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.”