Harrigan

CHAPTER 8

And the four of them went aft carrying McTee's body. On the promenade they passed Kate Malone. She shrank against the rail, her eyes blank and her face white.

"He's dead!" she cried.

"He's just beginnin' to live," said Harrigan.

The captain was muttering faintly as they laid him on the bunk in his room. "Now get out," commanded Harrigan. "I will be alone with him when he wakes up. I have something to whisper in his ear."

"Is it safe?" said the first mate to the chief engineer, gesturing with his weapon.

Harrigan snatched it away and waved it like a club above his head.

"Get out, or I'll bash your skull in."

His face was hideous, cut and blood-stained, starved with the long hunger and lighted with the victory. They slunk from the cabin, backing out as if they expected him to rush them. Harrigan locked the door and started to tend the captain. He washed McTee to the waist, cleansed the cut places carefully, and covered them with narrow strips of adhesive tape which he found in a small medicine chest. As the heavier breathing of the captain indicated that he was about to recover his senses, Harrigan performed the same services for himself. It was slow work, for now that the stimulus of action was gone, his weakness grew on him in recurrent waves. Finally a sound made him turn to see McTee propping himself up on the bunk with one elbow; his eyes, unconfused and steady, looked brightly out at Harrigan.

"You beat me?"

"It was the swing of the deck that rolled you over and broke your grip.
I've stayed to tell you that."

"Chances or no chances, you beat me."

"Man, you'd have busted my back if it hadn't been for that buck of the ship. When your hand came away, it took the skin with it."

"And that's why you didn't finish me?"

"Aye."

"You'll never have the chance again."

"I want no chances; I want no help except my own strength as it was before you withered me with your hellfire."

"When we stand up again, I'll kill you, Harrigan."

"When we stand up again, I'll break you, Black McTee—like a rotten stick."

"Lie down here," said the captain, rising quickly. "You're sick."

He forced Harrigan onto the bunk and stretched him out at full length. The Irishman clenched his hands and fought against the sleep which crept over his senses.

"There's fire in my brain," muttered Harrigan, "an' it's trying to burn its way out."

McTee dipped a towel in cool water.

"I kept the rest of them away," went on the Irishman. "When you woke up, I wanted you to hear why I didn't finish you."

He raised his shaking hands and gripped at the air.

"Ah-h! When me ould silf is back, I'll shtand up to ye. Tis a promise, McTee. Black McTee, Black McTee—I'll make ye Red McTee—red as the palms av me hands."

McTee tied the cold, wet towel around Harrigan's forehead.

"I'll kill you by inches, Harrigan. You'll read hell in my eyes before your end. Drink this!"

He raised Harrigan's almost lifeless head and forced the neck of a whisky bottle between his teeth.

"Ah-h!" said Harrigan, blinking and coughing after the strong liquor had burned its way down his throat. "The feel av your throat under me thumbs was sweeter than the touch av a colleen's hand, McTee! I'm dead for shlape!"

And instantly his eyes closed; his breathing was deep and sonorous. The captain watched him for a long moment, then sat down and laying a hand on the sleeping man's wrist, he counted the pulse carefully. It was irregular and feeble.

"Time is all he needs," muttered McTee to himself, and he sat staring before him, dreaming. "A fool can live well," he was thinking, "but it takes a great man to die well. Harrigan will make a fine death." In the meantime the big Irishman slept heavily, and Black McTee tended him well, keeping the towel cool and wet about his forehead. The pulse was gaining rapidly in strength and regularity; sleep seemed to act upon Harrigan as food acts upon a starved man. At times he smiled, and McTee could guess at the dream which caused it. He was dreaming of killing McTee, and McTee sat by and understood, and smiled with deep content. He, also, was tasting his thoughts of the battle-to-be when, without any warning rap, the door swung open and the burly form of Bos'n Masters appeared.

"The first mate—" he began.

"Did you knock?"

"I've got no time to waste, the first mate—"

McTee rose. In the frank, bold eyes of the bos'n he read the open revolt, and understood. He had been beaten in open battle; his crew felt that they were liberated by the victory of their champion.

"Who told you to enter without knocking?" he broke in.

"I don't need telling," said the dauntless bos'n. "The first mate's drunk an'—"

The heavy fist of McTee landed on Masters's mouth and hurled him in a heap into the corner of the cabin. The captain seized him by the nape of the neck and jerked him back to his feet, blinking and gasping, thoroughly subdued.

"Get out and come in as you should."

The bos'n fled. A moment later a timid knock came at the door and McTee bade him enter. He stepped in, cap in hand, his eyes on the floor.

"The first mate's drunk, sir, an' runnin' amuck with the ship. He's at the wheel an' he won't leave it. We've nearly scraped one reef already. You know this ain't any open sea, sir. There's green water everywhere."

"Go up and give the fool my orders. Tell the second officer to take the wheel."

The bos'n retreated, but he returned within a few moments.

"He won't leave the wheel," he reported. "He said you could take your orders to the devil, sir."

"I'll tie him to the deck and skin him alive," said McTee calmly. "Stay here and watch Harrigan while I—"

He was jerked from his feet and hurled across the room, crashing against the cabin wall. When his senses returned, he was sitting on the floor staring stupidly into the white face of the bos'n, who was in a similar posture. Harrigan, who had been flung from the bunk, staggered to his feet.

"What the deuce is up?" asked the Irishman.

A chorus of piercing yells rose in answer from the deck outside.

"The end of the Mary Rogers," said McTee. "Stay with me, Harrigan."

He caught the latter by the arm and dragged him out onto the deck. The hull of the ship at the bow must have been literally ripped away by the impact against the reef; already the deck sloped sharply to the bows.

