CHAPTER 15
"Is this what you feared?" said the Scotchman. "Is this what you wanted protection against? No; you're in league together to torture me, and all this time you've been laughing up your sleeves at my expense!"
"At your expense?" growled Harrigan, rising in turn. "Is it at your expense that I've been sittin' here breakin' me heart with singin' love tunes for you an' the girl?"
She sprang up in an agony of fear.
"Go! Go!" she begged of McTee. "If you doubt me, go, and when you come back calm, I will explain."
He brushed her to one side and made a step toward Harrigan.
"Love songs for me?" he repeated incredulously.
"Aye, love songs for you. Ye black swine, ye could not be happy till I was brought in to be the piper while you an' Kate danced!"
"While I and Kate danced?" thundered McTee. "My God, man—"
He broke off short, and a cruel light of understanding was in his eyes.
"Harrigan," he said quietly, "did Kate tell you she loved me?"
"Ye fool! Why else am I sittin' here singin' for your sake? Would I not rather be amusin' myself by takin' the hollow of your throat under my thumbs—so?"
McTee laughed softly, and Kate could not meet his eye.
"Well?" he said.
"Yes, I lied to you."
She turned to Harrigan: "And to you. Don't you see? I found you on the verge of a fight, and I knew that in it you would both be killed. What else could I do? I hoped that for my sake you would spare each other. Was it wrong of me, Dan? Angus, will you forgive me?"
Harrigan raised his arms high above his head and stretched like one from whose wrists the manacles have been unlocked after a long imprisonment.
"McTee, are ye ready? There's a weight gone off my soul!"
"Harrigan, I've been a driver of men, but this girl has put me under the whip. When I'm through with you, I'm coming back to her."
"It'll be your ghost that returns."
Kate hesitated one instant as if to judge which was the greatest force toward evil. Then she dropped to her knees and caught the hands of McTee, those strong, cruel hands.
"If you will not fight, I'll—I'll be kind to you, I'll be everything you ask of me—"
"You're pleading for him?"
"No, no! For him and for you; for your two souls!"
"Bah! Mine was lost long ago, and I'll answer that there's a claim on
Harrigan filed away in hell. He's too strong to have lived clean."
"Angus, we're all alone here—on the rim of the world, you've said—and in places like this the eye of God is on you."
He laughed brutally: "If He sees me, He'll look the other way."
"Have done with the chatter," broke in Harrigan. "Ah-h, McTee, I see where my hands'll fit on your throat."
"Come," McTee answered without raising his voice; "there's a corner of the beach where a current stands in close by the shore. You've been a traveling man, Harrigan. When I've killed you, I'll throw your body into the sea, and the tide will take you out to see the rest of the world."
"Come," said Harrigan; "I'd as soon finish you there as here, and when you're dead, I'll sit you up against a tree and come down every day to watch you rot."
The girl fell to the ground between them with her face buried in her arms, silent. The two men lowered their eyes for a moment upon her, and then turned and walked down the hill, going shoulder to shoulder like friends. So they came out upon the beach and walked along it until they reached the point of which McTee had spoken.
It was a level, hard-packed stretch of sand which offered firm footing and no rocks over which one of the fighters might stumble at a critical moment.
"Tis a lovely spot," sighed Harrigan. "Captain, you're a jewel of a man to have thought of it."
"Aye, this is no deck at sea that can heave and twist and spoil my work."
"It is not; and the palms of my hands are almost healed. Had you thought of that, captain?"
"As you lie choking, Harrigan, think of the girl. The minute I've heaved you into the sea, I go back to her."
The hard breathing of the Irishman filled up the interval.
"I see one thing clear. It's that I'll have to kill you slow. A man like you, McTee, ought to taste his death a while before it comes. Come to me ar-rms, captain, I've a little secret to whisper in your ear. Whisht! 'Twill not be long in the tellin'!"
McTee replied with a snarl, and the two commenced to circle slowly, drawing nearer at every step. On the very edge of leaping forward, Harrigan was astonished to see McTee straighten from his crouch and point out to sea.
"The eye of God!" muttered the Scotchman. "She was right!"
Harrigan jumped back lest this should prove a maneuver to place him off his guard, and then looked in the indicated direction. It was true; a point of light, a white eye, peered at them from far across the water. Then the shout of McTee rang joyously: "A ship!"
"The fire!" answered Harrigan, and pointed back to the hill, for Kate had allowed the flames to fall in their absence.
All thought of the battle left them. They started back on the run to build high their signal light, and when they came to the top of the hill, they found Kate lying as they had left her. She started to her knees at the sound of their footsteps and stretched out her arms to them.
"God has sent you back to me!"
"A ship!" thundered McTee for answer, and he flung a great armful of wood upon the blaze. It rose with a rush, leaping and crackling, but all three kept at their work until the pile of wood was higher than their heads. Only when the supply of dry fuel was exhausted did they pause to look out to sea. In place of the one eye of white there were three lights, one of white, one of red, and one of green—the lights of a ship running in toward land.
In a moment the moon slipped up above the eastern waters, and right across that broad white circle moved a ship with the smoke streaming back from her funnel. Unquestionably the captain had seen the signal fire and understood its meaning.
They waited until the red light became fairly stationary, showing that the steamer had been laid-to. Then they ran for the beach and took up their position on the line between the glow of their fire and the position of the ship, guessing that in this way they would be on the spot where the ship's boat would be most likely to touch the shore.
"McTee," said Harrigan, "it may be half an hour before that boat reaches the beach. Is there any reason why both of us should go aboard it?"
"Harrigan, there is none! Stand up to me."
"If you do this," broke in Kate, "I will bring the sailors who come ashore to the spot where the dead man lies, and I'll tell how he died."
They looked at her, knowing that she could be trusted to fulfill that threat. The moon lay on the beauty of her face; never had she seemed so desirable. They looked to each other, and each seemed doubly hateful to the other.
