Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/215

1868.] could they then do? Ask rather what could they not do! There were spirits among those forty-seven ripe for any desperate undertaking, and it was entirely within the bounds of possibility that they should run the boat back to some convenient spot on the coast, where they might abandon it and make good their escape. There was everything to prompt these desperadoes to such an undertaking; the immunity from military punishment for their offences, the hope of plunder, and a speedy escape from the service. Certainly, I realized it all as I stood there on the mid-deck of the Matanzas, facing the ruffian, and just about to speak the words which might overwhelm us in successful mutiny.

The sergeant stood just at my right; the corporal at my left; Hall immediately beyond him, and Rolan exactly in front of me, not more than four feet away. We five made an irregular circle of about a yard in diameter. My thinking was done in less time than one of these pipe whiffs is drawn in and expelled; and, just as Rolan spoke, I reached out my hand toward the sergeant, with the handcuffs.

"Take them, sergeant, and fasten his hands," I said.

But he had not touched them—nay, his own arm had hardly begun to extend itself forward—when Rolan, with a quick, cat-like motion, snatched the shackles from my hand, tossed them overboard, and turned upon me. His eyes were afire with mad, brutish passion; his fists clenched and elevated, and his foot took one step toward me. It all happened in an instant, in the snap of a finger, and I was ready for him. My pistol was drawn and the hammer up before the shackles struck the water; and as he took that step, in just such an attitude as I have seen a prize-fighter assume on a quick offensive, I shot him.

"Did you mean to kill him?" asked Minimus.

"II [sic] certainly did; and I say, in all humility what I think, that to my promptness alone that ship, with the crew and passengers, were indebted for their salvation. The ball struck him in the left breast, just above the heart, severing the great artery, as I afterward learned. He jerked his right hand up to the place, and settled heavily to the deck, at my feet, with the cry:

"O, boys, he's killed me, he's killed me!" And from the hold came up a responsive cry, "You murderer, you murderer!"

I bent down over him as his head fell to the deck. The heat of the action was yet in me, but it was in all kindness that I asked him,

"What have you to say? Who has been right in this business?"

He turned his eyes to me. The demon had all left them, and he spoke in a voice that was burdened with terror,

"You was right—and I was wrong—wrong—wrong! But, O, for God's sake, pray for me! pray for me!"

The color left his face in an instant. They were his last articulate words; he died in three minutes.

Up to this time I believe I had not been excited; but just as I rose to my feet, with my eyes fixed on the dead man's face, the cry of "murderer" was flung at me again from the hold, and then, I confess, I could not restrain my temper. I sprang down the ladder with the smoking revolver in my hand, and faced the crowd. They fell back without a word, cowed, I think, by the silent determination they saw in me.

"Men, I hope you understand me now," I said. "I will have no epithets, nor anything that looks like insubordination. You have compelled me to do