by Max Brand
He raised his hand like a guard, but two lean, thin hands, incredibly strong, closed on his wrists.
“A woman’s love,” went on the old buccaneer of the South Seas, “is stronger than armor plate to save the man she cares for. You can’t see it; you could never see it! But I tell you there are times when the ghosts have come close to me, and then sometimes I’ve seen the shadows of thin, small hands come in front of me and push them back. The hands of Beatrice push them back, and they’re helpless to harm me!”
CHAPTER 27
But McTee wrenched his arms away and fled out on the deck. He blundered into Jerry Hovey, who started back at sight of him.
“What’s happened, sir?” asked the bos’n. “Been seein’ ghosts?”
“Damn you,” growled McTee, “I had a nap and a bad dream—a hell of a nightmare.”
“You look it! You heard what Harrigan said? Does that sound as if I had enough backing?”
“If the rest of them are as strong for it as Harrigan, it does.”
“As strong for it as Harrigan? Between you and me—just a whisper in your ear—I don’t think Harrigan is half as strong for it as he talks. I don’t trust him, somehow.”
“No?”
“Look here,” said the bos’n cautiously. “We hear there was once some trouble between you and Harrigan?”
“Well?”
“Would you waste much tune if somethin’ was to happen to him—say in the middle of the night, silent and unexpected?”
“I would not! Take him by the foot and heave him into the sea. Very good idea, Hovey. Is he getting the eyes of the lads too much?”
Hovey fenced: “He’s a landlubber, and he don’t understand sea things. He’s better out of the way.”
“How’ll you do it?” asked McTee softly. “Speak out, Hovey. Would you try your own hand on Harrigan?”
“Not me! I know a better way. There’s one that’s in the mutiny who has a hand as strong as mine—almost—and a foot as silent as the paw of a cat. I’ll give him the tip.”
“And now for the details of the attack,” said McTee, anxious not to lay too much stress upon the destruction of Harrigan.
“Here it is,” answered Hovey, and entered into an elaborate description of all their plans. McTee listened with faraway eyes. He heard the words, but he was thinking of the death of Harrigan.
That invincible Irishman, after his talk with Hovey in front of the cabin of Kate, returned to the cool room of the chief engineer. The worthy Campbell, in wait for the ultimatum of White Henshaw, had been fortifying himself steadily with liquor, and by the middle of the afternoon he had reached a state in which he had no care for consequences; he would have defied all the powers upon earth and beyond it.
The next morning, as he went up to his usual task of scrubbing the bridge, Harrigan thought he perceived a possible reason why his persecution was being neglected. It was the picture of McTee and Kate Malone leaning at the rail. McTee was content. There was no doubt of that. He leaned above Kate and talked seriously down into her face. Harrigan was mightily tempted to turn about and climb to the bridge from the other side of the deck, but he made himself march on and begin whistling a tune.
McTee raised his head instantly, and, staring at the Irishman, he murmured a word to Kate, and she turned and regarded Harrigan with an almost painful curiosity. He was about to swagger past her when she shook off the detaining hand of McTee and ran to the Irishman.
“Dan,” she said eagerly, and laid a hand on his arm.
“Come back, Kate,” growled McTee. “You’ve promised me not to speak—”
“Did you promise him not to speak with me again?” broke in Harrigan.
“I only meant—” she began.
“It’s little I care what you meant,” said the Irishman coldly, and he shook off her hand. “Go play with McTee. I want none of ye! After I’ve slaved for ye an’ saved ye from God knows what, ye dare to turn and make them eyes cold and distant when ye look at me? Ah-h, get back to McTee! I’m through with ye!”
She only insisted the more: “I will speak to you, Dan!”
“Come away, Kate,” urged McTee, grinding his teeth. “Doesn’t this prove what I told you?”
“I don’t care what it proves,” she said hotly. “Dan, I’ve been thinking grisly things of you. I simply can’t believe them now that I look you in the face.”
“Whisht!” said Harrigan, and his face was black. “Have you the right to doubt me?”
