chum, and—­had he not saved my life, up there, on the yard?  It is true, there were none of the usual manifestations of foc’sle friendship between us; we did not swap tobacco, and yarns, and oaths.  Newman did not permit such intimacy; always he was a man apart, a marked man.  But, from the very first, the man’s personality dominated me, and, after that night on the yardarm, I felt a passionate loyalty to him.  He was not insensible to my friendliness, I knew; he welcomed it, and found comfort in it.

If he had come to me that night, or afterwards, with a scheme for taking the ship, I should have joined in straightway, no matter how harebrained it might seem.  But, of course, he did no such thing.  Indeed, he never mentioned the incident to me, after we left the deck that night.  For all of him, it might never have happened.  And, you may be sure, I did not intrude upon his reserve with queries, or reminiscence.

Nor did the rest of the watch approach him.  Rather did they avoid him, as a dangerous person.  With that thought of rebellion in my mind, I watched my watchmates that night with more tolerance than my eyes had yet shown them.  I wanted to judge what stuff was in them.

The stiffs whispered together and eyed us furtively.  I did not like the stuff I saw in them.  Rough, lawless, held obedient only by fear, the scum of the beach—­I did not like to imagine them sweeping along the decks with restraint cast aside, and passions unleashed.  The squareheads were a different kind.  Good men and sailors, here, but men whose habit of life was submission.  Yet, I saw they were gravely disturbed by what had taken place on deck.  No wonder.  I knew their minds.  “Who is safe in this ship?” they thought.  “Who, now, may go aloft feeling secure he will reach the deck again, alive and unhurt?” Those squareheads had proof of the mate’s temper in the person of their young landsman, lying broken in his bunk.  Now, they had proof of the skipper’s temper.