THE UNSPEAKABLE GENTLEMAN
stale tobacco smoke. Having finished speaking, I could hear my father still moving about deliberately and moderately, seemingly well pleased at the place where we had been driven.
"Yes," he said again, "not ten paces from the wheel, and now we will finish it."
"Will you never be serious, sir?" I cried. "Do you suppose they are going to let you take charge of the ship?"
"I think so," replied my father. "But first, I must take a swallow from my flask. There is nothing like a drink to rest one. Open the port by the door, Brutus."
And I felt him groping his way past me.
"Brutus," he said, "pass the flask to my son, and give me a pistol, and steady me with your arm—so. Ah, that is better—much better. . . ."
He fired, and the sound of his pistol in the closed room made my ears ring, and then the ship lurched, so that I had nearly lost my balance. We were rolling heavily in the trough of the sea, and outside the canvas was snapping like a dozen small arms, and then I knew what had happened. My father had shot the man at the helm—shot him where he stood, so that the wheel had broken from his grasp, so that the ship
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