I opened the door and stepped in backwards. My eyes a.s.sured me I was unseen. I closed the door, all save a crack, through which I meant to watch for the coming of my victim.

I heard a gasp behind me. I shut the door tight and wheeled about--and found myself staring into the wide-open eyes of the lady.

CHAPTER XX

She was on her knees, at the other end of the room. Aye, and it was a room, a s.p.a.cious cabin, not a cubbyhole berth I had blundered into; the lady's own quarters, no less. There was a lamp burning in gimbals, and its light disclosed to my first startled glance that it was a woman's room. Aye, to my foc'sle-bred senses the quarters were palatial.

The lady crouched on her knees, with her skirts spread wide, and her hands hidden behind her back. When first her eyes met mine, I saw she was fear-stricken. But immediately she recognized me the fear gave way to relief.

"Oh, I thought it was--" she began. Then she saw the revolver in my hand, and the fear leaped into her eyes again. Aye, fear, and comprehension. "That--oh, Boy, what do you mean to do?"

I had been gaping, open-mouthed, too surprised to utter a sound. But her swift recognition, and her words, brought me to myself. Also, just then we heard Captain Swope's voice. He was in the saloon, calling out an order to the steward. We listened with strained attention, both of us. He told the steward to open the lazaret hatch, and be sharp about it.

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder, and nodded significantly to the lady. "Don't be afraid, ma'am," I whispered. "He isn't going to hurt Newman. He isn't going to hurt anyone--not any more." Oh, the dread that showed in her face when we heard Swope's voice!

She brought her hands into view, when I spoke. Something she had been holding behind her back dropped on the deck with a metallic clink, and she pressed her hands against her bosom.

"You--you mean--" she began.

I nodded again. I really thought I was rea.s.suring her, lifting a load of care from her heart.

"I'm going out there and get him. Don't be afraid, ma'am. I won't make a miss of it. He isn't going to hurt Newman, or you, or anyone, after I've finished. And ma'am, please--will you try and slip for'ard and tell the men not to mutiny. They'll listen to you, especially when you tell them the Old Man is dead. They don't want to mutiny, ma'am--anyway, the squareheads don't--but they're afraid not to. If you tell them I've killed him, and appeal to them, the sailors will keep quiet, I know; and they'll make the stiffs keep quiet, too. It will save some lives, ma'am--for the crowd is coming aft to-night, like the Old Man plans, and the tradesmen are in the roundhouse, with guns, waiting for them."

There was anguish in her whispered reply. "Coming aft? No, no, they must not! It would mean--his death----"

She stopped. We listened. We heard Swope again, out in the saloon.

He was d.a.m.ning Wong for a sluggard, and demanding a lighted lantern that instant or sooner, or "I'll take a strip off your yellow hide, you heathen!"

"No, not Newman's death," I answered the lady. I turned, and laid my hand upon the door k.n.o.b. My weapon was ready. This was the moment I must act.

Before I could open the door, I felt the lady's cool fingers upon my wrist.

"No, no, not that! Not murder!" she exclaimed. "Oh, Boy, you would not take life--you would not do that!"

I turned and faced her, astonished. Her eyes were but a few inches distant from mine, now, and to my amazement I read in their expression not approbation but startled horror. And I could not mistake the meaning in her voice. She disapproved of my killing Captain Swope.

I was as shocked as she. Here I had been happy in the consciousness I was playing the hero, I had believed myself cutting a very pretty figure indeed in the lady's eyes, and, instead--well, my bubble was p.r.i.c.ked. As I looked into the lady's eyes, I could feel my grand dimensions dwindling in my own eyes. More than that, I began to feel ashamed. Just why that look in her eyes should shame me, I didn't know. My education had not progressed to the self-a.n.a.lytic stage. But shame me it did. I felt mean, vile. I felt, without consciously reasoning about it, that murdering Yankee Swope would, perhaps, be not such a n.o.ble deed after all. I confronted something that was superior to the barbarous moral code of my brutal world. I discovered it in the lady's wide open eyes. It vanquished me. It took from me the feeling I was doing right.

But I could not surrender thus tamely. Indeed, the need for the deed remained as urgent.

"But, ma'am, you know I must!" I said. "You know--he will kill him!"

Her little fingers were plucking at mine, which were stubbornly gripped about the revolver's stock. "I know you must not!" she answered. "You must not take human life!" It was a commandment she uttered, and I took it as such. Especially, when she added, "Do you think he would kill in that fashion?"