"Kate, dear," said Harrigan hastily, "I see the boat come tossin' there over the water. Speak out like a brave girl. Neither of us will leave the other in peace as long as we have a hope of you. Choose between us before we put a foot in that boat, and if you choose McTee, I'll give you God's blessin' an' say no more nor ever raise my hand against ye. McTee, will ye do the like?"
"For the sake of the day of the fight and the wreck I will. If she chooses you now, I'll raise no hand against you."
A shout came faintly across the rush and ripple of the breakers.
"Speak out," said Harrigan.
"Hallo!" she screamed in answer to the hail from the boat, and then turning to them: "I choose neither of you!"
"McTee," growled Harrigan, "I'm thinkin' we've both been fools."
"Think what you will, I'll have her; and if you cross me again, I'll finish you, Harrigan."
"McTee, ten of your like couldn't finish me. But look! There's the girl wadin' out to the boat. Let's steady her through the waves."
They ran out and, catching her beneath the shoulders, bore her safe and high through the small rollers. When they were waist-deep, the boat swung near. A lantern was raised by the man in the bows, and under that light they saw the four men at the oars, now backing water to keep their boat from washing to the beach. The sailors cheered as the two men swung Kate over the gunwale and then clambered in after her. The man at the bows all this time had kept his lantern high above his head with a rigid arm, and now he bellowed: "Black McTee!"
"Right!" said McTee. "And you?"
"Salvain—put back for the ship, lads—Pietro Salvain. D'you mean to say you've forgotten me?"
"Shanghai!" said McTee, as light broke on his memory. "What a night that was."
"But you—"
"The Mary Rogers took a header for Davy Jones's locker; first mate drunk and ran her on a reef; all hands went under except the three of us; we drifted to this island."
"Black McTee shipwrecked! By God, if we get to port with our old tramp,
I'll get a farm and stick to dry land."
"Your ship?"
"The Heron, four thousand tons, White Henshaw, skipper."
"White Henshaw?" cried McTee in almost reverent tones.
"The same. Old White still sticks to his wheel. He's as hard a man as you, McTee, in his own way."
They were pulling close to the freighter by this time, and Salvain gave quick orders to lay the boat alongside. In another moment they stood on the deck, where a tall man in white clothes advanced to meet them.
"Good fishing, sir," said Salvain. "We've picked up three shipwrecked people, with Angus McTee among them."
"Black McTee!" cried the other, and even in the dim light he picked out the towering form of the Scotchman.
"It took a wreck to bring us together, Captain Henshaw," said McTee, "but here we are, I've combed the South Seas for ten years for the sake of meeting you."
"H-m!" grunted Henshaw. "We'll drink on the strength of that. Come into the cabin."
They trooped after him, Salvain and the three rescued, and stood in the roomy cabin, the captain and the first mate dapper and cool in their white uniforms, the other three marvelously ragged. Barefooted, their hair falling in jags across their foreheads, their muscles bulging through the rents in their shirts, McTee and Harrigan looked battered but triumphant. Kate Malone might have been the prize which they had safely carried away. She was even more ragged than her companions, and now she withdrew into a shadowy corner of the cabin and shook the long, loose masses of her hair about her shoulders.
CHAPTER 16
The dark eye of Pietro Salvain was quick to note her condition. He was a rather small, lean-faced man with the skin drawn so tightly across his high cheekbones that it glistened. He was emaciated; his energy consumed him as hunger consumes other men.
"There is a berth for me below," he said to Kate. "You must take my room. And I have a cap, some silk shirts, a loose coat which you might wear—so?"
"This is Miss Malone, Salvain," said McTee before she could answer.
"You are very kind, Mr. Salvain," she said.
He smiled and bowed very low, and then opened the door for her; but all the while his glance was upon McTee, who stared at him so significantly that before following Kate through the door, Salvain shrugged his shoulders and made a gesture of resignation.
The captain turned to Harrigan. Henshaw was very old. He was always so erect and carried his chin so high that the loose skin of his throat hung in two sharp ridges. In spite of the tight-lipped mouth, the beaklike nose, and the small, gleaming eyes, there was something about his face which intensified his age. Perhaps it was the yellow skin, dry as the parchment from an Egyptian tomb and criss-crossed by a myriad little wrinkles.
"And you, sir?" he said to the Irishman.
"One of my crew," broke in McTee carelessly. "He'll be quite contented in the forecastle. Eh, Harrigan?"
"Quite," said Harrigan, and his glance acknowledged the state of war.
"Then if you'll go forward, Harrigan," said the captain, and his voice was dry and dead as his skin—"if you'll go forward and report to the bos'n, he'll see that you have a bunk."
"Thank you, sir," murmured Harrigan, and slipped from the room on his bare feet.
"That man," stated Henshaw, "is as strong as you are, McTee, and yet they call you the huskiest sailor of the South Seas."
"He is almost as strong," answered McTee with a certain emphasis.
Something like a smile appeared in the eyes of Henshaw, but did not disturb the fixed lines of his mouth. For a moment Henshaw and McTee measured each other.
The Scotchman spoke first: "Captain, you're as keen as the stories they tell of you."
"And you're as hard, McTee."
The latter waved the somewhat dubious compliment away.
"I was breaking that fellow, and he held out longer than any man I've ever handled. The shipwreck interrupted me, or I would have finished what I started."
"You'd like to have me finish what you began?"
"You read my mind."
"Discipline is a great thing."
"Absolutely necessary at sea."
Henshaw answered coldly: "There's no need for us to act the hypocrite, eh?"
McTee hesitated, and then grinned: "Not a bit. I know what you did twenty years ago in the Solomons."
"And I know the story of you and the pearl divers."
"That's enough."
"Quite."
"And Harrigan?"
"As a favor to you, McTee, I'll break him. Maybe you'll be interested in my methods."
