“No.”

“It is not the key to a jewel-case.”

“It does not concern you what it is.”

“It is the key to the storeroom door”

“You are stronger than I am.  You look the brute.  You can knock me away and get it.”

I knew then, of course, that it was the storeroom key.  But I could not take it by force.  And so defiantly she faced me, so valiant was every line of her slight figure, that I was ashamed of my impulse to push her aside and take it.  I loved her with every inch of my overgrown body, and I did the thing she knew I would do.  I bowed and left the cabin.  But I had no intention of losing the key.  I could not take it by force, but she knew as well as I did what finding it there in Turner’s room meant.  Turner had locked me in.  But I must be able to prove it—­my wits against hers, and the advantage mine.  I had the women under guard.

I went up on deck.

A curious spectacle revealed itself.  Turner, purple with anger, was haranguing the men, who stood amidships, huddled together, but grim and determined withal.  Burns, a little apart from the rest, was standing, sullen, his arms folded.  As Turner ceased, he took a step forward.

“You are right, Mr. Turner,” he said.  “It’s your ship, and it’s up to you to say where she goes and how she goes, sir.  But some one will hang for this, Mr. Turner,—­some one that’s on this deck now; and the bodies are going back with us—­likewise the axe.  There ain’t going to be a mistake—­the right man is going to swing.”

“That’s mutiny!”

“Yes, sir,” Burns acknowledged, his face paling a little.  “I guess you could call it that.”

Turner swung on his heel and went below, where Jones, relieved of guard duty by Burns, reported him locked in his room, refusing admission to his wife and Miss Lee, both of whom had knocked on the door.

The trouble with Turner added to the general misery of the situation.  Burns got our position at noon with more or less exactness, and the general working of the Ella went on well enough.  But the situation was indescribable.  Men started if a penknife dropped, and swore if a sail flapped.  The call of the boatswain’s pipe rasped their ears, and the preparation for stowing the bodies in the jolly-boat left them unnerved and sick.  Some sort of a meal was cooked, but no one could eat; Williams brought up, untasted, the luncheon he had carried down to the after house.

At two o’clock all hands gathered amidships, and the bodies were carried forward to where the boat, lowered in its davits and braced, lay on the deck.  It had been lined with canvas and tarpaulin, and a cover of similar material lay ready to be nailed in place.  All the men were bareheaded.  Many were in tears.  Miss Lee came forward with us, and it was from her prayer-book that I, too moved for self-consciousness, read the burial-service.

“I am the resurrection and the life,” I read huskily.