The little sea of scowling, twisting faces moved, it surged forward....
The men charged, more than a score, to overwhelm the four.
In the moment before, Joel had marked young Dick Morrell, at one side,
twisted with indecision; and in the instant when the men moved, he
called: "With us, Mr. Morrell."
It was command, not question; and the boy answered with a shout and a
blow.... On the flank of the men, he swept toward them. And Joel's
harpooner, and one of Asa Worthen's old men formed a triumvirate that
fought there....
They were thus seven against a score. But they were seven good men. And
the score were a mob....
It was fists, at the first, as Joel had sworn. The first, charging line
broke upon them; and old Aaron was swept back, fighting like a cat, and
crushed and bruised and left helpless in an instant. The fat cook dodged
into his galley, and snatched a knife and held the door there, prodding
the flanks of those who swirled past his stronghold. Joel dropped the
first man who came to him; and likewise Mark. But another twined 'round
Joel's legs, and he could not kick them free, and there was no time to
stoop and tear the man away.
He and Mark kept back to back for a moment; but Mark was not a defensive
fighter. He could not stand still and wait attack; and when his second
man fell, he leaped the twisting body and charged into the clump of them.
His black hair tossed, his eye was flaming; and his long arms worked like
pistons and like flails. He became the center of a group that writhed and
dissolved, and formed again. His head rose above them all.
The man who gripped Joel's legs, freed one hand and began to beat at
Joel's body from below. Joel could not endure the blows; he bent, and
took a rain of buffets on his head and shoulders while he caught the
attacker by the throat, and lifted him up and flung him away. He
staggered free, set his back against the galley wall; and when he shifted
to avoid another attack, he found his place in the galley door. The fat
cook crouched behind him, and Joel heard him shout: "I'll watch your
legs, Cap'n. Give 'em the iron, sir. Give 'em th' iron."
Once Joel, looking down, saw the cook's knife play like a flame between
his knees.... None would seek to pin him there.
The black harpooner fought his way across the deck to Joel's side. He
left a trail of twisting bodies behind him. And he was grinning with a
huge delight. "Now, sar, we'll do 'em, sar," he screamed. The sweat
poured down his black cheeks; and his mouth was cut and bleeding. His
shirt was torn away from one shoulder and arm....
"Good man," said Joel, between his panting blows. "Good man!"
Across the deck, one who had run forward for a handspike swept it down on
young Dick Morrel's brown head. Morrell dodged, but the blow cracked his
shoulder and swept him to the deck. The man who had fought beside him
spraddled the prostrate body, and jerked an iron from the boat on the
davits at his back and held it like a lance, to keep all men at a
distance. A sheath knife sped, and twisted in the air, and struck him
butt first above the eye, so that he fell limply and lay still....
Mark Shore had been forced against the rail near where Jim Finch was
pinned. Big Finch was howling and weeping with fright; and a little man
of the crew with a rat's mean soul who hated Finch had found his hour. He
was leaping about the mate, lashing him mercilessly with a heavy end of
rope; and Finch screamed and twisted beneath the blows.
So swiftly had the tumult of the battle arisen that all these things had
come to pass before the harpooners asleep in the steerage could wake and
reach the deck. When they climbed the ladder, and looked about them, they
saw Morrell and his ally prostrate at one side, Joel and the cook holding
the galley door against a half dozen men; and big Mark's towering head
amidst a knot of half a dozen more. And one of the harpooners backed away
toward the waist of the ship, watchful and wary, taking no part in the
affair.
But the other ... He was a Cape Verder, black blood crossed with Spanish;
and Mark Shore had tied him to a davit, once upon a time, and lashed him
till he bled, for faults committed. He saw Mark now, and his eyes shone
greedily.
This man crouched, and crossed to a boat--his own--and chose his own
harpoon. He twisted off the wooden sheath that covered the point, and
flung it across the deck; and he poised the heavy iron in his hands, and
started slowly toward Mark, moving on tiptoe, lightly as a cat.
Mark saw him coming; and the big man shouted joyfully: "Why, Silva! Come,
you...."
He flung aside the men encircling him. One among them held the handspike
with which he had struck down Morrell; and Mark smote this man in the
body, and when he doubled, wrenched the great club from his hands. He
swung this, leaped to meet the harpooner.
They came together in mid-deck. The great handspike whistled through the
air, and down. An egg-shell crunched beneath a heel.... Silva dropped.
Mark stood for an instant above him; and in that instant, every man saw
the harpoon which Silva had driven home. Its heavy shaft hung, dragging
on the deck; it hung from Mark's breast, high in the right shoulder; and
the point stood out six inches behind his shoulder blade. It seemed to
drag at him; he bent slowly beneath its weight, and drooped, and lay at
last across the body of the man whose skull the handspike had crushed.
There were, at that moment, about a dozen of the men still on their feet;
but in the instant of their paralyzed dismay, two things struck them; two
furies ... Dick Morrell, tottering on unsteady feet, brandishing a
razor-tipped lance full ten feet long. He came upon the men from the
flank, shouting; and Joel, when he saw his brother fall, left his shelter
in the galley door and swept upon them. The fat cook, with the knife,
fought nobly at his side.
The men broke; they fled headlong, forward; and Joel and Morrell and the
cook pursued them, through the waist, past the trypots, till they tumbled
down the fo'c's'le scuttle and huddled in their bunks and howled....
A dozen limp bodies sprawled upon the deck, bodies of moaning men with
heads that would ache and pound for days.... Joel left Morrell to guard
the fo'c's'le, and went back among them, going swiftly from man to
man....
Silva was dead. The others would not die--save only Mark. The iron had
pierced his chest, had ripped a lung....