"Let us have no more words," the captain was saying. "I have my own thoughts about any matter in my charge, as I've told you more than once before. I warned you not to come aboard this ship and that I would tolerate no interference. It is now daylight; get into your boat, go back to your vessel, and take Blake with you." It was Tarrant who answered. "You are injured," he said. "It will be many a day before you are up and active. And, as what is to be done should be done quickly, the need is too great for us to leave the vessel without--" But he was stopped by a burst of bitter cursing. Softly Anthony went up the ladder, and he stopped again when his eyes were level with the combing. Weir had lifted himself to his elbow; his face was twisted with pain, and he held a pistol leveled at Tarrant, who stood, sneering and disbelieving, before him. "Over the side," said the captain. "Over the side, and into your boat. I've warned you I'd one day split your skull with a bullet if you continued to cross me!" "In your condition," said Tarrant, "it is best not to worry. Above all, do not worry about me. I am in a fairly settled state of mind here; and I think--" Cold, deadly, with an ugly twist at one corner of his mouth, Captain Weir looked along the barrel of the pistol and fired; Tarrant, with his hands at his chest and death in his face, fell. As Anthony leaped upon deck there came a second shot; the pistol dropped from Weir's hand, and he stretched back upon his bed. Blake blew the smoke from the muzzle of his weapon, and viewed the two bodies. "Now," said he to Anthony, "here's a state of affairs. Here's a cutting down of a ship's company. Two gone to the devil as quick as you'd wink your eye." But Anthony gave him no attention; he went to Captain Weir and saw he was beyond all aid: to him the words of Weir had been the words of an honest man, resolute in his defense of the right, and Anthony's heart tightened in his chest. But, seaman-like, he looked first at the trim of the sail and then at the compass, which told him the ship was headed far out of the course he had laid down. "Northwest!" he growled to the helmsman. "Point her that way, and hold her so." The man's look mocked him, and there was no move to obey; so Anthony drove a blow into his face that spun him away from the wheel. Grim and lowering, the young man set the ship on her course. And while he did this Blake stood leaning with his back to the rail and looking vastly amused. "Now, by God!" said the pirate, "you are the most satisfactory fellow in the world. One need never cudgel his brains about you; you do precisely the thing expected of you." With his chin out and a scowl on his brow, Anthony looked at him. "I hope to be able to say something the same of you," said he. "For I expect you, with no loss of time, to lower a boat and take yourself and your two men out of this ship."