McTee raised a voice that rang like a trumpet over the clamor as he gave his orders to clear away the boats. If he had been a moment earlier, he might have succeeded in getting at least one of them safely launched, but now the Mary Rogers was settling to her doom with a speed which made the crew senseless with terror. A half-gale which promised to swell soon into a veritable hurricane seemed to be lifting the freighter by the heel and driving her nose into the sea. The quick settling twilight of the tropics made the waters doubly cold and dark.

Not till the bows of the Mary Rogers were deep below the waves and her propeller humming loudly in the air did the captain desist from his efforts to bring order out of the panic of the crew. Half a dozen men, with the Chinaman at their head, had cut one boat from its davits, but plunging into it before it fairly struck the water, they tipped it far to one side. It filled instantly and sank, leaving its occupants struggling on the surface. The Chinaman, who apparently could not swim, gave up the struggle at once. He threw his clutching hands high above his head and went down; his scream was the first death cry of the wreck of the Mary Rogers.

McTee, with Harrigan at his heels, rushed for the second lifeboat. Under the directions of the captain, pointed and emphasized by blows of his fist, the boat was swung safely from the davits and lowered to the sea. The instant that it rode the waves, bouncing up and down on the choppy surface, the crew began leaping in, the drunken mate being the first overside.

The lifeboat was loaded from stem to stern, and only Harrigan, McTee, and half a dozen more remained on the ship when the boat swung a dozen feet away from the Mary Rogers and with the next wave was picked up and smashed against the freighter. Its side went in like a matchbox pressed by a strong thumb, and it zigzagged quickly below the surface. The yells of the swimmers rose in a long wail. McTee caught Harrigan by the shoulder and shouted in his ear: "Stay close and do what I do."

"Miss Malone!" yelled Harrigan in answer, and pointed.

She stood by the after-cabin, clinging to the rail with one hand while she attempted to adjust a life preserver with the other. The Mary Rogers lurched forward, a long slide that buried half of the ship under the sea. A giant wave towered above the side and licked the wheelhouse away.

"Let her go!" roared McTee. "Save ourselves and let her go."

It was a matter of seconds now before the last of the Mary Rogers should disappear. They clambered up to the after-cabin.

"For the love av God, McTee, she's a woman!"

The Irishman struggled up the deck toward the girl, but the captain caught him and held him fast.

"There's one chance," shouted Black McTee, and he pointed to the litter of the wrecked wheelhouse which tossed on the waves. "Overboard and make for a big timber."

But the eyes of Harrigan held on the form of the girl. They could only make out the shadow of her form with her hair blowing wildly on the wind. Then as swift as the sway of a bird's wing, a mass of black water tossed over the side of the Mary Rogers. When it was gone, the shadowy figure of the girl had disappeared with it.

"Now!" thundered McTee.

"Aye," said Harrigan.

CHAPTER 9

They climbed the rail. Plainly Harrigan had made them delay too long, for now they had not time to swim beyond the reach of the swirl that would form when the ship went down. The Mary Rogers lurched to her grave as they sprang from the rail. A wave caught them and washed them beyond the grip of the whirlpool; another wave swung them back, and the waters sucked them down. Such was the force of that downward pull that it seemed to Harrigan as if a weight were attached to either foot. He drew a great, gasping breath before his head went under and then struck out with all his might.

When his lungs seemed bursting with the labor, he whirled to the surface again and drew another gasping breath. The storm had torn a rift in the clouds and through it looked the moon as if some god were peering through the curtain of mist to watch the havoc he was working. By this light Harrigan saw that he was being drawn down in a narrowing circle. Straight before him loomed a black fragment of the wreckage. He tried to swing to one side, but the current of the water bore him on. He received a heavy blow on the head and his senses went out like a snuffed light.

When consciousness returned, there was a sharp pain in both head and right shoulder, for it was on his shoulder that McTee had fastened his grip. The captain sprawled on a great timber, clutching it with both legs and one arm. With the free hand he held Harrigan. All this the Irishman saw by the haggard moonlight. Then they were pitched high up on the crest of a wave. As Harrigan grappled the timber with arms and legs, it turned over and over and then pitched down through empty space. The wind had literally cut away the top of the wave. He went down, submerged, and then rose to a giddy height again. As he caught a great breath of air, he saw that McTee was no longer on the timber.

A shout reached him, the sound being cut off in the middle by the noise of the wind and waves. He saw McTee a dozen feet away, swimming furiously. He came almost close enough to touch the timber with his hands, and then a twist of the wave separated them. Harrigan worked down the timber until he reached the end of the stanchion which was nearest Black McTee. All that time the captain was struggling, but could not draw closer. The wood was drifting before the wind faster than he could swim.

When he reached the end of the timber, Harrigan wound his long arms tightly around it and let his legs draw out on the water. McTee, seeing the purpose of the maneuver, redoubled his efforts. On a wave crest the storm swept Harrigan still farther away; then they dropped into a hollow and instantly he felt a mighty grip fall on his ankle. They pitched up again with the surge of a wave so sharp and sudden that what with his own weight and the tugging burden of McTee behind him, Harrigan felt as if his arms would be torn from their sockets. He kept his hold by a mighty effort, and the tremendous grip of McTee held fast on his ankle until they dropped once more into a hollow. Then the captain jerked himself hand over hand up the body of Harrigan until he reached the timber. They lay panting and exhausted on the stanchion, embracing it with arms and legs.

Sometimes the wind sent the timber with its human freight lunging through a towering wave; and several times the force of the storm caught them and whirled them over and over. When they rose to a wave crest, they struggled bitterly for life; when they fell into the trough, they drew long breaths and freshened their holds.

Save once when Harrigan reached out his hand and set it upon that of Black McTee. The captain met the grip, and by the wild moonlight they stared into each other's faces. That handshake almost cost them their lives, for the next moment the full breath of the storm caught them and wrenched furiously at their bodies. Yet neither of them regretted the handclasp, for all its cost. If they died now, it would be as brothers. They had at least escaped from the greatest of all horrors, a lonely death.

