No less clearly he saw how easy it would be for a mutineer to hit it.
Huddled up in a corner of the cabin he tried to think.

Tredgold and Stobell were strangely silent, and even the voice of Brisket had ceased.
The suspense became unbearable.

Then suddenly a faint creaking and straining of timbers apprised him of the fact that the Fair Emily was under way.
He sprang to his feet and beat heavily upon the door, but it was of stout wood and opened inwards.

Then a bright idea, the result of reading sensational fiction, occurred to him, and raising his rifle to his shoulder he aimed at the lock and pulled the trigger.
The noise of the explosion in the small cabin was deafening, but, loud as it was, it failed to drown a cry of alarm outside.

The sound of heavy feet and of two or three bodies struggling for precedence up the companion-ladder followed, and Mr.Chalk, still holding his smoking rifle and regarding a splintered hole in the centre of the panel, wondered whether he had hit anybody.