She answered sadly: “I have, Dan.”
The Irishman turned slowly away and started up for the bridge without answer. As he went, he groaned beneath his breath: “Ochone! Ochone! She’s heard!”
He could not dream how she knew of the mutiny, but if it was carried through, he was damned in her eyes forever. What she guessed McTee must know. What McTee knew must be familiar to White Henshaw, yet Henshaw could not know, for if he did, the ring-leaders would be instantly clapped into irons. Once or twice he looked down from his work to Kate and McTee. They still leaned at the rail, talking seriously.
And McTee was saying: “I have learned what I want to know. Every detail of the plot is in my hands. Now I am going to the cabin of White Henshaw and tell him everything. It’s the simplest way. And you’ve started a suspicion in the mind of Harrigan. He’ll spread the word to the rest of the mutineers, and they’ll be on their watch against us.”
She made a little gesture of appeal. “I couldn’t help speaking to him, Angus. Suspecting him of such a thing is like—is like suspecting myself!”
“Let it go. It’s done. Now I’m going up to see White Henshaw. The old man will be crazy when he hears it.”
He found the captain giving some orders to Salvain, and waited until they were alone. Then he said: “There are about ten of us against the rest of the crew of the ship. Can we hold them in case of a mutiny?”
He had planned this laconic statement carefully, expecting to see Henshaw turn pale and stammer in terror. Instead, the captain regarded McTee with quietly contemplative eyes.
“So,” he murmured, “you’ve heard of the mutiny?”
The tables were completely turned on the Scotchman. He gasped: “You have known all the time?”
“Certainly,” said Henshaw; “I even know every word that Hovey said to you.”
McTee turned crimson.
“I have eyes that see everything on the ship,” went on Henshaw, as if he wished to cover the embarrassment of the Scotchman, “and I have ears which hear everything. I have lines of information tangled through the forecastle. I can almost guess what they are about to think, let alone what they will speak or do. The blockheads are always planning a mutiny, though I confess none of them have ever taken the proportions of this one. However, this will go the way of the rest.”
“The way of the rest?” queried McTee almost stupidly.
“Yes. They plan to hold their action till we’re close to the land. About that time I’ll call up one or two of the ring-leaders and tell them just what they have planned to do. That’ll make them think I have unknown means of meeting the mutiny. It will die.”
McTee sat down, loosened his shirt at the throat, and gaped upon Henshaw as a child might gape upon a magician.
“I don’t blame you for taking a day to think over the temptation,” smiled the old buccaneer. “The gold I showed you would have tempted any man. But I’m glad you came to me. I expected you last night. It took you a little longer to settle the details in your mind, eh?”
“Henshaw, I feel like a yellow dog!”
“Come! Come! You’re a man after my own heart. You took the temptation in your hand—you looked it over—and then you turned away from it. Well, and suppose the mutiny should actually come to the breaking point; they would be right in thinking I have means of fighting them. I have no firearms on the ship; they know that. They don’t know that I have these.”
He went into the next room and returned carrying a heavy box. This he placed on the d
esk and took a small, heavy ball of metal from it.
“A bomb?” queried McTee.
“It is. The moment a group gathers, one of these tossed among them will end the mutiny the moment it begins.”
McTee handed back the bomb in silence. There was something about this cold-blooded way of speaking of death which was not cruelty—it was something greater—it was an absolute disregard of life.
“Of course,” said Henshaw, as he came back from depositing the box in the next room, “there are only half a dozen of those bombs, but that will be enough. The explosion of a couple of them would just about wreck the deck. However, the mutiny will never reach the point of action. I’ll see to that. What always ties the hands of the crew is that it lacks real leaders. Hovey, for instance, will turn to water when I say three words about the mutiny to him.”
“But Harrigan,” said McTee quietly, “will not.”
“The Irishman!” Henshaw muttered. “I forgot. McTee, I’m getting old!”
