rich prize under their very noses, the skipper was calmly letting it slip through his fingers.

It was pretty obvious that the mate's resentment was shared by the crew. For the last half-hour they had lined the bulwarks, watching the Germans transfer their plunder from the liner. Every man-Jack of them felt certain that, in the course of a very short time, that same plunder would find its way on board the Hawk with material benefit to themselves. When, however, it was seen that the Captain had no intention of carrying out their notion, scowling faces were turned towards the bridge, and there were angry mutterings. Soon the muttering grew louder, and at last one of the men, a huge serang, stepped out of the crowd, and shook his fist at Calamity, who was watching from the bridge.

Then, urged on by the others, he demanded that the ship should be put back to Singapore and the men discharged with a month's wages. They did not like, he said, being on a ship without knowing what port she was bound for. They did not like the officers, and, more than anything else, they did not like the Captain. The spokesman wound up his peroration in broken English by hinting that, unless the Hawk was put about at once, the crew would take charge of her.

All this while Calamity had stood leaning on the bridge-rail, listening to the serang with an expression of quiet, almost anxious, attention. The mate, watching him out of the corner of his eyes, saw no sign of that terrible berserker rage with which he had so often heard the Captain credited. In fact, a member of Parliament could not have listened to a deputation of constituents with more polite attention.

"I reckon if we don't do what they want they'll hand out some trouble," said the mate. "Them that ain't got one knife ready at their hips has got two."

Calamity made no answer, but a peculiar pallor had overspread his face. He turned away from the bridge-rail, and, without any sign of haste, descended the companion-ladder and stepped calmly into the midst of the snarling rabble.

"What are you doing on deck?" he asked the serang quietly. "Your place is in the stokehold."

The man started to make an impudent reply, but before he had uttered two words the Captain had snatched him off his feet as easily as if he had been a child and flung him bodily into the crowd of astonished men, knocking several of them over. Then, as the serang landed against a steam-winch with a terrible crash, Calamity snatched up a capstan bar and dashed into the crowd.

Then the mate, standing on the bridge, witnessed such a spectacle as he had never seen before and devoutly hoped he would never see again. Swinging the heavy iron bar above his head as though it were a flail, the Captain smashed left and right among the men, hitting them how and where he could—on the head, body, limbs—no matter where so long as he hit them. Two or three drew their knives and made a desperate rush at him, but there was no getting through the swinging circle of iron. In two minutes the forward deck bore a horrible resemblance to a shambles, for it was littered with injured men and blood was trickling down the white planks into the scuppers. Groans, shrieks, and curses resounded on all sides; the men scurried for shelter in every direction like rats, and two or three, reaching the forecastle, locked themselves in. But a couple of blows from the iron bar smashed the door to splinters and then cries rang out again and with them the sound of the terrible weapon as it crashed against a bulkhead or smashed a bunk to splinters. One man managed to escape out of the forecastle and was running for his life towards the poop when Calamity, his face distorted with demoniac fury, flung the bar at him. It caught the man on the back of the head and he pitched forward on the deck, where he lay weltering in his own blood.

Then, without so much as a glance at the fearful havoc he had wrought, the Captain returned to the bridge.

"What were you saying before I left, Mr. Dykes?" he inquired calmly.

"Er—I was saying that it looked as if the wind would change round to the nor' west before long, sir," answered the mate in a subdued and extremely respectful tone.

CHAPTER IV

THE CASTAWAYS

The following morning, at eight bells, those of the crew not on duty or on the sick-list were assembled upon the forward hatch. Many of them had heads or limbs in bandages, and they were as meek as little lambs. As the ship's bells were struck, Calamity mounted the bridge, accompanied by the mate, and walked up to the rail.

"I'm not going to waste my breath by telling such a crowd of doss-house and prison scum as you are what I think about you," he said in a harsh, grating voice, that seemed to emphasise the insults. "What I want to say is this: the first man who raises a murmur about anything or hesitates in carrying out an order, that man I'll string up at the end of a derrick with a hawser for a collar. And remember this: I like a cheerful crew, and if I see a man who doesn't look as cheerful as he ought, by God, I'll clap him in the bilboes. Now get out of my sight."

The Captain stepped back from the rail and turned to the mate.

"I always believe in exercising patience and in using persuasion, Mr. Dykes," he said. "If, however, we should have any more trouble—and I don't somehow think we shall—it will become necessary to deal drastically with the offenders."

Without waiting for a reply, he walked into the chart-room, leaving Mr. Dykes and the second-mate gasping.

"What in thunder would he call 'drastic,' I'd like to know?" inquired the former. "He's already maimed half the crew and calls that persuasion. The Lord stand between me and his persuading, that's all I say."

"He's a bloomin' knock-aht, swelp me Bob," replied the second-mate in a tone of subdued admiration. "I thought the yarns I'd heard about him was all kid, but now—help!"

Later on, when Mr. Dykes conveyed his impressions to the chief engineer, the latter merely nodded without evincing the slightest surprise.

"I told ye he was a michty quare mon," he remarked calmly. "I wouldna advise ye to run athwart him even if ye've got liquor as an excuse."

"You bet I won't, not after this. I guess I'll have to load up pretty considerable on liquor before I try to hand him a song and dance."

"Talkin' about liquor, ye'll find a bottle o' rum under the pillow o' my bunk, Meester Dykes. We'll jest have a wee drappie an' I'll tell ye hoo I marrit me fairst wife."

"Your first wife?" repeated the mate. "Say, how many have you had?"

"I couldna tell ye off-hand, mon. Ye see, the saircumstances in mony cases were compleecated, if ye ken me," answered McPhulach thoughtfully. "Me fairst, now ..."

Mr. Dykes listened for some time to the engineer's account of his matrimonial complications and then turned in. For the first time since leaving Singapore, he closed his eyes without an uneasy suspicion that he and the rest of the officers might have their throats cut before the morning. Indeed, the crew might henceforward have served as a model for the most exacting skipper that ever sailed the seas. The men could not have turned out for their respective watches with more promptitude had they been aboard a battleship, and their language on such occasions was such that even the boatswain's mate had no cause for complaint. And they were cheerful, laboriously cheerful. Whenever Calamity happened to approach a man, that man would start to hum a tune as if his life depended on it; he'd smile if he had a ten-thousand-horsepower toothache; everybody was happy, and only the ship's cat led a dog's life.

"It's a bloomin' wonder," said the second-mate to Mr. Dykes, "that the old man don't put up a blighted maypole and make all us perishers dance round it."

For two days the Hawk kept the smoke-trail of the German gunboat in view, but made no attempt to overhaul her.