"Try mine first. I made him scrub down the bridge with suds every morning, and while his hands were puffed and soft, I sent him down to the fireroom to pass coal."
"He'll kill you someday."
"If he can."
They smiled strangely at each other.
A knock came at the door, and Salvain entered, radiant.
"She is divine!" he cried. "Her hair is old copper with golden lights.
McTee, if she is yours, you have found another Venus!"
"If she is not mine," answered McTee, "at least she belongs to no other man."
Salvain studied him, first with eagerness, then with doubt, and last of all with despair.
"If any other man said that I would question it—so!—with my life. But
McTee? No, I love life too well!"
"Now," Henshaw said to Salvain, "Captain McTee and I have business to talk."
"Aye, sir," said Salvain.
"One minute, Salvain," broke in McTee. "I haven't thanked you in the girl's name for taking care of Miss Malone."
The first mate paused at the door.
"I begin to wonder, captain," he answered, "whether or not you have the right to thank me in her name!"
He disappeared through the door without waiting for an answer.
"Salvain has forgotten me," muttered McTee, balling his fist, "but I'll freshen his memory."
He flushed as he became aware of the cold eye of Henshaw upon him.
"Even Samson fell," said the old man. "But she hasn't cut your hair yet, McTee?"
"What the devil do you mean?"
Henshaw silently poured another drink and passed it to the Scotchman. The latter gripped the glass hard and tossed off the drink with a single gesture. At once his eyes came back to Henshaw's face with the fierce question. He was astonished to note kindliness in the answering gaze.
Old Henshaw said gently: "Tut, tut! You're a proper man, McTee, and a proper man has always the thought of some woman tucked away in his heart. Look at me! For almost sixty years I've been the King of the South Seas!"
At the thought of his glories his face altered, as soldiers change when they receive the order to charge.
"You're a rare man and a bold man, McTee, but you'll never be what White Henshaw has been—the Shark of the Sea! Ha! Yet think of it! Ten years ago, after all my harvesting of the sea, I had not a dollar to show for it! Why? Because I was working for no woman. But here I am sailing home from my last voyage—rich! And why? Because for ten years I've been working for a woman. For ourselves we make and we spend. But for a woman we make and we save. Aye!"
"For a woman?" repeated McTee, wondering. "Do you mean to say—"
"Tut, man, it's my granddaughter. Look!"
Perhaps the whisky had loosened the old man's tongue; perhaps these confidences were merely a tribute to the name and fame of McTee; but whatever was the reason, McTee knew he was hearing things which had never been spoken before. Now Henshaw produced a leather wallet from which he selected two pictures, and handed one to the Scotchman. It showed a little girl of some ten years with her hair braided down her back. McTee looked his question.
"That picture was sent to me by my son ten years ago."
It showed the effect of time and rough usage. The edges of the cheap portrait were yellow and cracked.
"He was worthless, that son of mine. So I shut him out of my mind until I got a letter saying he was about to die and giving his daughter into my hands. That picture was in the letter. Ah, McTee, how I pored over it! For, you see, I saw the face of my wife in the face of the little girl, Beatrice. She had come back to life in the second generation. I suppose that happens sometimes.
"I made up my mind that night to make a fortune for little Beatrice. First I sold my name and honor to get a half share and captaincy of a small tramp freighter. Then I went to the Solomon Islands. You know what I did there? Yes, the South Seas rang with it. It was brutal, but it brought me money.
"I sent enough of that money to the States to keep the girl in luxury. The rest of it I put back into my trading ventures. I got a larger boat. I did unheard-of things; and everything I touched turned into gold. All into gold!
"From time to time I got letters from Beatrice. First they were careful scrawls which said nothing. Then the handwriting grew more fluent. It alarmed me to notice the growth of her mind; I was afraid that when I finally saw her, she would see in me only a barbarian. So I educated myself in odd hours. I've read a book while a hurricane was standing my ship on her beam ends."
McTee, leaning forward with a frown of almost painful interest, understood. He saw it in the wild light of the old man's eyes; a species of insanity, this love of the old man for the child he had never seen.
"Notice my language now? Never a taint of the beach lingo in it. I rubbed all that out. Aye, McTee, it took me ten years to educate myself for that girl's sake. In the meantime, I made money, as I've said. Ten years of that!
"Beatrice was in college, and six months ago I got the word that she had graduated. A month later I heard that she was going into a decline. It was nothing very serious, but the doctors feared for the strength of her lungs. It made me glad. Now I knew that she would need me. An old man is like a woman, McTee; he needs to have things dependent on him.
"I turned everything I had into cash. I did it so hurriedly that I must have lost close to twenty per cent on the forced sales. What did I care? I had enough, and I made myself into a grandfather who could meet Beatrice's educated friends on their own level.
"I kept this old ship, the Heron, out of the list of my boats. I am going back to Beatrice with gold in my hands and gold in my brain! All for her. But is she not worth it? Look!"
He thrust the second portrait into McTee's hands. It showed a rather thin-faced girl with abnormally large eyes and a rather pathetic smile. It was an appealing face rather than a pretty one.
"Beautiful!" said McTee with forced enthusiasm.
"Yes, beautiful! A little pinched, perhaps, but she'll fill out as she grows older. And those are her grandmother's eyes! Aye!"
He took the photograph and touched it lightly.
His voice grew lower, and the roughness was plainly a tremolo now: "The doctors say she's sick, a little sick, quite sick, in fact. Twice every day I make them send me wireless reports of her condition. One day it's better—one day it's worse."
He began to walk the cabin, his step marvelously elastic and nervous for so aged a man.
"Is it not well, McTee? Let her be at death's door! I shall come to her bedside with gold in either hand and raise her up to life! She shall owe everything to me! Will that not make her love me? Will it?"
He grasped McTee's shoulder tightly.
"I'm not a pretty lad to look at, eh, lad?"
