by Max Brand
Harrigan was in doubt, but he concealed his trouble with a mighty effort and smiled.
“That’s a weak lie, Angus. When I was a boy of ten, I would of hung me head for shame if I could not have made a better lie. Shall I tell you what really happened when you met Kate? You came up smilin’ an’ grinnin’ like a baboon, an’ she passed you by with a look that went through you as if you were just a cloud on the edge of the sky. Am I right, McTee?”
“You’ve seen her, and she’s told you this,” exclaimed the captain.
Harrigan chuckled his triumph and went on with the scrubbing of the bridge.
“No, Angus, me dear, I’ve not seen her, but when two souls are as close as hers and mine — well, cap’n, I leave it to you!”
McTee ground his teeth with rage and turned his back on the worker for a moment until he could master the contorted muscles of his face.
“Tut, McTee,” went on the Irishman, “you’ve but felt the tickle of the spur; when I drive it in, you’ll yell like a whipped kid. Always you play into me hands, McTee. Now when you see Kate, you’ll feel me grin in the background mockin’ ye, eh?”
The banter gave the captain a shrewd inspiration. He leaned, and catching one of Harrigan’s hands with a quick movement, turned it palm up. It was as he suspected; the palm, though red from the effect of the strong suds and still scarcely healed after the torment of the Mary Rogers, was nevertheless manifestly unharmed by the labor which it was supposed Harrigan had performed the day before. The hand was wrenched away and a balled fist held under McTee’s nose.
“If you’re curious, Angus, look at me knuckles, not me palm. It’s the knuckles you’ll feel the most, cap’n.”
CHAPTER 22
BUT MCTEE, DEEP in thought, was walking from the bridge. He went straight to the hole of the ship and questioned some of the firemen, and they told him that Harrigan had done no work passing coal the day before; Campbell, it appeared, had taken him for some special job. With this tidings the Scotchman hastened back to Henshaw.
“The game’s slipping through our hands, captain,” he said.
“Harrigan?” queried Henshaw.
“Aye. He didn’t pass a shovelful of coal in the hole yesterday.”
“Tut, tut,” answered the other with a wave of the hand. “I sent orders to Campbell, and told him what sort of a man he could expect to find in Harrigan.”
“I’ve just talked to the firemen. They say that Harrigan didn’t handle a single pound of coal. That ought to be final.”
Henshaw went black.
“It may be so. I’ve given more rope to old Campbell than to any man that ever sailed the seas with White Henshaw, and it may be he’s using the rope now to hang himself. We’ll find out, McTee; we’ll find out! Where’s Harrigan now?”
“Gone below a while ago after he finished scrubbing down the bridge.”
“We’ll speak with Douglas. Come along, McTee. There’s nothing like discipline on the high seas.”
He went below, murmuring to himself, with McTee close behind him. Strange sounds were coming from the room of the chief engineer, sounds which seemed much like the strumming of a guitar.
“He’s playing his songs,” grinned Henshaw, and he chuckled noiselessly. “Listen! We’ll give him something to sing about — and it’ll be in another key. Ha-ha!”
He tasted the results of his disciplining already, but just as he placed his hand on the knob of the door, another sound checked him and made him turn with a puzzled frown toward McTee. It was a ringing baritone voice which rose in an Irish love song.
“What the devil—” began Henshaw.
“You’re right,” nodded McTee. “It’s the devil — Harrigan. Open the door!”
The captain flung it open, and they discovered the two worthies seated at ease with a black bottle and two glasses at hand. Campbell, in the manner of a musical critic of some skill, leaned back in a chair with his brawny arms folded behind his head and his eyes half closed. Harrigan, tilted back in a chair, rested his feet on the edge of a small table and swept the guitar which lay on his lap. In the midst of a high note he saw the ominous pair standing in the door, and the music died abruptly on his lips.
He rose to his feet and nudged Campbell at the same time. The latter opened his eyes and, glimpsing the unwelcome visitors, sprang up, gasping, stammering.
