by Max Brand
"Harrigan, you took a chance and came with me."
"Yes."
"I didn't ask you to come."
"Sure you didn't, but if you think you can treat me like a swine and get away with it--"
It was wonderful to see the eyes of McTee grow small. They seemed to retreat until they became points of light shining from the deep shadow of his brow. They were met by the cold, incurious light of Harrigan's stare.
"You're a hard man, Harrigan."
He made no answer, but listened to the deep thrum of the engines. It seemed to him that the force which drove the ship was like a part of McTee's will, a thing of steel.
"And I'm a hard man, Harrigan. On this ship I'm king. There's no will but my will; there's no right but my right; there's no law but my law.
Remember, on land we stood as equals. On this ship you stand and I sit."
The thin lips did not curve, and yet they seemed to be smiling cruelly, and the eyes were probing deep, deep, deep into Harrigan's soul, weighing, measuring, searching.
"When we reach land," said Harrigan, "I got an idea I'll have to break you."
He raised his hands, which trembled with the restrained power of his arms, and moved them as though slowly breaking a stick of wood.
"I've broken men--like that," he finished.
"When I'm through with you, Harrigan, you'll take water from a Chinaman. You're the first man I've ever seen who could make me stop and look twice. I need a fellow like you, but first I've got to make you my man. The best colt in the world is no good until he learns to take the whip without bucking. I'm going to get you used to the whip.
This is frank talk, eh? Well, I'm a frank man. You're in the harness now, Harrigan; make up your mind: Will you pull or will you balk? Answer me!"
"I'll see you damned!"
"Good. You've started to balk, so now you'll have to feel the whip."
He pulled a cord, and while they waited, the relentless duel of the eyes continued. A flash of instinct like a woman's intuition told Harrigan what impulse was moving McTee. He knew it was the same thing which makes the small schoolboy fight with the stranger; the same curiosity as to the unknown power, the same relentless will to be master, but now intensified a thousandfold in McTee, who looked for the first time, perhaps, on a man who might be his master. Harrigan knew, and smiled. He was confident. He half rejoiced in looking forward to the long struggle.
A knock came and the door opened.
"Masters," said McTee to the boatswain, "we're three hands short."
"Yes, sir."
"Here are the three hands. Take them forward."
Chapter 3
Masters looked at Harrigan, started to laugh, looked again, and then silently held the door open. Harrigan stepped through it and followed to the forecastle, a dingy retreat in the high bow of the ship. He had to bend low to pass through the door, and inside he found that he could not stand erect. It was his first experience of working aboard a ship, and he expected to find a scrupulous neatness, and hammocks in place of beds. Instead he looked on a double row of bunks heaped with swarthy quilts, and the boatswain with a silent gesture indicated that one of these belonged to Harrigan. He went to it without a word and sat down cross-legged to survey his new quarters. It was more like the bunkhouse of a western ranch than anything else he had been in, but all reduced to a miniature, cramped and confined.
Now his eyes grew accustomed to the dim, unpleasant light which came from a single lantern hanging on the central post, and he began to make out the faces of the sailors. An oily-skinned Greek squatted on the bunk to his left. To his right was a Chinaman, marvelously emaciated; his lips pulled back in a continual smile, meaningless, like the grin of a corpse.
Opposite was the inevitable Englishman, slender, good-looking, with pale hair and bright, active eyes. Harrigan had traveled over half the world and never failed to find at least one subject of John Bull in any considerable group of men. This young fellow was talking with a giant Negro, his neighbor. The black man chattered with enthusiasm while the Englishman listened, nodding, intent.
One thing at least was certain about this crew: the Negro, the Chinaman, the Greek, even the Englishman, despite his slender build, they were all hard, strong men.
The cook brought out supper in buckets--stews, chunks of stale bread, tea. As they ate, the sailors grew talkative.
"Slide the slum this way," said the Englishman.
The Negro pushed the bucket across the deck with his foot.