McTee poured himself a drink hastily, and drained the glass before he answered.
"A pretty man? Nonsense, Henshaw! A little weather-beaten, but a tight craft at that; she'll worship the ground you walk! Character, Henshaw, that's what these new American girls want to see in a man!"
Henshaw sighed with deep relief.
"Ah-h, McTee, you comfort me more than a drink on a stormy night! For reward, you shall see what I'm bringing back to her. Come!"
He rose and led McTee into his bedroom, for two cabins were retained for the captain's use. Filling one corner of the room was a huge safe almost as tall as a man.
He squatted before the safe and commenced to work the combination with a swift sureness which told McTee at once that the old buccaneer came here many times a day to gloat over his treasure. At length the door of the safe fell open. Inside was a great mass of little canvas bags. McTee was panting as if he had run a great distance at full speed.
"Take one."
The Scotchman raised one of the bags and shook it. A musical clinking sounded.
"Forty pounds of gold coin," said Henshaw, "and about ten thousand dollars in all. There are eighty-five of those bags, and every one holds the same amount. Also—"
He opened a little drawer at the top of the safe and took from it a chamois bag. When he untied it, McTee looked within and saw a quantity of pearls. He took out a small handful. They were chosen jewels, flawless, glowing. His hand seemed to overflow with white fire. He dropped them back in the bag, letting each pearl run over the end of his fingers. Henshaw restored the bag and locked the safe. Then the two men stared at each other. They had been opposite types the moment before, but now their lips parted in the same thirsty eagerness.
"If she were dead," said McTee almost reverently, "the sight of that would bring her back to life."
"McTee, you're a worthy lad. They've told me lies about you. Indeed it would bring her back to life! It must be so! And yet—" Sudden melancholy fell on him as they returned to the other room and sat down. "Yet I think night and day of what an old devil of a black magician told me in the Solomon Islands. He said I and my gold should burn together. I laughed at him and told him I could not die on dry land. He said I would not, but that I should burn at sea! Think of that, McTee! Suppose I should be robbed of the sight of my girl and of my gold at the same time!"
McTee started to say something cheerful, but his voice died away to a mutter. Henshaw was staring at the wall with visionary eyes filled with horror and despair.
"Lad, do you think ghosts have power?"
"Henshaw, you've drunk a bit too much!"
"If they have no power, I'm safe. I fear no living man!" He added softly: "No man but myself!"
"I'm tired out," said McTee suddenly. "Where shall I bunk, captain?"
"Here! Here in this room! Take that couch in the corner over there. It has a good set of springs. With gold in my hands. Here are some blankets. With gold in my hands and my brain. Though you don't need much covering in this latitude. I would raise her from the grave."
He went about, interspersing his remarks to McTee with half-audible murmurs addressed to his own ears.
"Is this," thought McTee, "the Shark of the South Seas?"
A knock came and the door opened. A fat sailor in an oilskin hat stood at the entrance.
"The cook ain't put out no lunch for the night watches, sir," he whined.
Henshaw had stood with his back turned as the door opened. He turned now slowly toward the open door. McTee could not see his face nor guess at its expression, but the moment the big sailor caught a glimpse of his skipper's countenance, he blanched and jumped back into the night, slamming the door behind him. That sight recalled something to McTee.
"One thing more, captain," he said. "What of Harrigan? Do we break him between us?"
"Aye, in your own way!"
"Good! Then start him scrubbing the bridge and send him down to the fireroom afterwards, eh?"
"It's done. Why do you hate him, McTee? Is it the girl?"
"No; the color of his hair. Good night."
CHAPTER 17
Long before this, Harrigan had reported to the bos'n, burly Jerry Hovey, and had been assigned to a bunk into which he fairly dived and fell asleep in the posture in which he landed. In the morning he tumbled out with the other men and became the object of a crossfire of questions from the curious sailors who wanted to know all the details of the wreck of the Mary Rogers and the life on the island. He was saved from answering nine-tenths of the chatter by a signal from the bos'n, who beckoned Harrigan to a stool a little apart from the rest of the crew. Jerry Hovey was a cheery fellow of considerable bulk, with an habitual smile. That smile went out, however, when he talked with Harrigan, and the Irishman became conscious of a pair of steady, alert gray eyes.
"Look here," said Hovey, and he talked out of the corner of his mouth with a skill which would have become an old convict of many terms, "I've had it put to me straight that you're a hard one. Is that the right dope?"
Harrigan smiled.
"Because if it is," said Hovey, "we're the best gang at bustin' up these hard guys that ever walked the deck of a ship. If you try any side steps and fancy ducking of your work, there'll be a disciplinin' comin' your way at a gallop. Are you wise?"
Harrigan still smiled, but the coldness of his eye made the bos'n thoughtful. He was not one, however, to be easily cowed. Now he balled his fist and smote it against the palm of his other hand with a slap that resounded.
"On my own hook," he stated, "I can sling my mitts with the best of them, an' I'm always lookin' for work in that line. Now I'm sayin' all this in private, sonny, to let you know that Black McTee has wised up the skipper about you, and I'm keepin' a weather eye open. If you make one funny move, I'll be on your back."
"All right, Jerry."
"Don't call me Jerry, you swab! I'm the bos'n."
"Look me in the eye, Jerry Hovey, me dear. If you so much as bat the lashes av wan eye in lookin' at me, I'll bust ye in two pieces like a sea biscuit, Jerry, an' I'll eat the biggest half an' throw the rest into the sea. Ar-r-re ye wise?"
Now, Jerry Hovey was a very big man, and he had thrashed men of larger bulk than Harrigan. But there was something about the Irishman's thickness of shoulder and length of arm that gave him pause. So first of all Jerry grew very thoughtful indeed, and then his habitual smile returned. Nevertheless, Harrigan did not forget those gray, alert eyes.
