The broad-shouldered man with the aggressive head looked stupidly surprised.

He turned towards his supporters with a pained look of inquiry, as if there was something he did not quite understand, and then he fell on his face and lay quite still.
Jack Meredith looked on the blank faces with a glance of urbane inquiry.
"Has anybody else anything to say to me ?" he asked.
There was a dead silence.

Some one laughed rather feebly in the background.
"Then I think I will go on with my breakfast." Which he accordingly proceeded to do.
One or two of the mutineers dropped away and went back to their own quarters.
"Take it away," said Meredith, indicating the body of the dead man with his teaspoon.
"And look here," he cried out after them, "do not let us have any more of this nonsense! It will only lead to unpleasantness." Some of the men grinned.

They were not particularly respectful in their manner of bearing away the mortal remains of their late leader.

The feeling had already turned.
Joseph thought fit to clench matters later on in the day by a few remarks of his own.
"That's the sort o' man," he said, more in resignation than in anger, "that the guv'nor is.