"They don't just know what's happening yet, but the big nigger seems ter be raisin' hell.

Carlson is a holdin' him back with his cutlass." "Open up and let me down." I fell, rather than clambered along the rungs of the ladder, coming to my feet on deck in the midst of a group of angry men, who had Carlson pinned against the bulkhead.

The light was so poor I could scarcely see their faces; a babel of voices greeted me, and more than one hand gripped me fiercely as the excited owner yelped a demand to know what in hell we were up to.

I roughly cleared a space, aided by Carlson's cutlass, and fronted them defiantly.

Towering above them all, his black apelike face, distorted with rage, I distinguished the giant Cochose, his immense hands grasping a wooden bar ripped from a bunk.
Plainly enough he was the leader, the one man whose ascendency I must crush, and I meant to do it, then and there.