"A hard trip," went on the first speaker.
"All trips on the _Mary Rogers_ is hard," rumbled a voice.
"Aye, but Black McTee is blacker'n ever today."
"He belted the bos'n with a rope end," commented the Negro.
"He ain't human. This is my last trip with him. How about you, John?
You got a lump on your jaw yet where he cracked you for breakin' that truck."
This was to the Chinaman, who answered in a soft guttural as if there were bubbling oil in his throat: "Me sail two year Black McTee, an'--"
To finish his speech he passed a tentative hand across his swollen jaw.
"And you'll sail with him till you die, John," said the Englishman.
"When a man has had Black McTee for a boss, he'll want no other. He's to other captains what whisky is to beer."
The white teeth of the Negro showed. "Maybe Black McTee won't live long," he suggested.
There was a long silence. It lasted until the supper was finished. It lasted until the men slid into their bunks. And Harrigan knew that every man was repeating slowly to himself: "Maybe Black McTee won't live long."
"Not if this gang goes after him," muttered Harrigan, "and yet--"
He remembered the fight in Ivilei and the heaving shoulders which showed above the heads of the swarming soldiers. With that picture in his mind he went to sleep.
They were far out of sight of land in the morning and loafing south before the trade wind, with a heavy ground swell kicking them along from behind. Harrigan saw the _Mary Rogers_ plainly for the first time.
She was small, not more than fifteen hundred or two thousand tons, and the dingiest, sootiest of all tramp freighters. He had little time to make observations.
In the first place all hands washed down the decks, some of the men in rubber boots, the others barefooted, with their trousers rolled up above the knees. Harrigan was one of this number. The cool water from the hose swished pleasantly about his toes. He began to think better of life at sea as the wind blew from his nostrils the musty odors of the forecastle. Then the bos'n, with the suggestion of a grin in his eyes, ordered him up to scrub the bridge. He climbed the steps with a bucket in one hand and a brush in the other. There stood McTee leaning against the wheelhouse and staring straight ahead across the bows. He seemed quite oblivious of his presence until, having finished his job, Harrigan started back down the steps.
"D'you call this clean?" rumbled McTee. "All over again!"
And Harrigan dropped to his knees without protest and commenced scrubbing again. As he worked, he hummed a tune and saw the narrow jaw of McTee jut out. Harrigan smiled.
He had scarcely finished stowing his bucket and brush away when the bos'n brought him word that he was wanted in the fireroom. Masters's face was serious.
"What's the main idea?" asked Harrigan.
The bos'n cast a worried eye fore and aft.
"Black McTee's breakin' you," he said; "you're getting the whip."
"Well?"
"God help you, that's all. Now get below."
There was a certain fervency about this speech which impressed even Harrigan. He brooded over it on his way to the fireroom. There he was set to work passing coal. He had to stand in a narrow passage scarcely wide enough for him to turn about in. On either side was a towering black heap which slanted down to his feet. Midway between the piles was the little door through which he shoveled the coal into the fireroom.
All was stifling hot, with a brea
th of coal dust and smoke to choke the lungs. Even the Greek firemen sweated and cursed, though they were used to that environment. An ordinary man might have succumbed simply to that fiery, foul atmosphere. It was like a glimpse of hell, dark, hopeless.
It was not the heat or the atmosphere which troubled Harrigan, but his hands. His skin was puffed and soft from the scrubbing of the bridge.
Now as he grasped the rough wood of the short-handled scoop the epidermis wore quickly and left his palms half raw. For a time he managed to shift his grip, bringing new portions of his hands to bear on the wood, but even this skin was worn away in time. When he finished his shift, his hands were bleeding in places and raw in the palms.
As he came on deck, he tied them up with bits of soft waste in lieu of a bandage and made no complaint, yet his fingers were trembling when he ate supper that night. He caught the eyes of the rest of the crew studying him with a cold calculation. They were estimating the strength of his endurance and he knew at once that they had been through the same trial one by one until they were broken.