“Only careless,” answered the other, “but it’s a bad thing to be careless where Harrigan is concerned. A man like that, Henshaw, could lead your mutineers, and lead them well. Hovey told me that every one of the crew looks up to the Irishman.”
“He’s got to be crippled—or put out of the way,” stated Henshaw calmly. “I was a fool. I forgot about Harrigan.”
“It may be,” said McTee, “that he’ll be put out of the way tonight.”
“McTee, I begin to see that you have brains.”
The latter waved the sinister compliment aside.
“Suppose the little—er—experiment fails? Doesn’t it occur to you that that message might be written out and sent to Campbell?”
The captain changed color, and his eyes shifted.
“I’ve told you—” he began.
“Nonsense,” said McTee. “I’ll write the thing, if you want, and all you’ll have to do is to sign it.”
“Would that make any difference?” asked Henshaw wistfully.
“Of course,” said McTee. “Here we go. You’ve got to do something to tame Harrigan, captain, or there’ll be the deuce to pay.”
And as he spoke, he picked up pen and paper and began to write, Henshaw in the meantime walking to the door in an agony of apprehension as if he expected to see the dreaded figure of Sloan appear. McTee wrote:
From Captain Henshaw to Chief Engineer Douglas Campbell
Sir:
On the receipt of this order, you will at once place Daniel Harrigan at work passing coal, beginning this day with a double shift, and continuing hereafter one shift a day.
(Signed)
“Here you are, captain,” he called, and Henshaw turned reluctantly from the door and sat down at the table.
“Bad luck’s in it,” he muttered, “but something has to be done— something has to be done!”
He wrote: “Captain Hensh—” but at this point the voice of Sloan spoke from the open door.
“A message, captain.”
With a choked cry Henshaw whirled and rose, supporting himself against the edge of the table with both trembling hands. His accusing eyes were on McTee.
“Sloan!” he called in his hoarse whisper at last, but still his damning gaze held hard upon McTee.
The wireless operator advanced a step at a time into the room, placed the written message on the edge of the table, and then sprang back as if in mortal fear. Henshaw, still keeping his glance upon the Scotchman with a terrible earnestness, picked up the sheet of paper on which he had been signing his name, and tore it slowly, methodically, into small strips. As the last of the small fragments fluttered to the floor, his hand went out to the message Sloan had brought and drew it to his side. He waved his arm in a sweeping gesture that commanded the other two from his presence, and they slipped from the cabin without a word.
CHAPTER 28
“She’s dead?” McTee asked softly when they stood on the promenade outside.
“She is. She must have been dying at about the time I brought in that other message—the one you told me to bring.”
They avoided each other’s eyes. Inside the cabin they heard a faint sound like paper crumpled up. Then they caught a moan from the room—a soft sound such as the wind makes when it hums around the corners of a tall building.
They were silent for a time, listening with painful intentness. Not another murmur came from the cabin. Sloan wiped his wet forehead and whispered shakily: “I wouldn’t mind it so much if he’d curse and rave. But to sit like that, not making a sound—it ain’t natural, Captain McTee.”
“Hush, you fool,” said McTee. “White Henshaw is alone with his dead. And it’s me that he blames for it. I brought him the bad luck.”
Sloan shuddered.
“Then I wouldn’t have your name for ten thousand dollars, sir.”
“If there’s bad luck,” said McTee solemnly, for every sailor has some superstitious belief, “it’s on the entire ship—on every one of the crew as well as on me. We’ll have to pay for this—all of us—and pay high. We’re apt to feel it before long. And I’ve got to go back to that cabin after a while!”
He spoke it as another man might say: “And an hour from now I have to face the firing squad.”
But when he returned to the cabin, he heard no outburst of reproaches from White Henshaw. The door to Henshaw’s bedroom was closed, and McTee could hear the captain stirring about in it, working at some nameless task over which he hummed continually, now and then breaking into little snatches of song. McTee was stupefied. He tried to explain to himself by imagining that Henshaw was one of those hard-headed men who live for the present and never waste time thinking of the past. He had made many plans for his granddaughter. Now she was dead, and he dismissed her from his mind.
