Bombini hesitated and glanced back across his shoulder at the leader, whose face he could not see for bandages and who he knew could not see. “’Tis a good deed—do it, Bombini,” Charles Davis encouraged. “Shut your face, Davis!” came out from Bert Rhine’s bandages. Kid Twist drew a revolver, shoved the muzzle of it first into Bombini’s side, then covered the men about the Jew. Really, I felt a momentary twinge of pity for the Italian. He was caught between the mill-stones, “Bombini, stick that Jew,” Bert Rhine commanded. The Italian advanced a step, and, shoulder to shoulder, on either side, Kid Twist and Nosey Murphy advanced with him. “I cannot see him,” Bert Rhine went on; “but by God I will see him!” And so speaking, with one single, virile movement he tore away the bandages. The toll of pain he must have paid is beyond measurement. I saw the horror of his face, but the description of it is beyond the limits of any English I possess. I was aware that Margaret, at my shoulder, gasped and shuddered. “Bombini!—stick him,” the gangster repeated. “And stick any man that raises a yap. Murphy! See that Bombini does his work.” Murphy’s knife was out and at the bravo’s back. Kid Twist covered the Jew’s group with his revolver. And the three advanced. It was at this moment that I suddenly recollected myself and passed from dream to action. “Bombini!” I said sharply. He paused and looked up. “Stand where you are,” I ordered, “till I do some talking.—Chantz! Make no mistake. Rhine is boss for’ard. You take his orders . . . until we get into Valparaiso; then you’ll take your chances along with him in jail. In the meantime, what Rhine says goes. Get that, and get it straight. I am behind Rhine until the police come on board.—Bombini! do whatever Rhine tells you. I’ll shoot the man who tries to stop you.—Deacon! Stand away from Chantz. Go over to the fife-rail.” All hands knew the stream of lead my automatic rifle could throw, and Arthur Deacon knew it. He hesitated barely a moment, then obeyed. “Fitzgibbon!—Giller!—Hackey!” I called in turn, and was obeyed. “Fay!” I called twice, ere the response came. Isaac Chantz stood alone, and Bombini now showed eagerness. “Chantz!” I said; “don’t you think it would be healthier to go over to the fife-rail and be good?” He debated the matter not many seconds, resheathed his knife, and complied. The tang of power! I was minded to let literature get the better of me and read the rascals a lecture; but thank heaven I had sufficient proportion and balance to refrain. “Rhine!” I said. He turned his corroded face up to me and blinked in an effort to see. “As long as Chantz takes your orders, leave him alone. We’ll need every hand to work the ship in. As for yourself, send Murphy aft in half an hour and I’ll give him the best the medicine-chest affords. That is all. Go for’ard.” And they shambled away, beaten and dispirited. “But that man—his face—what happened to him?” Margaret asked of me.