by Max Brand
"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 hi 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 hi 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.
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 somewha
t 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?"