It seemed as if the storm acknowledged the strength of their determination. It fell away as suddenly as it had risen. A heavy ground swell still ran, but without the wind to roughen the surface and sharpen the crests, the big timber rode safely through the sea. The storm clouds were dropping back in a widening circle beneath the moon when, as they heaved up on the top of a wave, Harrigan suddenly pointed straight ahead and shouted hoarsely. On the horizon squatted a black shadow, darker than any cloud.

All night they watched the shadow grow, and when the morning came and the tropic dawn stepped suddenly up from the east, the light glinted on the unmistakable green of verdure.

With the help of the steady wind they drifted slowly closer and closer to the island. By noon they abandoned the timber and started swimming, but the submerged beach went out far more gradually than they had expected. The last hundred yards they walked arm in arm, floundering through the gentle surf.

Then they stumbled up the beach, reeling with weariness, and sprawled out in the shade of a palm tree. They were asleep almost before they struck the sand.

It was late afternoon when they woke, ravenously hungry, their throats burning with thirst. For food McTee climbed a coconut palm and knocked down some of the fruit. They split the gourds open on a rock, drank the liquor, and ate heartily of the meat. That quelled their appetites, but the sweet liquor only partially appeased their thirst, and they started to search the island for a spring. First they went to the center of the place to a small hill, and from the top of this they surveyed their domain. The island was not more than a thousand yards in width and three or four miles in length. Nowhere was there any sign of even a hut.

"Well?" queried Harrigan, seeing McTee frown.

"We can live here," explained the captain, "but God knows how long it will be before we sight a ship. Our only hope is for some tramp freighter that's trying to find a short cut through the reefs. Even if we sight a tramp, how'll we signal her?"

"With a fire."

"Aye, if one passes at night. We could stack up wood on the top of this hill. The island isn't charted. If a skipper saw a light, he might take a chance and send a boat. But how could we kindle a fire?"

They went slowly down the hill, their heads bent. At the base, as if placed in their path to cheer them in this moment of gloom, they found a spring. It ran a dozen feet and disappeared into a crevice. They cupped the water in their hands and drank long and deep. When they stood up again, McTee dropped a hand on Harrigan's shoulder. He said: "You've cause enough for hating me."

"Pal," said Harrigan, "you're nine parts devil, but the part of you that's a man makes up for all the rest."

McTee brooded: "Now we're standing on the rim of the world, and we've got to be brother to each other. But what if we get off the island—there's small chance of it, but what if we should? Would we remember then how we took hands in the trough of the sea?"

Harrigan raised his hand.

"So help me God—" he began.

"Wait!" broke in McTee. "Don't say it. Suppose we get off the island, and when we reach port find one thing which we both want. What then?"

Harrigan remembered a word from the Bible.

"I'll never covet one of your belongin's, McTee, an' I'll never cross your wishes."

"Your hair is red, Harrigan, and mine is black; your eye is blue and mine is black. We were made to want the same thing in different ways. I've never met my mate before. I can stand it here on the rim of the world—but in the world itself—what then, Harrigan?"

They stepped apart, and the glance of the black eye crossed that of the cold blue.

"Ah-h, McTee, are ye dark inside and out? Is the black av your eye the same as the soot in your heart?"

"Harrigan, you were born to fight and forget; I was born to fight and remember. Well, I take no oath, but here's my hand. It's better than the oath of most men."

"A strange fist," grinned Harrigan; "soft in the palm and hard over the knuckles—like mine."

They went down the hill toward the beach, Harrigan singing and McTee silent, with downward head. On the beach they started for some rocks which shelved out into the water, for it was possible that they might find some sort of shellfish on the rocks below the surface of the water. Before they reached the place, however, McTee stopped and pointed out across the waves. Some object tossed slowly up and down a short distance from the beach.

"From the wreck," said McTee. "I didn't think it would drift quite as fast as this."

They waded out to examine; the water was not over their waists when they reached it. They found a whole section from the side of the wheelhouse, the timbers intact.

On it lay Kate Malone, unconscious.

Manifestly she never could have kept on the big fragment during the night of the storm had it not been for a piece of stout twine with which she had tied her left wrist to a projecting bolt. She had wrapped the cord many times, but despite this it had worn away her skin and sunk deep in the flesh of her arm. Half her clothes were torn away as she had been thrown about on the boards. Whether from exhaustion or the pain of her cut wrist, she had fainted and evidently lain in this position for several hours; one side of her face was burned pink by the heat of the sun.

They dragged the float in, and McTee knelt beside the girl and pressed an ear against her breast.

"Living!" he announced. "Now we're three on the rim of the world."

"Which makes a crowd," grinned Harrigan.

CHAPTER 10

They started working eagerly to revive her. While McTee bathed her face and throat with handfuls of the sea water, Harrigan worked to liberate her from the twine. It was not easy. The twine was wet, and the knot held fast. Finally he gnawed it in two with his teeth. McTee, at the same time, elicited a faint moan. Her wrist was bruised and swollen rather than dangerously cut. Harrigan stuffed the twine into his hip pocket; then the two Adams carried their Eve to the shade of a tree and watched the color come back to her face by slow degrees.

The wind now increased suddenly as it had done on the evening of the wreck. It rose even as the day darkened, and in a moment it was rushing through the trees screaming in a constantly rising crescendo. The rain was coming, and against that tropical squall shelter was necessary.

The two men ran down the beach and returned dragging the ponderous section of the wheelhouse. They leaned the frame against two trunks at the same instant that the first big drops of rain rattled against it. Overhead they were quite securely protected by the dense and interweaving foliage of the two trees, but still the wind whistled in at either side and over and under the frame of boards. Of one accord they dropped beside their patient.