The bos'n went on in a gentler voice: "I was tryin' you out, Harrigan. I'll lay to it that the cap'n has the wrong idea about you. But will you tell me why he's ridin' you?"
"Sure. It's Black McTee. Before the Mary Rogers went down, McTee was tryin' to break me. I guess he's asked this White Henshaw to try a hand. What have they got lined up for me?"
"You're to scrub down the bridge an' while your hands are still soft you go down to the fireroom an' pass coal. It'll tear your hands off, that work."
Harrigan was gray, but he answered. "That's an old story. McTee worked me like that all the time."
"An' you didn't break?" gasped Hovey.
Harrigan grinned, but his smile stopped when he noticed a certain calculation in the face of the bos'n.
"Mate," said Hovey, "I guess you're about ripe for something I'm goin' to say to you one of these days. Now go up to the bridge an' scrub it down."
With the prospect of the long torture before him once more, Harrigan in a daze picked up the bucket of suds to which he was pointed and went with his brush toward the bridge. Through the mist which enveloped his brain broke wild thoughts—to steal upon McTee at the first meeting and hurl his hated body overboard. Yet even in his bewildered condition he realized what such an act would mean. Murder on land is bad enough, but murder at sea is doubly damned by the law. It was in the power of White Henshaw to hang him up to the mast.
Revolving these dismal prospects with downward head, he climbed from the waist of the ship to the cabin promenade, and there a voice hailed him, and he turned to see Kate Malone approaching. She was all in white—cap, canvas shoes, silk shirt absurdly lose at the throat, and linen coat with the sleeves turned far back so that her hands would not be enveloped. The duck trousers were also taken up several reefs.
"Good morning," she said, and held out her hand.
He watched her smile wistfully, and then made a little gesture with his own hands, one burdened with the scrubbing brush and the other with the bucket.
"What does it mean?"
"Hell," said Harrigan.
"Explain."
"It's McTee again, damn his eyes!"
"Do you mean to say they've started to treat you as they did on the Mary Rogers? The scrubbing and then the work in the fireroom?"
"Right."
She stamped her foot in impotent fury.
"What manner of man is he, Dan? He's not all brute; why does he treat you like this?"
The Irishman smiled.
She cried with increasing anger: "What can I do?"
"Make your skin yellow an' your hair gray an' walk with no spring in your step. He wants to break me now because of you."
There was moist pity in her eyes, yet they gleamed with excitement at the thought of this battle of the Titans for her sake.
"I will go to him," she said after a moment, "and tell him that you mean nothing to me. Then he will stop."
The cold, incurious eyes studied her without passion, and once more he smiled.
"He'll not stop. Whether you like me or not, Kate, doesn't count. One of us'll go down, an' you'll be for the one that's left. He knows it—I know it."
"Harrigan!" called the voice of McTee from the bridge, and the tall
Scotchman lifted his cap to Kate.
"I'm the slave," said Harrigan, "and there's the whip. Good-by."
She stamped her foot with an almost childish fury, saying: "Someday he shall regret this brutal tyranny. Good-by, Dan, and good luck!"
She took his hand in both of hers, but her eyes held spitefully upon the bridge, as if she hoped that McTee would witness the handshake; the captain, however, had turned his back upon them.
Dan muttered to himself as he climbed the bridge: "Did she do that to anger McTee or to please me?" And the thought so occupied his mind that he paid no attention to the Scotchman when he reached the bridge. He merely dropped to his knees and commenced scrubbing. McTee, in the meanwhile, loitered about the bridge as if on his own ship. In due time Harrigan drew near, the suds swishing under his brush. The Irishman, remembering suddenly, commenced to hum a tune.
"The old grind, eh, Harrigan?" said McTee.
The Irishman, humming idly still, looked up, calmly surveyed the captain, and then went on as if he had heard merely empty wind instead of words.
"After the scrubbing brush the shovel," went on McTee, but still Harrigan paid no attention. He rose when his task was completed and made his eyes gentle as if with pity while he gazed upon McTee.
"I'm sorry for you, McTee; you've made a hard fight; it's strange you've got no ghost of a chance of winnin'."
"What d'you mean?"
"Couldn't you hear her when she talked to me?"
"I could not."
"Couldn't you see her face? It was written there as plain as print."
McTee cleared his throat.
"What was written there?"
"The thing you want to see. When she took my hand in both of hers—"
"Hell!"
"Ah-h, man, it was wonderful! The scrubbing brush an' the shovel—they mean nothin' to me now."
"Harrigan, you're lying."
The latter dropped his scrubbing brush into the bucket of suds and stood with arms akimbo studying the captain.
"For a smart man, McTee, you've been a fool. I could of gone down on me knees an' begged to do what you've done. Don't you see? You've thrown her with her will or against it into me arms. I'm poor Harrigan, brave and downtrodden; you're Black McTee once more, the tyrant. She looks sick at the mention of your name."
"I never dreamed you'd go whining to her. I thought you were a man; you're only a spineless dog, Harrigan!"
"Am I that? She pities me, McTee, an' from pity it's only one step to something bigger. Can you trust me to lead her that one step? You can!"
"If I went to her and told her how you boasted of having won her?"
"She wouldn't believe what you said about me if you swore it with both hands on the Bible. Be wise, McTee. Give up the game. You've lost her, me boy! For every day that I work in the fireroom I'll come to her an' show her the palms of me bleedin' hands an' mention your name. An' for every day I work in the hole the hate of you will burn blacker into her heart."
"I'd rather have her hate than her pity."
"You'll have both; her hate for torturin' Harrigan; her pity for lettin' the devil in you get the best of the man. You're done for, McTee."
Each one of the short phrases was like a whip flicked across the face of McTee, but he would not wince.
"You've said enough. Now get down to the fireroom. I've had Henshaw prepare the chief engineer for your coming."
Harrigan turned.
"Wait! Remember when you're in hell that the old compact still holds.
