glanced from Lavelle toward Emily and Elsie. "We shall have order here, ladies, and——You may trust me." From them he turned to Chang. "Tell those men to get that sea anchor aboard and set that sail."

"My flen, you more better sit down. Huh! You may get kill," said Chang.

"Mutiny already!" exclaimed Rowgowskii, straightening and with his hand going toward his hip.

"My God! aren't we miserable enough!" shrieked the Shanghai woman.

Terror locked Emily's lips.

"Don't," said Lavelle quietly, but in a tone fraught with menace.

"Get up out of that and go to your work!" snarled Rowgowskii, and he whipped out a revolver.

In that instant Lavelle rose like a rattler from a coil. There was a crunching of bone against bone as his fist landed full in Rowgowskii's face and sent him spinning overboard. The weapon spun in the air and fell at Emily's feet.

Lavelle staggered from the force of his blow. His eyes closed and he put his hands to his brow. He would have fallen if it had not been for Chang, who caught him and stretched him along the seat opposite Emily. There he swooned.

Emily shrank forward and away from him in terror. This was the Lavelle of the Yakutat who filled her dreams; this the brute who had shadowed her childhood and filled her nights with fearful shapes.

"What a fiend, what a fiend," she whispered to the Shanghai woman.

"He's a white man—you don't know—you don't understand," Elsie answered and raised a barrier between them with the words.

Both women, looking over the side, saw Rowgowskii swimming desperately toward the sea anchor. His cries for aid went unheeded by either Chang or the three coolies who were cowering in the bows. Chang picked up the revolver from the bottom of the boat. The act was portentous.

"For God's love!" cried Elsie, beginning an appeal which trailed off into an outburst in the Chinese tongue.

Chang shook his head obdurately. He nodded toward Lavelle.

"They're going to let him drown," she told Emily hysterically. "Weren't enough drowned last night? This Chinaman will not do anything unless Captain Whitridge tells him."

 Prev. P 21/151 next