Then he turned to me, and told me that I might as well go on deck, for they would not need my services right away. I took the hint, and went. After all, stories of mutinies are much alike; they differ only in details. But the two captains sat there a couple of hours longer, with the fresh pitcher of hot rum and water which I had brought just before I came up. Something turned up sooner than they could have expected. We were only a day at Amsterdam laying in wood, for we did not really need wood. Our anchor was up the next afternoon and we sailed to the northeast, bound either to Sunda Strait, or for a cruise along the south coast of Java, as circumstances might determine. We had been out about a week, and were getting into more comfortable weather, when I was awakened, very early one morning, {275} by a rumpus on deck. There were shouts, a tramping of feet, and a heavy report, like that of a Spencer gun. My heart jumped up into my throat, I was completely awake, there was that prickling sensation at the roots of my hair, my breath came short and hard, and I found that I was smiling. It was no use, I was always taken that way when any kind of a fight promised. I could no more help it than I could help breathing; not so easily. I scrambled into some clothes and ran up the ladder. I came out into the gray, melancholy half-light of early dawn. I was conscious of it and of the whispering sea about us. If I had ever contemplated suicide, I am sure it would have been at just that time of day, for that is the time when a man’s fortitude is at the lowest ebb, everything looks black, and the future holds no promise. The darkest night is not nearly so bad. That gray loneliness of early dawn is an equally fitting time to choose for going insane, and Mr. Snow seemed to have chosen it for that purpose. He was standing in the same spot that Captain Nelson occupied when he dropped Smith from the yard, and was living over that experience, with himself in the captain’s place. A Spencer was in his right hand, the barrel in the hollow of his left arm, and a long, sharp lance leaned against the after house. Now and then he bellowed an order at an imaginary man on the yard, and that was apparently what he had shot at. Spencer bullets, however, are not imaginary, and nothing was to be seen of the men of the watch. They had run forward and taken refuge behind the foremast, the try-works, and anything that offered shelter. I caught a glimpse of one poor fellow who had taken refuge behind the mainmast, almost directly in front of Mr. Snow, and who was trying his level best to make himself small. Mr. Snow did not notice him; did not see him. All his attention was directed to that foretopsail yard.