Your hand in mine and a promise to be my man will end the war."
Only the low laughter of the Irishman answered as he made his way down to the deck.
CHAPTER 18
"There's times for truth an' there's times for lying," murmured Harrigan, as he stowed away the bucket and brush and started down for the fireroom, "an' this was one of the times for lyin'. He's sick for the love of her, an' he's hatin' the thought of Harrigan."
So he was humming a rollicking tune when he reached the fireroom. It was stifling hot, to be sure, but it was twice as large as that of the Mary Rogers. The firemen were all glistening with sweat. One of them, larger than the rest and with a bristling, shoebrush mustache like a sign of authority, said to the newcomer: "You're Harrigan?"
He nodded.
"The chief wants to see you, boss, before you start swingin' the shovel."
"Where's the chief's cabin?"
"Take him up, Alex," directed the big fireman, and Harrigan followed one of the men up the narrow ladder and then aft. He was grateful for this light respite from the heat of the hole, but his joy faded when the man opened a door and he stood at last before the chief, Douglas Campbell, who looked up at the burly Irishman in a long silence.
The scion of the ancient and glorious clan of the Campbells had fallen far indeed. His face was a brilliant red, and the nose, comically swollen at the end, was crossed with many blue veins. Like Milton's Satan, however, he retained some traces of his original brightness. Harrigan knew at once that the chief engineer was fully worthy of joining those rulers of the south seas and harriers of weaker men, McTee and White Henshaw.
"Stand straight and look me in the eye," said Campbell, and in his voice was a slight "bur-r-r" of the Scotch accent.
Harrigan jerked back his shoulders and stood like a soldier at attention.
"A drinkin' man," he was saying to himself, "may be hard an' fallen low, but he's sure to have a heart."
"So you're the mutineer, my fine buck?"
Harrigan hesitated, and this seemed to infuriate Campbell, who banged a brawny fist on a table and thundered: "Answer me, or I'll skin your worthless carcass!"
The cold, blue eyes of Harrigan did not falter. They studied the face of the Campbell as a fighter gauges his opponent.
"If I say 'yes,'" he responded at length, "it's as good as puttin' myself in chains; if I say 'no,' you'll be thinkin' I'm givin' in, you an' McTee, damn his eyes!"
Campbell grew still redder.
"You damn him, do you? McTee is Scotch; he's a gentleman too good to be named by swine!"
The irrepressible Harrigan replied: "He's enough to make swine speak!"
Amazement and then a gleam of laughter shone in the eyes of the chief engineer. He was seized, apparently, by a fit of violent coughing and had to turn away, hiding his face with his hand. When he faced the Irishman again, his jaw was set hard, but his eyes were moist.
"Look me in the eye, laddie. Men say a good many things about me; they call me a slave driver and worse. Why? Because when I say 'move,' my men have to jump. I've asked you a question, and I'm going to get an answer. Are you a mutineer or not?"
"I will not pleasure McTee by sayin' I'm not!"
The ponderous hand rose over the table, but it was checked before it fell.
"What the devil has McTee to do with this?" he bellowed.
"He's the one that sent me here." Harrigan was thinking fast as he went on: "And you're going to keep me here for the sake of McTee."
Campbell changed from red to purple and exploded: "I'll keep no man here to please another; not White Henshaw himself. He rules on deck, and I rule below. D'you hear? Tell me you're a liar! Speak up!"
"You're a liar," said Harrigan instantly.
The engineer's mouth opened and closed twice while he stared at
Harrigan.
"Get out!" he shouted, springing to his feet. "I'll have you boxed up and sweated; I'll have you pounded to a pulp! Wait! Stay here! I'll bring in some men!"
Harrigan was desperate. He knew that what he had said was equivalent to a mutiny. He threw caution to the wind. Campbell had rung a bell.
"Bring your men an' be damned!" he answered; and now his head tilted back and he set his shoulders to the wall. "I'll be afther lickin' your whole crew! A man do ye call yourself? Ah-h, ye're not fit to be lickin' the boots ay a man! Slave driver? No, ye're an overseer, an' Henshaw kicks you an' you pass the kick along. But lay a hand on Harrigan, an' he'll tear the rotten head off your shoulders!"
The door flew open, and the second assistant engineer, a burly man, with two or three others, appeared at the entrance, drawn by the furious clamor of the bell.
"What—" began the second assistant, and then stopped as he caught sight of Harrigan against the wall with his hands poised, ready for the first attack.
"Who called you?" roared Campbell.
"Your bell—" began the assistant.
"You lie! Get out! I was telling a joke to my old friend Harrigan. Maybe I leaned back against the bell. Shake hands with Harrigan. I've known him for years."
Incredulous, Harrigan lowered his clenched fist and relaxed it to meet the hesitant hand of the assistant.
"Now be off," growled the chief, and the others fled.
As the door closed, Harrigan turned in stupid amazement upon the Scotchman. The latter had dropped into his chair again and now looked at Harrigan with twinkling eyes.
"You'd have fought 'em all, eh, lad?"
He burst into heavy laughter.
"Ah, the blue devil that came in your eyes! Why did I not let them have one whirl at you? Ha, ha, ha!"
"Wake me up," muttered Harrigan. "I'm dreamin'!"
"There's a thick lie in my throat," said Campbell. "I must wash it out and leave a truth there!"
He opened a small cupboard, exposing a formidable array of black and green bottles. One of the black he pulled down, as well as two small glasses, which he filled to the brim.
"To your bonny blue eyes, lad!" he said, and raised a glass. "Here's an end to the mutiny—and a drop to our old friendship!"
Harrigan, still with clouded mind, raised the glass and drank. It was a fine sherry wine.
"How old would you say that wine was?" queried the Scotchman with exaggerated carelessness.
The carelessness did not deceive Harrigan. His mind went blanker still, for he knew little about good wines.
"Well?" asked the engineer.