“What? Come in! Don’t be standing there, Cap’n Henshaw. Come in and sit down!”
In spite of his bluster his red face was growing blotched with patches of gray. Harrigan, less moved than any of the others, calmly replaced the guitar in its green cloth case.
“I sent this fellow down to be put at hard work,” said Henshaw, and waited.
It was obvious to Harrigan that the chief engineer was in mortal fear. He himself felt strangely ill at ease as he looked at White Henshaw with his skin yellow as Egyptian papyrus from a tomb.
“Just a minute, captain,” began the engineer. “You sent Harrigan down to the hole because he’s considered a hard man to handle, eh?”
Henshaw waited for a fuller explanation; he seemed to be enjoying the distress of Campbell.
“Just so,” went on the Scotchman, “but there are two ways of handling a difficult sailor. One is by using the club and the other by using kindness. The club has been tried and hasn’t worked very well with Harrigan. I decided to take a hand with kindness. The results have been excellent. I was just about—”
His voice died away, for McTee was chuckling in a deep bass rumble, and
Henshaw was smiling in a way that boded no good.
The captain broke in coldly: “I’ve heard enough of your explanation, Campbell. Send Harrigan down to the hole at once. We’ll work him a double shift today, for a starter.”
Campbell was trembling like a self-conscious girl, for he was drawn between shame and dread of the captain.
“Look!” he cried, and taking the hand of Harrigan, he turned it palm up. “This chap has been brutally treated. He’s been at work that fairly tore the skin from the palms of his hands. One hour’s work with a shovel, captain, would make Harrigan useless at any sort of a job for a month.”
“Which goes to show,” said McTee, “that you don’t know Harrigan.”
“I’ve heard what you have to say,” said Henshaw. “I sent him down to work in the hole; I come down and find him singing in your room. I expect you to have him passing coal inside of fifteen minutes, Campbell.”
Harrigan started for the door, feeling that the game had been played out, and glad of even this small respite of a day or more from the labor of the shovel. Before he left the room, however, the voice of Campbell halted him.
“Wait! Stay here! You’ll do what I tell you, Harrigan. I’m the boss belowdecks.”
It was a declaration of war, and what it cost Campbell no one could ever tell. He stood swaying slightly from side to side, while he glared at Henshaw.
“You’re drunk,” remarked the captain coldly. “I’ll give you half an hour, Campbell, to come to your senses — but after that—”
“Damn you and your time! I want no tune! I say the lad has been put through hell and shan’t go back to it, do you hear me?”
Henshaw was controlling himself carefully, or else he wished to draw out the engineer.
He said: “You know the record of Harrigan?”
“What record? The one McTee told you? Would you believe what Black
McTee says of a man he tried to break and couldn’t?”
“My friend McTee is out of the matter. All that you have to do with is my order. You’ve heard that order, Campbell!”
“I’ll see you in hell before I send him to the hole.”
Henshaw waited another moment, quietly enjoying the wild excitement of the engineer like the Spanish gentleman who sits in safety in the gallery and watches the baiting of the bull in the arena below.
“I shall send that order to you in writing. If you refuse to obey then,
I shall act!”
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He turned on his heel; McTee stayed a moment to smile upon Harrigan, and then followed. As the door closed, Harrigan turned to Campbell and found him sitting, shuddering, with his face buried in his hands. He touched the Scotchman on the shoulder.
“You’ve done your part, chief. I won’t let you do any more. I’m starting now for the hole.”
“What?” bellowed Campbell. “Am I no longer the boss of my engine room? You’ll sit here till I tell you to move! Damn Henshaw and his written orders!”
“If you refuse to obey a written order, he can take your license away from you in any marine court.”
“Let it go.”
“Ah-h, chief, ye’re afther bein’ a thrue man an’ a bould one, but I’d rather stay the rest av me life in the hole than let ye ruin yourself for me. Whisht, man, I’m goin’! Think no more av it!”
