It was a hot minute for Gunner Moore. Now Mr. Moore, you who are so smart, how would you have taken the _Loyal Captain_ without risk? One may feel sorry for the gunner; he has angered the hardest man, in some respects, on or off the coast of Malabar, in whose shelter the _Adventure_ was then riding. The gunner did what almost everybody would have done in the same stress; he tried to put out to sea in a lie. “Sir,” said he, “I never spoke such a word, nor ever thought such a thing.” Gunner Moore was not naturally adapted for the piratical life. With Kidd in that mood and menace before him there was no refuge for him in words. The captain must have surmised that the gunner had been audible to the crew as well as himself, and his particular game made an example imperative. It was really all up with the gunner before a word was said. Everybody on board was looking on. The sail maker sat cross-legged with his needle poised; men dozing on the blistering decks awoke to stare; over the yardarms aloft the heads of the sailors working gazed fixedly below them; it was that intense moment before tragedy. Captain Kidd pronounced sentence in a voice that everybody could hear: “You lousy dog!” Kidd was never short of picture words. He used few abstractions; everything and everybody he painted in quick, certain colors. Perhaps, after all, there was a chance for the gunner. If he had meekly bowed assent and driven along with his chisel-grinding it might have been well for him. But it is to be taken that Gunner Moore had passed himself for a man of some character among his fellows. He was a sort of gang leader, apparently; had he not spoken up, had not his attitude been, “Who’s afraid of Kidd?” He was, really, but had not imagination enough to know it. And now he was tumbled low before all men with these rough words. To swallow them was to creep about the ship forever humble. He rallied, did the gunner, but instead of rallying with words he should have resorted to the chisel in his hand or a marlin-spike. No, he did not understand the piratical trade. He mistook it as a calling in which one could still talk. “If I am a lousy dog,” he cried desperately, “you have made me so; you have brought me to ruin and many more.” “And many more.” Notice that! It is an appeal to that gaping sailmaker, those wide-eyed sleepers, those staring men in the rigging. Here am I, it says, your spokesman, telling the captain now just what we have all been saying about him and the way we all feel; stick by me; somebody up there in the yards please drop a block on his head. Gangs, being untrained and undirected, are necessarily uncertain and do not engage their opportunity. A brisk demonstration of sympathy might have saved the gunner; the captain was only one man. The ship rocked, the wind blew sluggish from Malabar, a cord smacked thinly against the spars and the moment passed. “Have I ruined you, ye dog?” replied his formidable opponent. “Take that!”