The next question was as to weapons.  The mutineers were each of them possessed of at least a knife, while it was known that Tonkin and some six or seven others had one or more pistols, and it was also speedily ascertained that they had secured all the pikes and tomahawks belonging to the ship.  Moreover, there were such formidable makeshift weapons as capstan-bars, marline-spikes, belaying-pins, and other instruments accessible to them at a moment's notice.  If, therefore, it should come to a hand-to-hand fight, our antagonists were likely to prove rather formidable.