Campbell’s eyes grew moist with the temptation, but then the fighting blood of his clan ran hot through his veins.
“Sit down,” he commanded. “Sit down and wait till the order comes. It’s a fine thing to be chief engineer, but it’s a better thing to be a man. What does Bobbie say?”
And he quoted in a ringing voice: “A man’s a man for a’ that!” Afterward they sat in silence that grew more tense as the minutes passed, but it seemed that Henshaw, with demoniac cunning, had decided to prolong the agony by delaying his written order and the consequent decision of the engineer. And Harrigan, watching the suffused face of Campbell, knew that the time had come when his will would not suffice to make him follow the dictates of his conscience.
All of which Henshaw knew perfectly well as he sat in his cabin filling the glass of McTee with choice Scotch.
They sat for an hour or more, chatting, and McTee drew a picture of the pair waiting below in silent dread — a picture so vivid that Henshaw laughed in his breathless way. In time, however, he decided that they had delayed long enough, and took up pen and paper to write the order which was to convince the dauntless Campbell that even he was a slave. As he did so, Sloan, the wireless operator, appeared at the door, saying: “The report has come, sir.”
CHAPTER 23
HE HELD A little folded paper in his hand. At sight of it Henshaw turned in his chair and faced Sloan with a wistful glance.
“Good?”
“Not very, sir.”
Henshaw rose slowly and frowned like the king on the messenger who bears tidings of the lost battie.
“Then very bad?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Very well. Let me have the message. You may go.”
He took the slip of paper cautiously, as if it were dangerous in itself, and then called back the operator as the latter reached the door.
“Come back a minute. Sloan, you’re a good boy — a very good boy. Faithful, intelligent; you know your business. H-m! Here — here’s a five spot” — he slipped the money into Sloan’s hand— “and you shall have more when we touch port. Now this message, my lad — you couldn’t have made any mistake in receiving it? You couldn’t have twisted any of the words a little?”
“No mistake, I’m sure, sir. It was repeated twice.”
“That makes it certain, then — certain,” muttered Henshaw. “That is all,
Sloan.”
As the latter left the cabin, the old captain went back to his chair and sat with the paper resting upon his knee, as if a little delay might change its import.
“I am growing old, McTee,” he said at last, apologetically, “and age affects the eyes first of all. Suppose you take this message, eh? And read it through to me — slowly — I hate fast reading, McTee.”
The big Scotchman took the slip of paper and read with a long pause between each word:
Beatrice — failing — rapidly — hemorrhage — this — morning — very — weak.
The paper was snatched from his hand, and Henshaw repeated the words over and over to himself: “Weak — failing — hemorrhage — the fools! A little bleeding at the nose they call a hemorrhage!”
McTee broke in: “A good many doctors are apt to make a case seem more serious than it is. They get more credit that way for the cure, eh?”
“God bless you, lad! Aye, they’re a lot of damnable curs! Burning at sea — death by fire at sea! He was right! The old devil was right! Look, McTee! I’m safe on my ship; I’m rich; but still I’m burning to death in the middle of the ocean.”
He shook the Scotchman by his massive shoulder.
“Go get Sloan — bring him here!”
McTee rose.
“No! Don’t let me lay eyes on him — he brought me this! Go yourself and carry him a message to send. The doctors are letting her die; they think she has no money. Send them this message:
“Save Beatrice at all costs. Call in the greatest doctors. I will pay all bills ten times over.
“Quick! Why are you waiting here? You fool! Run! Minutes mean life or death to her!”
McTee hastened back to the wireless house in the after-part of the ship. To Sloan he gave the message, even exaggerating it somewhat. After it was sent, he said: “Look here, my boy, do you realize that it’s dangerous to bring the captain messages like that last one you carried to him?”
“Do I know it? I should say I do! Once the old boy jumped at me like a tiger because I carried in a bad report.”
“Could you make up a false message?”
“It’s against the law, sir.”