That finished me. Aye, she knew how to beat down my defense; her woman's insight had supplied her with an invincible argument. I averted my eyes from hers, and hung my head; I allowed her to take the revolver from my grasp.

For I knew the answer to her question. "He" would not creep into the cabin and shoot Captain Swope. She meant Newman, and I knew that Newman would scorn to do the thing I planned to do. Kill Swope in fair fight, with chances equal? Newman might do that. But shoot him down like a mad dog, when he was unprepared and perhaps unarmed--no, Newman would not do that. Nor would any decent man.

I pa.s.sed another milestone in my evolution into manhood, as I stood there, hangdog and ashamed. I added another "don't" to my list.

She brushed back the hair from my forehead. Oh, there was magic in her fingers. That gentle stroke restored my pride, my self-respect. It was a gesture of understanding. I felt now as I felt the first time I saw the lady, like a little boy before a wise and merciful mother. I knew the lady understood. She knew my heart was clean, my motive good.

She held up the weapon she had taken from me. "This--is not the way,"

she said. "It is never the way. You must not!"

"I must not," I echoed. "Yes, ma'am; I won't do it now.

But--what--how----"

I floundered and stopped. "What--how," aye, that was it. If I did not kill Captain Swope what would happen to Newman? That was the question that hammered against my mind, that sent a wave of sick fear through me. If I did not kill Swope--then Newman was lost.

"But--I must do something," I added, miserably. "You know what will happen when the hands come aft. It will be the skipper's excuse; Newman told me it would. I can't see him butchered without doing something to prevent it. Why, ma'am, Newman is my friend!"

"He is my life," said she. Her voice was so low I barely caught the words. "But I would not buy his life with murder; it would lower him to their level." She swayed, and clutched at my shoulder; I thought she was falling, and gripped her arm to steady her. But she was not the swooning kind. Not the lady. She recovered herself instantly.

She clutched my lapels, and laid down the law to me.

"There must be no fighting. The men must not come aft," said she. "If they do, it will ruin everything. Boy, you must stop them. Deakin will help you. You must hold them back."

I shook my head. "It's too late," I informed her. "They will not listen to the parson, or me; they are too afraid."

"But they must be stopped!" she cried.

"Only one man can stop them--and that's Newman, himself," I replied.

"What time have they set?" she asked, quickly.

"Next eight bells," I told her. "We gave the skipper's spy to understand it was timed for four o'clock in the morning; but the lads really mean to make the rush at midnight."

"Then we have time," was her verdict. "And you must help me."

She pointed to the deck. My eyes followed her gesture, and for the first time I examined the floor of the room. The first thing my gaze encountered was a large carpenter's auger, or brace and bit; the next thing I saw, was a pattern of holes in the floor. There were two rows of them, parallel, each about eighteen inches long, and the same distance apart. The holes overlapped each other, and made a continuous cut in the deck.

The lady thrust out her hands, palms up, for my inspection. Upon each palm was a great red blister.

"I was nearly despairing," said she, "I could longer press down hard enough. But now----"

She did not need to explain. The sight of the holes and the auger told me enough to set me to work instantly. Aye, I grabbed up the tool and turned to with a song in my heart and the strength of Hercules in my arms. There was after all a chance to save my friend, and it depended in part upon my haste and strength. A chance to save him without murder.

The lady locked the door, and came and sat down beside me. While I worked she explained the plot behind the task. She talked eagerly, without reserve; it helped her, eased her mind, I think, to unload into my ears.

I was boring my way to Newman. My task was to connect the two rows of holes already bored through the deck with two other rows; when I was finished there would be an opening in the deck some eighteen inches square. A manhole to the lazaret below, where lay Newman.

But this was not all. She told me there was a scheme to free her and him completely from the captain and the ship. Well, I had guessed something like that was in the wind; but I did not tell her so. She said that Mister Lynch was in the plot; aye, this hard bucko, this "square-shooter," as I had heard him called, was the instigator and prime mover in the affair. One of the tradesmen was also friendly, and had brought the lady the tool I was using to cut through the deck.

Wong, the steward, who was the lady's devoted slave, played a very important part.

The plot was this. We were to get Newman out of the lazaret (she always called him "Roy" when she spoke of him or to him; and when she mentioned Swope, it was always with a little hesitating catch in her voice) through this hole we were making. She had the key that would release him from irons. Wong had stolen it from the skipper's desk.