He could see that they hated the captain and he wondered why they would ship with him time and again. He watched their expressions when Black McTee was mentioned, and then he understood. They were waiting for the time when the captain should weaken. Then they would have their revenge.
The second day was a repetition of the first. He began with scrubbing down the bridge. The suds, strong with lye, ate shrewdly at his raw hands. Still he hummed as he worked and watched McTee's frown grow dark. When he was ordered below to the fireroom, he wrapped his hands in the soft waste again. That helped him for a time, but after the first two hours the waste matted and grew hard with perspiration and blood. He had to throw it away and take the shovel handle against his bare skin. He told himself that it was only a matter of time before calluses would form, but what chance was there for a formation of calluses when the water and suds softened his hands every morning?
On the third day he was a little more used to the torture. His hands were hopelessly raw now, but still he made no complaint and stuck with his task. That night he secured a rag and retreated to the stretch of deck between the wheelhouse and the after-cabin, where he squatted beside a bucket of water and washed his hands carefully. Both hands were puffed and red; one of the creases in the left palm bled a steady trickle. He washed them slowly, with infinite relish of the cool water, until he felt that peculiar sensation which warns us that we are watched by another eye.
He looked up to see a young woman standing above him at the rail of the after-cabin. She had been watching him by the light from the window of the wheelhouse.
Chapter 4
"Let me bandage your hands," she said. "I have some salve in my room."
Her voice was a balm to the troubled heart of Harrigan. His knotted forehead relaxed.
"Are you coming up?"
"Aye."
He ran up the ladder and followed her to a cabin. She rummaged through a suitcase and finally brought out a little tin box of salve and a roll of gauze. As she stooped with her back to him, he saw that her hair was red--not fiery red like his, but a deep dull bronze, with points of gold where the light struck it. When she straightened and turned, her eyes went wide, looking up to him, for he bulked huge in the tiny cabin.
"What a big fellow you are!"
He did not answer for a moment; he was too busy watching her eyes, which were sea-green, and strangely pleasant and restful.
"Do you know me?" she asked with a slight frown.
"'Scuse me," muttered Harrigan. "I thought at first I did."
He abased his glance while she took one of his hands and turned it palm up.
"Ugh!" she muttered. "How did this happen?"
"Work."
"Do you mean to say they make you work with your hands in this condition?"
"Sure."
"Poor fellow! That black captain!"
Her voice had changed from a peculiarly soft, low accent to a shrill tone that made Harrigan start.
"Poor fellow!" she repeated. "Sit down."
The campstool creaked under the burden of his weight. She pulled up the chair in front of him and placed his left hand on her knees.
"This is peroxide. Tell me if it hurts too much."
She spilled some of the liquid across his palm; it frothed.
"Ouch!" grunted Harrigan involuntarily.
She caught his wrists with both hands.
"Why, your whole arm is trembling! You must be in torture with this.
Have you made any complaint?"
"No."
She studied him for a moment, scenting a mystery somewhere and guessing that he would not speak of it. And she asked no questions. She said not a word and merely bowed her head and started to apply the salve with delicate touches. For the result, a confession of all his troubles tumbled up the big man's throat to his tongue. He had to set his teeth to keep it back.
She became aware of those cold, incurious eyes studying her face as she wrapped the gauze bandage deftly around the injured palms.
"Why do you watch me so closely?"
It disarmed him. Those possibilities of tenderness came about his stiff-set lips, and the girl wondered.
"I was thinkin' about my home town."
"Where is it?"
He frowned and waved his hand in a sweep which included half the points on the compass.
"Back there."
She waited, wrapping up the gauze bandage.
"When I was a kid, I used to go down to the harbor an' watch the ships comin' in an' goin' out," he went on cautiously.
She nodded, and he resumed with more confidence: "I'd sit on the pierhead an' watch the ships. I knew they was bringing the smell of far lands in their holds."