"H-m!" muttered Harrigan, and racked his brain to remember the ages at which a good vintage becomes a rare old wine. "About thirty-five years."
"By the Lord!" cried Campbell. "It never fails—a strong man knows his liquor like a book! You're almost right. Add three years and you have it! Thirty-eight years in sunshine and shadow!"
He leaned back and gazed dreamily up to the ceiling.
"Think of it," he went on in a reverent murmur. "Men have been born and grown strong and then started toward the shady side of life since this wine was put in the bottle. For thirty-eight years it has been gathering and saving its perfume—draw a breath of it now, lad!—and when I uncork the bottle, all the odor blows out to me at once."
"True," said Harrigan, nodding sagely. "I've thought the same thing, but never found the words for it, chief."
"Have you?" asked Campbell eagerly. "Sit down, lad; sit down! Well, well! Good wine was put on earth for a blessing, but men have misused it, Harrigan—but hear me preaching when I ought to be praying!"
"Prayin'?" repeated the diplomatic Harrigan. "No, no, man! Maybe you've drunk a good store of liquor, but it shines through you. It puts a flush on your face like a sun shinin' through a cloud. You'd hearten any man on a dark day!"
He could not resist the play on the words, and a shadow crossed the face of the engineer.
"Harrigan," he growled, "there's a double meaning in what you say, but I'll not think of it. You're no fool, lad, but do not vex me. But say your say. I suppose I'm red enough to be seen by my own light on a dark night. What does Bobbie say?
"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
"Well, well! I forgave you for the sake of Bobbie! Do you know his rhymes, lad?"
A light shone in the eye of Harrigan. He began to sing softly in his musical, deep voice: "Ye banks and braes of bonny Doon—"
"No, no, man!" cried Campbell, raising his hand in horror at the sound of the false accent. "It should go like this!"
He pulled a guitar out of a case and commenced to strum lightly on it, while he rendered the old song in a voice roughened by ill usage but still strong and true. A knock at the door interrupted him at the climax of his song, and he glared toward the unseen and rash intruder.
"What will ye hae?" he roared, continuing the dialect which the song had freshened on his tongue.
"The shift in the fireroom is short-handed," said the voice. "That fellow Harrigan has not shown up. Shall we search for him?"
"Search for the de'il!" thundered Campbell. "Harrigan is doing a fine piece of work for me; shall I let him go to the fireroom to swing a shovel?"
"The captain's orders, sir," persisted the voice rashly.
Campbell leaped for the door and jerked it open a few inches.
"Be off!" he cried; "or I'll set you passin' coal yourself, my fine lad! What? Will ye be asking questions? Is there no discipline? Mutiny, mutiny—that's what this is!"
"Aye, aye, sir!" murmured a rapidly retreating voice.
Campbell closed and locked the door and turned back to Harrigan with a grin.
"The world's a wide place," he said, "but there's few enough in it who know our Bobbie, God bless him! When I've found one, shall I let him go down to the fireroom? Ha! Now tell me what's wrong between you and McTee."
"I will not talk," said Harrigan with another bold stroke of diplomacy, "till I hear the rest of that song. The true Scotch comes hard on my tongue, but I'll learn it."
"You will, laddie, for your heart's right. Man, man, I'm nothing now, but you should have heard me sing in the old days—"
"When we were in Glasgow," grinned Harrigan.
"In Glasgow," repeated Campbell, and then lifted his head and finished the song. "Now for the story, laddie."
Harrigan started, as though recalled from a dream built up by the music. Then he told briefly the tale of the tyranny aboard the Mary Rogers, now apparently to be repeated.
"So I thought," he concluded, "that it was to be the old story over again—look at my hands!"
He held them out. The palms were still red and deeply scarred. Campbell said nothing, but his jaw set savagely.
"I thought it was to be this all over again," went on Harrigan, "till I
met you, chief. But with you for a friend I'll weather the storm.
McTee's a hard man, but when Scot meets Scot—I'll bet on the
Campbells."
"Would you bet on me against Black McTee?" queried the engineer, deeply moved. "Well, lad, McTee's a dour man, but dour or not he shall not run the engine room of the Heron."
And he banged on the table for emphasis.
"Scrub down the bridge every morning, as they tell you, but when they send you below to pass the coal, come and report to me first. I'll have work for you to do—chiefly practicing the right accent for Bobbie's songs. Is not that a man's work?"
CHAPTER 19
To make good this promise, Campbell straightway sang for Harrigan's delectation two or three more of his favorite selections. It was evening, and the shift in the fireroom was ended before Harrigan left the engineer's room. On his way to the deck he passed the tired firemen from the hole of the ship. They stared at the Irishman with wide eyes, for it was known that he had been in the chief engineer's room for several hours; they looked upon him as one who has been in hell and has escaped from thence to the upper air.
He was, in fact, a marked man when he reached the forecastle. Rumor travels through a ship's crew and it was already known that Black McTee hated the Irishman and that White Henshaw had commenced to persecute him in a new and terrible manner.
This would have been sufficient tragedy to burden the shoulders of any one man, however strong, and when to this was added the fact that he had been kept by the grim chief engineer for several hours in the chief's own room, and finally considering that this man had passed through a shipwreck, one of three lone survivors, it is easy to understand why the sailors gave him ample elbow room.
It was evidently expected that he would break out into a torrent of abuse, and when he, perceiving this, remained silent, their awe increased. All through supper he was aware of their wondering glances; above all he felt the gray, steady eyes of Jerry Hovey, the bos'n, yet he ate without speaking, replying to their tentative questions with grunts. Before the meal was finished and the pipes and cigarettes lighted, he was a made man. Persevering in his role, as soon as he had eaten he went out on deck and sat down in the corner between the rail and the forecastle upon a coil of rope.