This explanation might be the truth, but nevertheless the steady humming wore on McTee’s nerves until finally he knocked on the door of the inner cabin. It was dusk by this time, and when Henshaw opened the door, he was carrying a lantern.
“You!” he muttered. “Well, captain?”
“You seem busy,” said McTee uneasily, shifting under the steady light from the lantern. “I thought I might be able to help you.”
“At the work I’m doing no man can help,” answered Henshaw.
“What work?”
“I’m calculating profit and loss.”
“On your cargo?”
“Cargo? Yes, yes! Profit and loss on this cargo.”
And he broke into a harsh laugh. Obviously Henshaw was lying, yet the Scotchman went on with the conversation, eager to draw out some hidden meaning.
“It’s an odd idea of yours, this, to bring a shipment of wheat from the south seas to Central America.”
“Aye, the first time it’s ever been done. This wheat came all the way from Australia and the United States, and now it’s going back again. I’ll tell you why. Wheat is scarce for export even in the States just now, so I’m taking a gambling chance on getting this to port before the first quantities come from the north. If I get in in time, I’ll clean up—big.”
“I understand,” said McTee.
The captain raised his lantern again and shone it in the eyes of McTee.
“Do you understand?” he queried. “Do you?”
And he broke again into the harsh laughter. McTee started back with a scowl.
“What’s the mystery, captain? What’s the secret you’re laughing about?”
Again Henshaw chuckled.
“You’re a curious man, McTee. Well, well! What am I laughing about? Money always makes me want to laugh, and now I’m laughing about money. Do you understand that? No, you don’t. Perhaps you will before long. Patience, my friend!”
For some reason the blood of McTee grew cold and colder as he listened. His original suspicion of insanity grew weaker. He was being mocked, and the mad do not mock.
“So tonight is the last night of Harrigan, eh?” said Henshaw suddenly.
“In the name of God,” sai
d McTee, deeply shaken, “why do you speak of that? Yes, tonight he dies!”
“Alone!” said Henshaw in a changed voice. “He dies alone! It must be a grim thing to die alone at sea—to slip into the black water—to drink the salt—a little struggle—and then the light goes out. So!”
He shivered and folded his arms. He seemed to be embracing himself to find warmth.
“But to die in the middle of the ocean with many men around you,” he went on, speaking half to himself, “that would not be so bad. What do you say, McTee?”
But McTee was not in a mood for speaking. He only stared, fascinated and dumb. Henshaw continued: “In the middle of night, with the engines thrumming, and the lights burning in every port, suppose a ship should put her nose under the surface and dive for the bottom! The men are singing in the forecastle, and suddenly their song goes out. The captain is in the wheelhouse. He is dreaming of his home town, maybe, when he sees the black waters rising over the prow. He thinks it is a dream and rubs his eyes. Before he can look again, the waves are upon him. There is no alarm; the wireless, perhaps, is broken; the boats, perhaps, are useless; and so the brave ship dives down to Davy Jones’s locker with all on board, and the next minute the waves wash over the spot and rub out all memory of those who died there. Well, well, McTee, there’s a way of dying that would please White Henshaw more than a death in a bed at a home port, with the landsharks sitting round your bed grinning and nodding out your minutes of life. Ha?”
But Black McTee, like a frightened child caught in a dark room, turned and fled in shameless fear into the deep night. Not till he was far aft did he stop in a quiet place to think of Harrigan dying alone, choking in the black water.
But Harrigan was far from fear. He lay on the deck above the forecastle, cradled by the swing of the bows. He shook away the lurking horror of the mutiny and gave himself up to peace.
In the midst of his sleep he dreamed of lying in a pitch-dark room and staring up at a brilliant point of light, like a dark lantern partially unshuttered. And suddenly Harrigan woke, and looking up, he caught a flashing point of light directly above his eyes. In another moment he was aware of the dark figure of a man crouched beside him, and then he knew that the light which glittered over his head was the shimmer of the stars against a steel blade.