“It’s not against the law to keep a man from going crazy.”
“Crazy?”
“I mean what I say. Henshaw is balancing on the ragged edge of insanity. Mark my words! If the news comes of his granddaughter’s death, he’ll fall on the other side. Why can’t you give him some hope in the meantime? Suppose you work up something this afternoon like this: ‘Beatrice rallying rapidly. Doctor’s much more hopeful.’ What do you say?”
“Crazy!” repeated the wireless operator, fascinated. “If the old man loses his reason, we’re all in danger.”
“He’s on the verge of it. I know something of this subject. I’ve studied it a lot. A common sign is when one fancy occupies a man’s brain. Henshaw has two of them. One is what an old soothsayer told him: that he would die by fire at sea; the other is his love for this girl. Between the two, he’s in bad shape. Remember that he’s an old man.”
“You’re right, sir; and I’ll do it. It may not be legal, but we can’t stop for law in a case like this.”
McTee nodded and went back to Henshaw, whom he found walking the cabin with a step surprisingly elastic and quick.
“Go back and send another message,” he called. “I made a mistake. I didn’t send one that was strong enough. They may not understand. What I should have said was—”
“I made it twice as strong as the way you put it,” said McTee; and he repeated his phrasing of the message with some exaggeration.
The lean hand of the captain wrung his.
“You’re a good lad, McTee — a fine fellow. Stand by me. You’d never guess how my brain is on fire; the old devil of a soothsayer was right. But that message you sent will bring those deadheaded doctors to life. Ah, McTee, if I were only there for a minute in spirit, I could restore her to life — yes, one minute!”
“Of course you could. But in the meantime, for a change of thought, suppose you finish that order you were about to write out and send to Campbell.”
“What order?”
“About Harrigan.”
“Who the devil is Harrigan?”
McTee drew a deep breath and answered quietly: “The man you ordered to work in the hole. Here’s the paper and your pen.”
He placed them in the hands of the captain, but the latter held them idly.
“It’s the frail ones who are carried off by the white plague. Am I right?”
“No, you’re wrong. The frail ones sometimes have a better chance than the husky people. Look at the number of athletes who are carried away by it!”
“God bless you,
McTee!”
“The strength that counts is the strength of spirit, and this girl has your own fighting spirit.”
“Do you think so?”
“Yes; I saw it in her eyes.”
Henshaw shook his head sadly.
“No; they’re the eyes of her grandmother, and she had no fighting spirit. I think I married her more for pity than for love. Her grandmother died by that same disease, McTee.”
The latter gave up the struggle and spent an hour soothing the excited old man. When he managed to escape, he went up and down the deck breathing deeply of the fresh air. For the moment Harrigan was safe, but it would not be long before he would force Henshaw to deliver the order. Into this reverie broke the voice of Jerry Hovey.
“Beg your pardon, Captain McTee.”
The Scotchman turned to the bos’n with the smile still softening his stern lips.
“Well?” he asked good-naturedly.
“Let me have half a dozen words, sir.”
“A thousand, bos’n. What is it?”
Now, Hovey remembered what Harrigan had said about coming straight to the point, and he appreciated the value of the advice. Particularly in speaking to a man like McTee, for he recognized in the Scotchman some of the same strong, blunt characteristics of Harrigan.
“Every man who’s sailed the South Seas knows Captain McTee,” he began.
“None of that, lad. If you know me, you also know that I’m called Black
McTee — and for a reason.”
“More than that, sir, we know that whatever men say of you, your word has always been good.”
“Well?”
“I’m going to ask you to give me your word that what I have to say, if it doesn’t please you, will go out one ear as fast as it goes in the other.”
“You have my word.”
“And maybe your hand, sir?”
McTee, stirred by curiosity, shook hands.
Hovey began: “Some of us have sailed a long time and never got much in the pocket to show for it.”
“Yes, that’s true of me.”
“But there’s none of us would turn our backs on the long green?”