There was a little pause; then his head tilted back and he burst into the soft, thick brogue: "Ah-h, I was afther bein' woild about the schooners blowin' out to sea wid their sails shook out like clouds. An' then I'd look down to the wather around the pier, an' it was green, deep green, ah-h, the deep sea-green av it! An' I would look into it an' dream. Whin I seen your eyes--"
He stopped, grown cold as a man will when he feels that he has laid his inner self indecently bare to the eye of the world. But she did not stir; she did not smile.
"I felt like a kid again," said Harrigan, recovering from the brogue.
"Like a kid sittin' on the pierhead an' watchin' the green water. Your eyes are that green," he finished.
Self-consciousness, the very thing which she had been trying to keep the big sailor from, turned her blood to fire. She knew the quick color was running from throat to cheek; she knew the cold, incurious eye would note the change. He was so far aware of the alteration that he rose and glanced at the door.
"Good-by," she said, and then quite forgetting herself: "I shall ask the captain to see that you are treated like a white man."
"You will not!"
"I beg your pardon?" she said, but the hint of insulted dignity was lost on Harrigan.
"You will not," he repeated. "It'd simply make him worse."
She was glad of the chance to be angry; it would explain her heightening color.
"The captain must be an utter brute."
"I figger he's nine tenths man, an' the other tenth devil, but there ain't no human bein' can change any of them ten parts. Good-by. I'm thankin' you. My name's Harrigan."
She opened the door for him.
"If you wish to have that dressing changed, ask for Miss Malone."
"Ah-h!" said Harrigan. "Malone!"
She explained coldly: "I'm Scotch, not Irish."
"Scotch or Irish," said Harrigan, and his head tilted back as it always did when he was excited. "You're afther bein' a real shport, Miss Malone!"
"Miss Malone," she repeated, closing the door after him, and vainly attempting to imitate the thrill which he gave to the word. "What a man!"
She smiled for a moment into space and then pulled the cord for the cabin boy.
Chapter 5
The cabin boy did duty for all the dozen passengers, and therefore he was slow in answering. When he appeared, she asked him to carry the captain word that she wished to speak with him. He returned in a short time to say that Captain McTee would talk with her now in his cabin.
She followed aft to the captain's room. He did not rise when she entered, but turned in his chair and relinquished a long, black, fragrant cigar.
"Don't stop smoking," she said. "I want you in a pleasant mood to hear what I have to say."
Without reply he placed the cigar in his mouth and the bright black eyes fastened upon her. That suddenly intent regard was startling, as if he had leaned over and spoken a word in her ear. She shrugged her shoulders as if trying to shake off a compelling hand and then settled into a chair.
"I've come to say something that's disagreeable for you to hear and for me to speak."
Still he would not talk. He was as silent as Harrigan. She clenched her hands and drove bravely ahead. She told how she had called the red-headed sailor up to the after-cabin and dressed his hurts, and she described succinctly, but with rising anger the raw and swollen condition of his fingers. The captain listened with apparent enjoyment; she could not tell whether he was relishing her story or his slowly puffed cigar. In the end she waited for his answer, but evidently none was forthcoming.
"Now," she said at last, "I know something about ships and sailors, and I know that if this fellow was to appeal against you after you touch port, a judge would weigh a single word of yours against a whole sentence of Harrigan's. It would be a different matter if a disinterested person pressed a charge of cruelty against you. I am such a person; I would press such a charge; I have the money, the time, and the inclination to do it."
She read the slight hesitation in his manner, not as if he were impressed by what she had to say, but as though he was questioning himself as to whether he should give her any answer at all. It made her wish fervently that she were a man--and a big one. He spoke then, as if an illuminating thought had occurred to him.
"You know Harrigan's record?"
"No," she admitted grudgingly.
McTee sighed as if with deep relief and leaned back in his chair. His smile was sympathetic and it altered his face so marvelously that she caught her breath.