His subordinates in command, however, were far more active. Wilder had already beaten back the boldest of the seamen, and a space was cleared between the hostile parties, into which his assistants threw themselves, with the haste of men who knew how much was required at their hands. This momentary success might have been pushed too far; for, believing that the spirit of mutiny was subdued, our adventurer was proceeding to improve his advantage by seizing the most audacious of the offenders when his prisoner was immediately torn from his grasp by twenty of his confederates.
“Who’s this, that sets himself up for a Commodore aboard the ‘Dolphin!’” exclaimed a voice in the crowd, at a most unhappy moment for the authority of the new lieutenant. “In what fashion did he come, aboard us? or, in what service did he learn his trade?”
“Ay, ay,” continued another sinister voice, “where is the Bristol trader he was to lead into our net, and for which we lost so many of the best days in the season, at a lazy anchor?”
Then broke forth a general and simultaneous murmur which, had such testimony been wanting, would in itself have manifested that the unknown officer was scarcely more fortunate in his present than in his recent service. Both parties united in condemning his interference; and from both sides were heard scornful opinions of his origin, mingled with certain fierce denunciations against his person. Nothing daunted by such palpable evidences of the danger of his situation, our adventurer answered to their taunts with the most scornful smiles, challenging a single individual of them all to dare to step forth, and maintain his words by suitable actions.
“Hear him!” exclaimed his auditors.—“He speaks like a King’s officer in chase of a smuggler!” cried one.—“Ay, he’s a bold’un in a calm,” said a second.—“He’s a Jonah, that has slipp’d into the cabin windows!” cried a third; “and, while he stays in the ‘Dolphin,’ luck will keep upon our weather-beam”—“Into the sea with him! overboard with the upstart! into the sea with him! where he’ll find that a bolder and a better man has gone before him!” shouted a dozen at once; some of whom immediately gave very unequivocal demonstrations of an intention to put their threat in execution. But two forms instantly sprang from the crowd, and threw themselves, like angry lions, between Wilder and his foes. The one, who was foremost in the rescue, faced short upon the advancing seamen, and with a blow from an arm that was irresistible, level led the representative of Neptune to his feet, as though he had been a mere waxen image of a man The other was not slow to imitate his example; and, as the throng receded before this secession from its own numbers, the latter, who was Fid, flourished a fist that was as big as the head of a sizeable infant, while he loudly vociferated,— “Away with ye, ye lubbers! away with ye! Would you run foul of a single man, and he an officer and such an officer as ye never set eyes on be fore, except, mayhap, in the fashion that a cat looks upon a king? I should like to see the man, among ye all, who can handle a heavy ship, in a narrow channel, as I have seen master Harry here handle the saucy”—
“Stand back,” cried Wilder, forcing himself between his defenders and his foes. “Stand back, I say, and leave me alone to meet the audacious villains.
“Overboard with him! overboard with them all!” cried the seamen, “he and his knaves together!”
“Will you remain silent, and see murder done before your eyes?” exclaimed Mrs Wyllys, rushing from her place of retreat, and laying a hand eagerly on the arm of the Rover.
He started like one who was awakened suddenly from a light sleep, looking her full and intently in the eye.
“See!” she added, pointing to the violent throng below, where every sign of an increased commotion was exhibiting itself. “See, they kill your officer, and there is none to help him!”
The look of faded marble, which had so long been seated on his features, vanished, as his eye passed quickly over the scene. The organs took in the whole nature of the action at the glance; and, with the intelligence, the blood came rushing into every vein and fibre of his indignant face. Seizing a rope, which hung from the yard above his head, he swung his person off the poop, and fell lightly into the very centre of the crowd. Both parties fell back, while a sudden and breathing silence succeeded to a clamour that a moment before would have drowned the roar of a cataract. Making a haughty and repelling motion with his arm, he spoke, and in a voice that, if any change could be noted, was even pitched on a key less high and threatening than common. But the lowest and the deepest of its intonations reached the most distant ear, and no one who heard was left to doubt its meaning.
“Mutiny!” he said, in a tone that strangely balanced between irony and scorn; “open, violent, and blood-seeking mutiny! Are ye tired of your lives, my men? Is there one, among ye all, who is willing to make himself an example for the good of the rest? If there be, let him lift a hand, a finger, a hair: Let him speak, look me in the eye, or dare to show that life is in him, by sign, breath, or motion!”
He paused; and so general and absorbing was the spell produced by his presence and his mien, that, in all that crowd of fierce and excited spirits, there was not one so bold as to presume to brave his anger Sailors and marines stood alike, passive, humbled and obedient, as faulty children, when arraigned before an authority from which they feel, in every fibre, that escape is impossible. Perceiving that no voice answered, no limb moved, nor even an eye among them all was bold enough to meet his own steady but glowing look, he continued, in the same deep and commanding tone,—
“It is well: Reason has come of the latest; but, happily for ye all, it has returned Fall back, fall back, I say; you taint the quarter-deck.”—The men receded a pace or two on every side of him.—“Let those arms be stacked; it will be time to use them when I proclaim the need. And you, fellows, who have been so bold as to lift a pike without an order have a care they do not burn your hands.”—A dozen staves fell upon the deck together.—“Is there a drummer in this ship? let him appear!”
A terrified and cringing-looking being presented himself, having found his instrument by a sort of desperate instinct.
“Now speak aloud, and let me know at once whether I command a crew of orderly and obedient men, or a set of miscreants, that require some purifying before I trust them.”
The first few taps of the drum sufficed to tell the men they heard the “beat to quarters.” Without hesitating a reluctant moment, the crowd dissolved, and each of the delinquents stole silently to his station; the crew of the gun that had been turned inward managing to thrust it through its port again, with a dexterity that might have availed them greatly in time of combat. Throughout the whole affair, the Rover had manifested neither anger nor impatience. Deep and settled scorn, with a high reliance on himself had, indeed, been exhibited in the proud curl of his lip, and in the spelling of his form, but not, for an instant, did it seem that he had suffered his ire to get the mastery of his reason. And, now that he had recalled his crew to their duty, he appeared no more elated with his success than he had been daunted by the storm which, a minute before, had threatened the utter dissolution of his authority. Instead of pursuing his further purpose in haste, he awaited the observance of the minutest form which etiquette, as well as use, had rendered customary on such occasions.
The officers approached, and reported their several divisions in readiness to engage, with exactly the same regularity as if an enemy had been in sight. The topmen and sail-trimmers were enumerated, and found prepared; shot-plugs and stoppers were handled: the magazine was even opened; the arm chests emptied of their contents; and, in short, far more than the ordinary preparations of an every day exercise was observed.
“Let the yards be slung; the sheets and halyards stoppered,” he said to the first lieutenant, who now displayed as intimate an acquaintance with the military as he had hitherto discovered with the nautical part of his profession; “Give the boarders their pikes and boarding-axes, sir; we will now show these fellows that we dare to trust them with