The ramshackle and skeletal arm of the flail rattled across the cabin, a strangely unfolding train of dire consequences, and struck the new intruder round about the elbow with a splintery sort of noise. The arm was withdrawn, leaving a dark cavity through which the one-armed man flung a dagger that had appeared in his hand from nowhere. "Shoot him!" someone screamed, from the other side of the bulkhead; but Brigitte had the presence of mind to topple Eliza’s mattress—which had been propped against the cabin door—so that it obscured the rift in the bulkhead. The men on the other side could reach through the hole and thrust it away, but it only flopped back again; which, if Eliza had had more time for reflection, she might have taken as some sort of lesson in how soft defenses could be more effective than hard ones.