I do not believe any of us ever
realized what a frail chip was between life and eternity till we heard
the wrenching and groaning of the timbers in the silence that followed
M. Radisson's words.
"Gentlemen," continues M. Radisson, softer-spoken than before, "if any
one here is for turning back, I desire him to stand up and say so."
The St. Pierre shipped a sea with a strain like to tear her asunder,
and waters went sizzling through lee scuppers above with the hiss of a
cataract. M. Radisson inverts a sand-glass and watches the sand
trickle through till the last grain drops. Then he turns to us.
Two or three faces had gone white as the driving spray, but never a man
opened his lips to counsel return.
"Gentlemen," says M. Radisson, with the fires agleam in his deep-set
eyes, "am I to understand that every one here is for going forward at
any risk?"
"Aye--aye, sir!" burst like a clarion from our circle.
Pierre Radisson smiled quietly.
"'Tis as well," says he, "for I bade the coward stand up so that I
could run him through to the hilt," and he clanked the sword back to
its scabbard.
"As I said before," he went on, "the crew on my kinsman's ship have
mutinied. There's another trifle to keep under your caps,
gentlemen--the mutineers have been running up pirate signals to the
crew of this ship----"
"Pirate signals!" interrupts La Chesnaye, whose temper was ever
crackling off like grains of gunpowder.
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