She was trembling violently; they heard the light, continuous chattering of her teeth. After her many hours under the merciless sun, this sudden change of temperature might bring on the fever against which they could not fight. They stripped off their shirts and wound them carefully around her shivering body. McTee lifted her in his arms and sat down with his back to the wind. Harrigan took a place beside him, and they caught her close. They seemed to be striving by the force of their will to drive the heat from their own blood into her trembling body. But still she moaned in her delirium, and the shivering would not stop.

Then the great idea came to Harrigan. He rose without a word and ran out into the rain to a fallen tree which must have been blown down years before, for now the trunk and the splintered stump were rotten to the core. He had noticed it that day. There was only a rim of firm wood left of the wreck. The stump gave readily enough under his pull. He ripped away long strips of the casing, bark and wood, and carried it back to the shelter. He made a second trip to secure a great armful of the powder-dry time-rotted core of the stump.

His third expedition carried him a little farther afield to a small sapling which he could barely make out through the night. He bent down the top of the little tree and snapped off about five feet of its length. This in turn he brought to the shelter. He stopped short here, frozen with amazement. The girl was raving in her delirium, and to soothe her, McTee was singing to her horrible sailor chanteys, pieced out with improvised and foolish words.

Harrigan listened only while his astonishment kept him helpless; then he took up his work. He first stripped away the twigs from his sapling top. Then he tied the twine firmly at either end of the stick, leaving the string loose. Next he fumbled among the mass of rubbish he had brought in from the rotten trunk and broke off a chunk of hard wood several inches in length. By rubbing this against the fragment of the wheelhouse, he managed to reduce one end of the little stick to a rough point.

He took the largest slab of the rim wood from the stump and knelt upon it to hold it firm. On this wood he rested his peg, which was wrapped in several folds of the twine and pressed down by the second fragment of wood. When he moved the long stick back and forth, the peg revolved at a tremendous rate of speed, its partially sharpened end digging into the wood on which it rested. It is a method of starting a fire which was once familiarly used by Indians.

For half an hour Harrigan sweated and groaned uselessly over his labor. Once he smelled a taint of smoke and shouted his triumph, but the peg slipped and the work was undone. He started all over again after a short rest and the peg creaked against the slab of wood with the speed of its rotation—a small sound of protest drowned by the bellowing of the storm and the ringing songs of McTee. Now the smoke rose again and this time the peg kept firm. The smoke grew pungent; there was a spark, then a glow, and it spread and widened among the powdery, rotten wood which Harrigan had heaped around his rotating peg.

He tossed the peg and bow aside and blew softly and steadily on the glowing point. It spread still more and now a small tongue of flame rose and flickered. Instantly Harrigan laid small bits of wood criss-cross on the pile of tinder. The flame licked at them tentatively, recoiled, rose again and caught hold. The fire was well started.

With gusts of wind fanning it roughly, the flame rose fast. Harrigan made other journeys to the rotten stump and wrenched away great chunks of bark and wood. He came back and piled them on the fire. It towered high, the upper tongues twisting among the branches of the tree. They laid Kate Malone between the windbreak and the fire. In a short time her trembling ceased; she turned her face to the blaze and slept.

They watched her with jealous care all night. In lieu of a pillow they heaped some of the wood dust from the stump beneath her head. When their large hands hovered over her to straighten the clothes which the wind fluttered, she seemed marvelously delicate and fragile. It was astonishing that so fragile a creature should have lived through the buffeting of the sea.

Toward morning the storm fell at a breath and the rain died away. They agreed that it might be safe to leave her alone while they ventured out to look for food, and at the first hint of light they started out, one to the north, and one to the south. Harrigan started at an easy run. He felt a joyous exultation like that of a boy eager for play. He tried to find shellfish first, but without success. His search carried him far down the beach to a group of big rocks rolling out to sea. On the leeward side of these rocks, in little hollows of the stone, he found a quantity of the eggs of some seafowl. They were quite large, the shells a dirty, faint blue and apparently very thick. He collected all he could carry and started back.

As he approached the shelter, he heard voices and stopped short with a sudden pang; McTee had returned first and awakened the girl. Harrigan sighed. He knew now how he had wanted to watch her eyes open for the first time, the cool sea-green eyes lighted by bewilderment, surprise, and joy. All that delight had been McTee's. It was that dark, handsome face she had seen leaning over her when she awoke. He was firmly implanted in her mind by this time as her savior. She opened her eyes, hungered, and she had seen McTee bringing food. Harrigan drew a long breath and went on slowly with lowered head.

They sat cross-legged, facing each other. The captain was showing Kate his prizes, which seemed to consist of a quantity of shellfish. She clapped her hands at something McTee said, and her laughter, wonderfully clear, reminded Harrigan of the chiming of faraway church bells. Blind anger suddenly possessed him as he stood by the fire glowering down at them.

CHAPTER 11

"Eggs! How perfectly wonderful, Mr. Harrigan! And I'm starved!"

She looked up to him, radiant with delight; but the triumphant eye of Harrigan fell not upon her but on McTee, who had suddenly grown pensive.

"But how can we cook them? There's nothing to boil water in—and no pan for frying them," ventured McTee.

"Roast 'em," said Harrigan scornfully. "Like this."

He wrapped several eggs in wet clay and placed them in the glowing ashes of the fire which had now burned low.

"While they're cooking," said McTee, "I'm going off. I've an idea."

Harrigan watched him with a shade of suspicion while he retreated. He turned his head to find Kate studying him gravely.

"Before you came, Mr. Harrigan—"

"My name's Dan. That'll save time."

"While you were gone," she went on, thanking him with a smile, "Captain
McTee told me a great many things about you."

Harrigan stirred uneasily.

"Among other things, that you had no such record as he hinted at while we were on the Mary Rogers. So I have to ask you to forgive me—"

The blue eyes grew bright as he watched her.

"I've forgotten all that, for the sea washed it away from my mind."

"Really?"

"As clean as the wind has washed the sky."

Not a cloud stained the broad expanse from horizon to horizon.

