to keep them there until the cabin was in order.

At three bells the cook brought coffee, and some of the men took it.
I tried to swallow, but it choked me.

Burns had served as second mate on a sailing vessel, and thought he
could take us back, at least into more traveled waters. We decided
to head back to New York. I got the code book from the captain's cabin,
and we agreed to run up the flag, union down, if any other vessel came
in sight. I got the code word for "Mutiny--need assistance," and I
asked the mate if he would signal if a vessel came near enough. But
he turned sullen and refused to answer.

I find it hard to recap calmly the events of that morning: the three
still and shrouded figures, prone on deck; the crew, bareheaded,
standing around, eyeing each other stealthily, with panic ready to
leap free and grip each of them by the throat; the grim determination,
the reason for which I did not yet know, to put the first mate in
irons; and, over all, the clear sunrise of an August morning on the
ocean, rails and decks gleaming, an odor of coffee in the air, the
joyous lift and splash of the bowsprit as the Ella, headed back on
her course, seemed to make for home like a nag for the stable.

Surely none of these men, some weeping, all grieving, could be the
fiend who had committed the crimes. One by one, I looked in their
faces--at Burns, youngest member of the crew, a blue-eyed,
sandy-haired Scot; at Clarke and Adams and Charlie Jones, old in
the service of the Turner line; at McNamara, a shrewd little
Irishman; at Oleson the Swede. And, in spite of myself, I could not
help comparing them with the heavy-shouldered, sodden-faced man below