Nils.  His absence was noted immediately, for the mate was lynx-eyed; and Fitzgibbon was all for invading the foc’sle and hauling out the truant by the scruff of the neck.  Aye, Mister Fitz was all for teaching a lesson with boot and fist, for Holy Joe was a small man and a pacifist, fair game for any bucko.  But the squareheads would not have it so.  For Nils was dying, and Holy Joe was praying for his soul.

Suddenly Mister Fitzgibbon stopped cursing, and in a voice that meant business, ordered the watch aft to the braces.  The stiffs tumbled over themselves in their eagerness to obey; but not a squarehead budged.  They still stood between the mate and his victim.  So he drew the revolver out of his pocket, and pointed it at Lindquist.

“Lay aft—­or I’ll splatter lead among you!” he said.

He meant it.  He would have shot Lindquist, I am sure, for winging a man, or worse, meant little to the mate of the Golden Bough, and the squarehead bravely stood his ground.  But the threat to shoot into the men who were shielding him had the effect of drawing the parson out of the foc’sle.  He suddenly appeared in the lighted doorway.

“Oho, that brought you out of it—­hey, you sniveling this-and-that!” hailed Fitzgibbon.  He lifted his aim from Lindquist, and brought the weapon to bear upon Holy Joe.  “Step aft, here, you swab, or I’ll drill you through, s’help me!”

The words brought a menacing growl from the squareheads; there was a stir among them, and they seemed about to fling themselves upon the trio.  But Holy Joe checked the movement with a word.

“Steady, lads,” said he.  “No violence; obey your orders.  Spread out, there, boys, and let me through; I will speak with him.”

That was what he said, but it was how he said it that really mattered.  Aye, Holy Joe might have been the skipper, himself, from his air.  He spoke with authority, in a deep, commanding voice, and the squareheads instantly gave him the obedience they had refused the mate.  They did not, indeed, tumble aft in the wake of the stiffs; but they did spread out and make a lane through their midst down which Holy Joe advanced with quick and firm step.  Right up to Fitzgibbon he walked, and stopped, and said to the bucko’s face,

“Put away that weapon!  Would you add another murder to your crimes?”

To me, to the mate and his henchmen, indeed, to all hands, it was a most astounding situation.  And perhaps the most surprising element in it was the fact that Holy Joe was not immediately shot or felled with a blow, and the additional fact that none of us expected him to be.

It was the stiff, not the officer, who commanded the deck that moment.  By some strange magic I could not as yet fathom, the little parson had assumed the same heroic proportions Newman had assumed the day he chased the skipper from the poop.  Oh, it was no physical change that took place; it was rather as if the man doffed a mask and revealed himself to us in his true self.  There he stood, a full head shorter than his antagonist, with his head tilted back to meet the larger man’s eyes, and Bully Fitzgibbon quailed before his gaze.