"That's a beautiful way to put it. Now that we are here on the island, we begin all over again and forget what happened on the ship?"

"Aye, all of it."

"Shake on it."

He took her hand, but so gingerly that she laughed.

"We have to be careful of you," he explained seriously. "Here we are, as McTee puts it, on the rim of the world, two men an' one woman. If something happens to one of us, a third of our population's gone."

"A third of our population! Then I'm very important?"

"You are."

He was so serious that it disconcerted her. It suddenly became impossible for her to meet his eyes, they burned so bright, so eager, with something like a threat in them. She hailed the returning figure of McTee with relief.

He came bearing a large gourd, and he knelt before Kate so that she might look into it. She cried out at what she saw, for he had washed the inside of the gourd and filled it with cool water from the spring.

"Look!" said she to Harrigan. "It's water—and my throat is fairly burning."

"Humph," growled Harrigan, and he avoided the eye of McTee.

The gourd was too heavy and clumsy for her to handle. The captain had to raise and tip it so that she might drink, and as she drank, her eyes went up to his with gratitude.

Harrigan set his teeth and commenced raking the roasted eggs from the hot ashes. When her thirst was quenched, she looked in amazement at Harrigan; even his back showed anger. In some mysterious manner it was plain that she had displeased the big Irishman.

He turned now and offered her an egg, after removing the clay mold. But when she thanked him with the most flattering of smiles, she became aware that McTee in turn was vexed, while the Irishman seemed perfectly happy again.

"Have an egg, McTee," he offered, and rolled a couple toward the big captain.

"I will not. I never had a taste for eggs."

"Why, captain," murmured Kate, "you can't live on shellfish?"

"Humph! Can't I? Very nutritious, Kate, and very healthful. Have to be careful what you eat in this climate. Those eggs, for instance. Can you tell, Harrigan, whether or not they're fresh?"

Harrigan, his mouth full of egg, paused and glared at the captain.

"For the captain of a ship, McTee," he said coldly, "your head is packed with fool ideas. Eat your fish an' don't spoil the appetites of others."

He turned to Kate.

"These eggs are new-laid—they're—they're not more than twenty-four hours old."

His glance dared McTee to doubt the statement. The captain accepted the challenge.

"I suppose you watched 'em being laid, Harrigan?"

Harrigan sneered.

"I can tell by the taste partly and partly"—here he cracked the shell of another egg and, stripping it off, held up the little white oval to the light—"and partly by the color. It's dead white, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"That shows it's fresh. If there was a bit of blue in it, it'd be stale."

McTee breathed hard.

"You win," he said. "You ought to be on the stage, Harrigan."

But Harrigan was deep in another egg. Kate watched the two with covert glances, amazed, wondering. They had saved each other from death at sea, and now they were quarreling bitterly over the qualities of eggs.

And not eggs alone, for McTee, not to be outdone in courtesy, passed a handful of his shellfish to Harrigan. The Irishman regarded the fish and then McTee with cold disgust.

"D'you really think I'm crazy enough to eat one of these?" he queried.

Black McTee was black indeed as he glowered at the big Irishman.

"Open up; let's hear what you got to say about these shellfish," he demanded.

Harrigan announced laconically: "Scurvy."

"What?" This from Kate and McTee at one breath.

"Sure. There ain't any salt in 'em. No salt is as bad as too much salt.
A friend of mine was once in a place where he couldn't get any salt
food, an' he ate a lot of these shellfish. What was the result? Scurvy!
He hasn't a tooth in his head today. An' he's only thirty."

"Why didn't you tell me?" cried Kate indignantly, and she laid a tentative finger against her white teeth, as if expecting to find them loose.

"I didn't want to hurt McTee's feelin's. Besides, maybe a few of them won't hurt you—much!"

McTee suddenly burst into laughter, but there was little mirth in the sound.

"Maybe you know these are the great blue clams that are famous for their salt."

"Really?" said Kate, greatly relieved.

"Yes," went on McTee, his eyes wandering slightly. "This species of clam has an unusual organ by which it extracts some of the salt from the sea water while taking its food. Look here!"

He held up a shell and indicated a blue-green spot on the inside.

"You see that color? That's what gives these clams their name and this is also the place where the salt deposit forms. This clam has a high percentage of salt—more than any other."

Harrigan, sending a bitter side glance at McTee, rose to bring some more wood, for it was imperative that they should keep the fire burning always.

"I'm so glad," said Kate, "that we have both the eggs and the clams to rely on. At least they will keep us from starving in this terrible place."

"H'm. I'm not so sure about the eggs."

He eyed them with a watering mouth, for his raging hunger had not been in the least appeased by the shellfish.

"But I'll try one just to keep you company."

He peeled away the shell and swallowed the egg hastily, lest Harrigan, returning, should see that he had changed his mind.

"Maybe the eggs are all right," he admitted as soon as he could speak, and he picked up another, "but between you and me, I'll confess that I shall not pay much attention to what Harrigan has to say. He's never been to sea before. You can't expect a landlubber to understand all the conditions of a life like this."

But a new thought which was gradually forming in her brain made Kate reserve judgment. Harrigan came back and placed a few more sticks of wood on the fire.

"I can't understand," said Kate, "how you could make a fire without a sign of a match."

"That's simple," said McTee easily. "When a man has traveled about as much as I have, he has to pick up all sorts of unusual ways of doing things. The way we made that fire was to—"

"The way we made it?" interjected Harrigan with bitter emphasis.

Kate frowned as she glanced from one to the other. There was the same deep hostility in their eyes which she had noticed when they faced each other in the captain's cabin aboard the Mary Rogers.

"An' why were ye sittin' prayin' for fire with the gir-rl thremblin' and freezin' to death in yer ar-rms if ye knew so well how to be makin' one?"

"Hush—Dan," said Kate; for the fire of anger blew high.

