Mr. Vanderholt came running from the companion-hatch. His right hand was in the pocket of his coat. 'What is it, men?' he bawled. 'I am an old sailor, and was a man at sea when you were boys. Is your pork bad? Is the rest of your food bad?' 'Go and gut yourself!' roared Dabb. 'If that cuckoo had the victualling of this ship, you had the paying of him; and was there ever a Dutchman that didn't know good food from bad by the price of it?' He was proceeding. Gordon, standing alongside, clipped the dog over the back of his neck, and silenced him. Mr. Vanderholt swayed speechless on the slightly heaving deck of his vessel. He was petrified. He stared at the insolent villain; he couldn't credit his senses. Indeed, it was shocking that that fine old gentleman, with his full gray beard, his dignified bearing, his knowledge of life and letters, his years, his great fortune, should be thus addressed by a brute of the sea, a scab, a wen of the ocean, who ashore, in liquor, was, of course, the swaggering, yelping terror of women and little children. Mr. Tweed came along from the forecastle, grasping an iron bar with rings upon it The moment the men saw him, three or four--Scott, Toole, Allan, and another--flung themselves upon him. The irons were sent whizzing overboard, the man himself was felled to the deck. He rose in a minute, breathless and mad. 'But you _shall_ come aft. Help me, Tweed!' And the captain, crying this out in a voice frightful to hear with its tension of passion, flung himself upon the boatswain. 'The man who moves--the man who interferes with the captain, I'll shoot!' shouted Vanderholt, pulling out a revolver, a six-barrelled engine of those days, from his pocket, and taking aim at the crew. Tweed had sprung upon the boatswain, and now three madmen were wrestling. A fourth rushed in; he was Simon Toole. He yelled like a savage as he leapt upon the heaving and writhing group. 'Stand back, or I'll shoot you!' shouted Mr. Vanderholt. 'I have six men's lives here.' He saw Toole seize Captain Glew by the throat, and taking aim at the man, he pulled the trigger. The flash, the report, was followed by a dying groan, and Tweed, with both hands lifted and clenched, fell, shot through the head. At this moment an iron belaying-pin[1] struck Mr. Vanderholt across the face. It was Maul who hurled it. He flung it with the rage and meaning of murder, standing not a couple of fathoms away from the unhappy gentleman, who dropped like a running man when he falls dead from heart disease. 'You murderous curs!' groaned Captain Glew, falling upon one knee with his hand to his side. For a little while they stood raging; their shouts were hoarse and insane. Legg bawled to them from the helm, and they answered him. You would have thought that they were breeding some fresh hellish scene of bloodshed amongst themselves, so flushed, wild, clamorous was the mob of them, every man trying to drown the other's voice.