Page:The Dark Frigate (Hawes).djvu/96

like a turkey-cock. His eyes being on the horizon aud his back toward the watchful mate, he remained unaware that he had attracted the mate’s attention.

“A fine fellow, but overbold,” he repeated and smiled with a very haughty air.

The mate, casting his eyes about the deck, picked up a handy end of rope and made a knot in it. One man and another and another became aware of the play that the mate and Martin were about to set and, grinning hugely, they paused in their work to watch, even though they risked getting themselves into such a plight as Martin’s. The captain came to the break of the quarter-deck and, perceiving the fun afoot, leaned on the swivel-gun. Slowly his humour mastered his dignity and a smile twitched at his lips.

"A fine fellow, but overbold,’’ Martin was murmuring for the fourth time, when the rope whistled and wound about his ribs and the knot fetched up on his belly with a thump that knocked his wind clean out.

He made a horrible face, gasping for breath, and his ruddy colour darkened to purple. Reaching for his knife he whirled round and drew steel.

“What rakehell muckworm, what base stinkard, what — ” He met the cold eye of the mate and for a moment flinched, then, burning with his own folly, he cried, ‘‘Thou villain, to strike thus a man the captain himself called a fine fellow but overbold!”

A snicker grew in the silence and swelled into a rumble of laughter; then, by the forecastle bulkhead, a man began to bawl, ‘‘A liar! A liar!”

The mate stopped short and his hand fell.

A score of voices took up the cry — "A liar! A liar!” — and Martin turned pale.