McTee started.

"You know each other pretty well, eh?"

"Tut, tut!" said Harrigan airily. "You can't expect a slip of a girl to be calling a black man like you by the front name?"

McTee moistened his white lips. He rose.

"I'm going for a walk—I always do after eating."

And he strode off down the beach. Harrigan instantly secured a handful of the shellfish.

"Speakin' of salt," he said apologetically, "I'll have to try a couple of these to be sure that the captain's right. I can tell by a taste or two."

He pried open one of the shells and ate the contents hastily, keeping one eye askance against the return of McTee.

"Maybe he's right about these shellfish," he pronounced judicially, "but it's a hard thing an' a dangerous thing to take the word of a man like McTee—he's that hasty. We must go easy on believin' what he says, Kate."

CHAPTER 12

Then understanding flooded Kate's mind like waves of light in a dark room. She tilted back her head and laughed, laughed heartily, laughed till the tears brimmed her eyes. The gloomy scowl of Harrigan stopped her at last. As her mirth died out, the tall form of McTee appeared suddenly before them with his arms crossed. Where they touched his breast, the muscles spread out to a giant size. He was turned toward her, but the gleam of his eye fell full upon Harrigan.

"I suppose," said McTee, and his teeth clicked after each word like the bolt of a rifle shot home, "I suppose that you were laughing at me?"

The Irishman rose and faced the Scotchman, his head thrust forward and a devil in his eyes.

"An' what if we were, Misther McTee?" he purred. "An' what if we wer-r-re, I'm askin'?"

Kate leaped to her feet and sprang between them.

"Is there anything we can do," she broke in hurriedly, "to get away from the island?"

"A raft?" suggested Harrigan.

McTee smiled his contempt.

"A raft? And how would you cut down the trees to make it?"

"Burn 'em down with a circle of fire at the bottom."

"And then set green logs afloat? And how fasten 'em together, even supposing we could burn them down and drag them to the water? No, there's no way of getting off the island unless a boat passes and catches a glimpse of our fire."

"Then we'll have to move this fire to the top of the hill," said
Harrigan.

"Suppose we go now and look over the hill and see what dry wood is near it," said McTee.

"Good."

Something in their eagerness had a meaning for Kate.

"Would you both leave me?" she reproached them.

"It was McTee suggested it," said Harrigan.

McTee favored his comrade with a glance that would have made any other man give ground. It merely made Harrigan grin.

"We'll draw straws for who goes and who stays," said McTee.

Kate picked up two bits of wood.

"The short one stays," she said.

"Draw," said Harrigan in a low voice.

"I was taught manners young," said McTee. "After you."

They exchanged glares again. The whole sense of her power over these giants came home to her as she watched them fighting their duel of the eyes.

"You suggested it," she said to McTee.

He stepped forward with an expression as grim as that of a prize fighter facing an antagonist of unknown prowess. Once and again his hand hovered above the sticks before he drew.

"You've chosen the walk to the hill," she said, and showed the shorter stick. "Do you mind?"

"No," mocked Harrigan, "he always walks after meals."

Their eyes dwelt almost fondly upon each other. They were both men after the other's heart. Then the Scotchman turned and strode away.

Kate watched Harrigan suspiciously, but his eyes, following McTee, were gentle and dreamy.

"Ah," he murmured, "there's a jewel of a man."

"Do you like him so much?"

"Do I like him? Me dear, I love the man; I'll break his head with more joy than a shtarvin' man cracks a nut!"

He recovered himself instantly.

"I didn't mean that—I—"

"Dan, you and McTee have planned to fight!"

He growled: "If a man told me that, I'd say he was a liar."

"Yes; but you won't lie to a girl, Harrigan."

She rose and faced him, reaching up to lay her hands on his thick shoulders.

"Will you give me your promise as an honest man to try to avoid a fight with him?"

For she saw death in it if they met alone; certainly death for one, and perhaps for both.

"Kate, would you ask a tree to promise to avoid the lightning?"

She caught a little breath through set teeth in her angry impatience, then: "Dan, you're like a naughty boy. Can't you be reasonable?"

Despite her wrath, she noticed a quick change in his face. The blue of his eyes was no longer cold and incurious, but lighted, warm, and marvelously deep.

And she said rapidly, making her voice cold to quell the uneasy, rising fire behind his eyes: "If you have made McTee angry, aren't you man enough to smooth things over—to ask his pardon?"

He answered vaguely: "Beg his pardon?"

"Why is that so impossible? For my sake, Dan!"

The light went out of his face as if a candle had been snuffed.

"For you, Kate?"

Then she understood her power fully for the first time, and found the thing which she must do.

"For me. I—I—"

She let her head droop, and then glanced up as if beseeching him to ask no questions.

"Look me square in the eye—so!"

He caught her beneath the chin with a grip that threatened a bruise, and his eyes burned down upon her.

"Are ye playin' with me, Kate? Are ye tryin' to torment me, or do ye really care for McTee?"

She tried with all her might, but could not answer. The rumble and ring of his voice brought her heart to her throat.

"You're tremblin'," said Harrigan, and he released her. "So it's all true. McTee!"

He turned on his heel like a soldier, lest she should mark the change of his expression; but she must have noticed something, for she called: "Harrigan—Dan!"

He stopped, but would not face her.

"You have your hands clenched. Are you going out to hunt for McTee in that black mood?"

"Kate," said Harrigan, "by my honor I'm swearin' he's as safe in my hands as a child."

CHAPTER 13

Harrigan strode off through the trees. To loosen the tight, aching muscles of his throat he began to sing—old Irish songs with a wail and a swing to them. He had taken no certain direction, for he only wished to be alone and far away from the other two; but after a time he realized that he was on the side of the central hill to which McTee had gone to look for the dry wood. Above all things in the world he wished to avoid the Scotchman now, and as soon as he became conscious of his whereabouts, he veered sharply to the right. He had scarcely walked a minute in the new direction before he met McTee. The latter had seen him first, and now stood with braced feet in his position of battle, rolling the sleeves of his shirt away from his forearms. Harrigan stepped behind a tree.