As deep as the blue sea in the evening light was the peace which lay on the soul of Harrigan, for the day had brought two great victories, one over McTee and the other over the chief engineer. It was not a stolid content, for he knew the danger of the implacable hate of McTee, but with the aid of Campbell he felt that he would have a fighting chance at least to survive, and that was all he asked.
So he sat on the coil of rope leaning against the rail, and looked ahead. It was almost completely dark when a hand fell on his shoulder and he looked up into the steady, gray-blue eyes of the bos'n.
"I promised to talk to you tonight," said that worthy, and sat down uninvited on a neighboring coil of rope.
He waited for a response. As a rule, sailors are glad to curry favor with the bos'n. Harrigan, however, sat without speaking, staring through the gloom.
"Well?" said Hovey at length. "You're a silent man, Harrigan."
There was no response.
"All right; I like a silent man. In a way of speakin', I need 'em like you! If you say little to me, you're likely to say little to others.
"I don't talk much myself," went on Hovey, "until I know my man. I ain't seen much of you, but I guess I figure you straight."
He grew suddenly cautious, cunning, and the steady, gray-blue eyes reminded Harrigan of a cat when she crouches for hours watching the rathole.
"You ain't got much reason for standing in with White Henshaw?" he purred.
"H'm," grunted the Irishman, and waited.
"Sure, you ain't," went on Hovey soothingly, "because McTee has raised hell between you. They say McTee tried his damnedest to break you?"
The last question was put in a different manner; it came suddenly like a surprise blow in the dark.
"Well?" queried Harrigan. "What of it?"
"He tried all the way from Honolulu?"
"He did."
"Did he try his fists?"
"He did."
Jerry Hovey cursed with excitement.
"And?"
"I carried him to his cabin afterward," said Harrigan truthfully.
"Would you take on McTee again? Black McTee?"
"If I had to. Why?"
"Oh, nothin'. But McTee has started White Henshaw on your trail. Maybe you know what Henshaw is? The whole South Seas know him!"
"Well?"
"You'll have a sweet hell of a time before this boat touches port,
Harrigan."
"I'll weather it."
"Yes, this trip, but what about the next? If Henshaw is breakin' a man, he keeps him on the ship till the man gives in or dies. I know! Henshaw'll get so much against you that he could soak you for ten years in the courts by the time we touch port. Then he'll offer to let you off from the courts if you'll ship with him again, and then the old game will start all over again. You may last one trip—other men have—one or two—but no one has ever lasted out three or four shippings under White Henshaw. It can't be done!"
He paused to let this vital point sink home. Only the same dull silence came in reply, and this continued taciturnity seemed to irritate Hovey. When he spoke again, his voice was cold and sharp.
"He's got you trapped, Harrigan. You're a strong man, but you'll never get his rope off your neck. He'll either hang you with it or else tie you hand and foot an' make you his slave. I know!"
There was a bitter emphasis on the last word that left no doubt as to his meaning, and Harrigan understood now the light of that steady, gray-blue eye which made the habitual smile of good nature meaningless.
"Ten years ago I shipped with White Henshaw. Ten years ago I didn't have a crooked thought or a mean one in my brain. Today there's hell inside me, understand? Hell!" He paused, breathing hard.
"There's others on this ship that have been through the same grind, some of them longer than me. There's others that ain't here, but that ain't forgotten, because me an' some of the rest, we seen them dyin' on their feet. Maybe they ain't dropped into the sea, but they're just the same, or worse. You'll find 'em loafin' along the beaches. They take water from the natives, they do."
He went on in a hoarse whisper: "On this ship I've seen 'em busted. An' Henshaw has done the bustin'. This is a coffin ship, Harrigan, an' Henshaw he's the undertaker. He don't bring 'em to Davy Jones's locker—he does worse—he brings 'em to hell on earth, a hell so bad that when they go below, they don't notice no difference. Harrigan, me an' a few of the rest, we know what's been done, an' some of us have thought wouldn't it be a sort of joke, maybe, if sometime what Henshaw has done to others was done to himself, what?"
The sweat was standing out on Harrigan's face wet and cold. It seemed to him that through the darkness he could make out whole troops of those broken men littering the decks. He peered through the dark at the bos'n, and made out the hint of the gray-blue eyes watching him again as the cat watches the mousehole, and the heart of Harrigan ached.
"Hovey, are you bound for the loincloth an' the beaches, like the rest?"
"No, because I've sold my soul to White Henshaw; but you're bound there, Harrigan, because you can never sell your soul. I looked in your eyes and seen it written there like it was in a book."
He gripped the Irishman by the shoulder.
"There's some say this is the last voyage of White Henshaw, but me an' some of the rest, we know different. He can't leave the sea, which means that he won't take us out of hell. Now, talk straight. You stood up to McTee; would you stand up to Henshaw?"
Harrigan muttered after a moment of thought: "I suppose this is mutiny, bos'n?"
"Aye, but I'm safe in talkin' it. White Henshaw trusts me, he does, because I've sold my soul to him. If you was to go an' tell him what I've said, he'd laugh at you an' say you was tryin' to incite discontent. What's it goin' to be, Harrigan? Will you join me an' the rest who can set you free an' make a man of you, or will you stay by McTee and White Henshaw and that devil Campbell?"
"How could you set me free?"
"One move—altogether—in the night—we'd have the ship for our own, an' we could beach her and take to the shore at any place we pleased."
Harrigan repeated: "One move—altogether—in the night! I don't like it, bos'n. I'll stand up to my man foot to foot an' hand to hand, but for strikin' at him in the dark—I can't do it."
He caught the sound of Hovey's gritting teeth.
"Think it over," persisted the bos'n. "We need you, Harrigan, but if you don't join, we'll help McTee and Henshaw and Campbell to make life hell for you."
"I've thought it over. I don't like the game. This mutiny at night—it's like hittin' a man who's down."
"That's final?"
"It is."
"Then God help you, Harrigan, for you ain't the man I took you for."