Page:White and Hopkins--The mystery.djvu/202

172 attention, so that I did not see Captain Ezra Selover until he stood almost at my elbow.

"Stop!" he shrieked in his high, falsetto voice.

And would you believe it, even through the blood haze of their combat the men heard him, and heeded. They drew reluctantly apart, got to their feet, stood looking at him through reeking brows half submissive and half defiant. The bull-headed Thrackles even took a half step forward, but froze in his tracks when Old Scrubs looked at him.

"I hire you men to fight when I tell you to, and only then," said the captain sternly. "What does this mean?"

He menaced them one after another with his eyes, and one after another they quailed. All their plottings, their threats, their dangerousness dissipated like mist before the command of this one resolute man. These pirates who had seemed so dreadful to me, now were nothing more than cringing schoolboys before their master.

And then suddenly to my horror I, watching closely, saw the captain's eye turn blank. I am sure the men must have felt the change, though certainly they were too far away to see it, for they shifted by ever so little from their first frozen attitude. The captain's hand sought his pocket, and they froze again, but instead of the expected revolver, he produced a half-full brandy bottle.

The change in his eyes had crept into his features. They had turned foolishly amiable, vacant, confiding.

"'llo boys," said he appealingly, "you good fellowsh, ain't you? Have a drink. 'S good stuff. Good