"Come out," roared McTee. "I've seen you. Don't try to sneak behind and take me from the back."

With an exceeding bitterness of heart, Harrigan stepped into view again.

"You look sick," went on McTee. "If you knew what would happen when we met, why did you come? If you fear me, go back and hug the skirts of the girl. She'll take pity on you, Harrigan."

The Irishman groaned. "Think your thoughts an' say your say, McTee. I can't lay a hand on you today."

The latter stepped close, stupefied with wonder.

"Do I hear you right? Are you taking water, Harrigan?"

Harrigan bowed his head, praying mutely for strength to endure.

"Don't say it!" pleaded McTee. "I've hunted the world and worn the roads bare looking for one man who could stand up to me—and now that I've found him, he turns yellow inside!"

And he looked upon the Irishman with a sick horror, as if the big fellow were turning into a reptile before his eyes. On the face of Harrigan there was an expression like that of the starving man whom the fear of poison induces to push away food.

"There's no word I can speak to you, McTee. You could never understand.
Go back to the girl. Maybe she'll explain."

"The girl?"

At the wild hope in that voice Harrigan shuddered, and he could not look up.

"Harrigan, what do you mean?"

"Don't ask me. Leave me alone, McTee."

"Here's a mystery," said the Scotchman, "and our little party is postponed. The date is changed, that's all. Remember!"

He stepped off through the trees in the direction of the shelter on the beach, leaving Harrigan to throw himself upon the ground in a paroxysm of shame and hate.

But McTee, with hope to spur him on—a vague hope; a thought half formed and therefore doubly delightful—went with great strides until he came to Kate where she sat tending the fire. He broke at once into the heart of his question.

"I met Harrigan. He's changed. Something has happened. Tell me what it is. He says you know."

He crouched close to her, intent and eager, his eyes ready to read a thousand meanings into the very lowering of her lashes; but she let her glance rove past him.

"Well?" he asked impatiently.

"It is hard to speak of it."

Cold doubt fell upon the captain; he moistened his lips before he spoke.

"Hit straight from the shoulder. There's something between you and the
Irishman?"

She dropped a hand over his mighty fist.

"After all, you are our only friend, Angus. Why shouldn't you know?"

He stood up and made a few paces to and fro, his hands locked behind him and his leonine head fallen low.

"Yes, why shouldn't you tell me! I think I understand already."

All desire to laugh went from her, and deep fear took its place; her eyes were held fascinated upon his interlaced fingers, white under their own terrific pressure; yet she understood that she must go on. If she failed, this mighty force would be turned against Harrigan; and Harrigan, not less grim in battle, as she could guess, would be turned against him.

She said quickly, to conceal her fear: "I thought there was some trouble between you and Dan. I asked him to promise that he would not fight with you. But I don't need to ask you to promise not to fight with him, for now that you know—"

He leaped up and beat his hands together over his head.

"And that was why! I taunted him and all the time he was laughing to himself!"

He stopped and then whispered to himself: "Still, it's only postponed.
The tune will come! The time will come!"

She understood the promise.

"Angus! What are you saying?"

He said quietly: "Harrigan's safe from me while you care for him. Do you think I'm fool enough to make a martyr of him? Not I! But when we get back to the world—"

He finished the sentence by slowly flexing his fingers.

"I love you, Kate, and until the strength goes out of my hands, I'll still love you. I want you; and what I want I get. You'll hate me for it, eh?"

He went off without waiting for an answer, stumbling as he walked like one who was dazed. Her strength held with her until he was out of sight among the trees, but then she sank to the ground, panting. Sooner or later they were sure to discover her ruse, and the moment one of them learned that she did not love the other, they would rush into battle. She only prayed that the discovery would not come till they were safely off the island. Once back in the world the strong arm of the law might suffice to keep them apart.

The falling of the fire roused her at last and she set about gathering wood to keep it alive. It was the Irishman who returned first. He waved her to the shade of the shelter and finished collecting the wood.

CHAPTER 14

Afterward he inquired, frowning: "Where's McTee? I met him an' he started back to find you."

"He's gone off with his thoughts, Dan."

Harrigan sighed, looking up to the stainless blue of the sky: "Aye, that's the way of the Scotch. When they're happy in love, they go off by themselves an' brood like a dog that's thinking of a fight. But were I he, I'd never be leavin' your side, colleen."

His head tilted back in the way she had come to know, and she waited for the soft dialect: "I'd be singin' songs av love an' war-r-r, an' braggin' me hear-rt out, an' talkin' av the sea-green av your eyes, colleen. Look at him now!"

For the great form of McTee left the circle of the trees and approached them.

"He's got his head down between his shoulders like a whipped cur. He's broodin', an' his soul is thick in a fog."

"Dan, I trust you to cheer him up; but you'll not speak of me?"

"Not I. He's a proud man, Black McTee, an' he'd be angered to the core of him if he thought you'd talked about him an' his love to Harrigan. Whisht, Kate, I'll handle him like fire!

"The wood," he began, as McTee came in. "Did you find it on top of the hill, lad?"

McTee rumbled after a pause, and without looking at Harrigan: "There's plenty of it there. I made a little heap of the driest on the crown of the hill."

"Then the next thing is to move our fire up there."

"Move our fire?" cried Kate. "How can you carry the fire?"

"Easy. Take two pieces of burnin' wood an' walk along holdin' them close together. That way they burn each other an' the flame keeps goin'. Watch!"

He selected two good-sized brands from the fire and raised them, holding one in either hand and keeping the ignited portions of the sticks together. McTee looked from Kate to Harrigan.

"Sit down and talk to Kate. I'll carry the sticks; I know where the pile of timber is."

Harrigan made a significant and covert nod and winked at McTee with infinite understanding.

"Stay here yourself, lad. I wouldn't be robbing you——"

Kate coughed for warning, and he broke off sharply.

"You've made one trip to the hill. This is my turn. Besides, you wouldn't know how to keep the stick burnin'. I've done it before."

McTee stared, agape with astonishment. The meaning of that wink still puzzled his brain. He turned to Kate for explanation, and she beckoned him to stay. When Harrigan disappeared, he said: "What's the meaning? Doesn't Harrigan want to be with you?"

She allowed her eyes to wander dreamily after Harrigan.

"Don't you see? He's like a big boy. He's overflowing with happiness and he has to go off to play by himself."

McTee watched her with deep suspicion.

"It's queer," he pondered. "I know the Irish like a book, and when they're in love, they're always singing and shouting and raising the devil. It looked to me as if Harrigan was making himself be cheerful."

He went on: "I'll take him aside and tell him that I understand.
Otherwise he'll think he's fooling me."

"Please! You won't do that? Angus, you know how proud he is! He will be furious if he finds out that I've spoken to you about—about—our love. Won't you wait until he tells you of his own accord?"

He ground his teeth in an ugly fury.

"You understand? If I find you've been playing with me, it'll mean death for Harrigan, and worse than that for you?"

She made her glance sad and gentle.

"Will you never trust me, Angus?"

He answered, with a sort of wonder at himself: "Since I was a child, you are the first person in the world who has had the right to call me by my first name."

"Not a single woman?" and she shivered.

"Not one."

She pondered: "No love, no friendship, not even pity to bring you close to a single human being all your life?"

"No child has ever come near me, for I've never had room for pity. No man has been my friend, for I've spent my time fighting them and breaking them. And I've despised women too much to love them."

The tears rose to her eyes as she spoke: "I pity you from the bottom of my soul!"

"Pity? Me? By God, Kate, you'll teach me to hate you!"

"I can't help it. Why, if you have never loved, you have never lived!"

"You talk like a girl in a Sunday school! Ha, have I never lived? Men were made strong so that a stronger man should be their master; and women—"

"And women, Angus?"

"All women are fools; one woman is divine!"

The yearning of his eyes gave a bitter meaning to his words, and she was shaken like a leaf blown here and there by contrary winds. Unheeded, the sudden tropic night swooped upon them like the shadow of a giant bird, and as the dark increased, they saw the glimmering of the fire upon the hill. She rose, and he followed her until they reached the upward slope.

Then he said: "You will want to be alone with him for a time. Can you find the rest of the way?"

"Yes. You'll come soon?"

"I'll come soon, but I have to be by myself for a while. I may hate you for it afterward, but now I'm weak and soft inside—like a child—and I only wish for your happiness."

"God bless you, Angus!"

"God help me," he answered harshly, and stepped into the blank night of the shadow of the trees.

Harrigan shook his head in wonder when he saw her coming alone. He had built up the fire and heaped fresh fuel in towering piles nearby. The flames shot up twenty and thirty feet, making a wide signal across the sea.

"He's gone off by himself again?" questioned the Irishman.

She complained: "I can't understand him. Will he be always like this?
What shall I do, Dan?"

He met her appeal with a smile, but the blue eyes went cold at once and he sighed. It would never do to have the two sitting silent beside that fire. The brooding of McTee would excite no suspicions in the mind of Harrigan, but the quiet of the Irishman would be sure to excite the suspicions of the other.

"Will you do something for me, Dan?"

He looked up with a whimsical yearning.

"Teach McTee manners? Aye, with all me heart!"

She laughed: "No; but cheer him up. You said that if you were in his place, you'd be singing all the time."

"And I would."

"Then sing for me—for Angus and me—tonight when we're sitting by the fire. He's fallen into a brooding melancholy, and I can't altogether trust him. Can you understand?"

"And I'm to do the cheering up?"

"You won't fail me?"

He turned and occupied himself for a moment by hurling great armfuls of wood upon the fire. The flames burst up with showering sparks, roaring and leaping. Then, as if inspired by the sight, he came to her with his head tilting back in the way he had.

"I'll do it—I'll sing my heart out for you."

As McTee came up, the three sat down; a strange group, for the two men stared fixedly before them at the fire, conscientiously avoiding any movement of the eyes toward Kate and the other; and she sat between them, watching each of them covertly and humming all the while as if from happiness. Each of them thought the humming a love song meant for the ears of the other. Finally McTee turned and stared curiously, first at Kate and then at Harrigan. Manifestly he could not understand either their silence or their aloofness. It was for the Scotchman that she would have to play her role; Harrigan was blind. The Irishman also, as if he felt the eyes of McTee, turned his head. Kate nodded significantly and moved closer to him.

Obedient to his promise, he turned away again and raised his head to sing. Alternate light and shadow swept across his face and made fire and dark in his hair as the wind tossed the flame back and forth. At the other side of her McTee rested upon one elbow. Whenever she turned her head, she caught the steel-cold glitter of his eyes.

The first note from Harrigan's lips was low and faltering and off key; she trembled lest McTee should understand, but the Scotchman attributed the emotion to another cause. As his singing continued, moreover, it increased in power and steadiness. One thing, however, she had not counted on, and that was the emotion of Harrigan. Every one of his songs carried on the theme of love in a greater or less degree, and now his own singing swept him beyond the bounds of caution; he turned directly to Kate and sang for her alone "Kathleen Mavourneen." There was love and farewell at once in his singing, there was yearning and despair.

She knew that a crisis had come, and that McTee was pressed to the limits of his endurance. The game had gone too far, and yet she dared not appear indifferent to the singing. That would have been too direct a betrayal, so she sat with her head back and a smile on her lips.

There was a groan and a stifled curse. McTee rose; the song died in the throat of Harrigan.