“This here craft is registered under your grandpa’s name an’ is sailin’ under his house-flag,” the old cook reminded him. His face was still bland as ever, but in his eyes lurked a queer little gleam. “It ain’t the same thing at all—not yet.”
“Damn your infernal lip!” shouted Hal, advancing. Captain Briggs, quivering, half-rose from his chair. “You’ve got the damned impudence to stand there and dictate to me?”
“Master Hal,” retorted Ezra with admirable self-restraint, “you’re sailin’ a bit too wide wide o’ your course now. There’s breakers ahead, sir. Look out!”
“I believe you’ve been at the Jamaica yourself, you thieving son of Satan!” snarled Hal. “I’ll not stand here parleying with a servant. Get me that Jamaica, or I’ll break your damned, obstinate neck!”
“Now, Master Hal, I warn you—”
“To hell with you!”
“With me, Master Hal? With old Ezra?”
“With everything that stands in my way!”
Despite Hal’s furious rage the steadfast old sailor-man still resolutely faced him. Captain Briggs, now again hearing almost the identical words he himself had poured out in the cabin of the Silver Fleece, sank back into his chair with a strange, throaty gasp.
“Doctor!” he gulped. “Do you hear that?”
“Wait!” the doctor cautioned, leaning forward. “This is very strange. It is, by Jove, sir! Some amazing coincidence, or—”
“Next thing you know he’ll knock Ezra down!” whispered the captain, staring. He seemed paralyzed, as though tranced by the scene. “That’s what I did to the cabin-boy, when my rum was wrong. Remember? It’s all coming round again, doctor. It’s a nightmare in a circle—a fifty-year circle! Remember Kuala Pahang? She—she died! I wonder what woman’s got to die this time?”
“That’s all pure poppycock!” the doctor ejaculated. He was trembling violently. With a great effort, leaning heavily on his stick, he arose. Captain Briggs, too, shook off the spell that seemed to grip him and stood up.
“Hal!” he tried to articulate; but his voice failed him. Turning, he lurched toward the front door.
From within sounded a cry, a trampling noise. Something clattered to the floor.
“Hal! My God, Hal!” the captain shouted hoarsely.
As he reached the door Ezra came staggering out into the hall, a hand pressed to his face.
“Ezra! What is it? For Heaven’s sake, Ezra, what’s Hal done to you?”
The old man could make no answer. Limply he sagged against the newel-post, a sorry picture of grief and pain. The captain put an arm about his shoulders, and with burning indignation cried:
“What did he do? Hit you?”
Ezra shook his head in stout negation. Even through all the shock and suffering of the blow, his loyalty remained sublimely constant.
“Hit me? Why, no, sir,” he tried to smile, though his lips were white. “He wouldn’t strike old Ezra. There’s no mutiny aboard this little craft of ours. Two gentlemen may disagree, an’ all that, but as fer Master Hal strikin’ me, no, sir!”
“But I heard him say—”
“Oh, that’s nothin’, cap’n,” the old cook insisted, still, however, keeping his cheek-bone covered with his hand. “Boys will be boys. They’re a bit loose with their jaw-tackle, maybe. But there, there, don’t you git all har’red up, captain. Men an’ pins is jest alike, that way—no good ef they lose their heads. Ca’m down, cap’n!”
“What’s that on your face. Blood?”
“Blood, sir? How would blood git on my doggone face, anyhow? That’s—h-m—”
“Don’t you lie to me, Ezra! I’m not blind. He cut you with something! What was it?”
“Honest to God, cap’n, he never! I admit we had a bit of an argyment, an’ I slipped an’ kind of fell ag’in’ the—the binnacle, cap’n. I’ll swear that on the ship’s Bible!”
“Don’t you stand there and perjure your immortal soul just to shield that boy!” Briggs sternly reproved, loving the old man all the more for the brave lie. “But I know you will, anyhow. What authority have I got aboard my own ship, when I can’t even get the truth? Ezra, you wouldn’t admit it, if Hal took that kris in there and cut your head off!”
“How could I then, sir?”
“That’ll do, Ezra! Where is he now?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“I’ll damn soon find out!” the captain cried, stung to the first profanity of years. He tramped into the cabin, terrible.
“Come here, sir!” he cried in a tone never before heard in Snug Haven.
No answer. Hal was not there. Neither was the bottle of whisky. A chair had been tipped over, and on the floor lay the captain’s wonderful chronometer, with shattered glass.
This destruction, joined to Ezra’s innocent blood, seemed to freeze the captain’s marrow. He stood there a moment, staring. Then, wide-eyed, he peered around.
“Mutiny and bloodshed,” he whispered. “God deliver us from what’s to be! Hal Briggs, sir!” he called crisply. “Come here!” The captain, terrible in wrath, strode through the open door.
A creaking of the back stairs constituted the only answer. The captain hurried up those stairs. As he reached the top he heard the door of Hal’s room shut, and the key turn.
“You, sir!” he cried, knocking violently at the panels. A voice issued:
“It’s no use, gramp. I’m not coming out, and you’re not coming in. It’s been nothing but hell ever since I struck this damn place. If it doesn’t stop I’m going to get mad and do some damage round here. All I want now is to be let alone. Go ’way, and don’t bother me!”
“Hal! Open that door, sir!”
Never a word came back. The captain knocked and threatened, but got no reply.
At last, realizing that he was only lowering his dignity by such vain efforts, he departed. His eyes glowered strangely as he made his way down-stairs.
Ezra had disappeared. But the old doctor was standing in the hallway, under the gleam of a ship’s lantern there. He looked very wan and anxious.
“Captain,” said he, with timid hesitation. “I feel that my presence may add to your embarrassment. Therefore, I think I had best return to Salem this evening. If you will ask Ezra to harness up my horse, I’ll be much obliged.”
“I’ll do nothing of the kind, doctor! You’re my friend and my guest, and you’re not going to be driven out by any such exhibition of brutal bad manners! I ask you, sir, to stay. I haven’t seen you for fifty years, sir; and you do no more than lay ’longside, and then want to hoist canvas again and beat away? Never, sir! Here you stay, to-night, aboard me. There’s a cabin and as nice a berth as any seafaring man could ask. Go and leave me now, would you? Not much, sir!”
“If you really want me to stay, captain—”
Briggs took Filhiol by the hand and looked steadily into his anxious, withered face.
“Listen,” said he, in a deep, quiet tone. “I’m in trouble, doctor. Deep, black, bitter trouble. Nobody in this world but you can help me steer a straight course now, if there’s any way to steer one, which God grant! Stand by me now, doctor. You did once before on the old Silver Fleece. I’ve got your stitches in me yet. Now, after fifty years, I need you again, though it’s worse this time than any knife-cut ever was. Stand by me, doctor, for a little while. That’s all I ask. Stand by!”
CHAPTER XXIII
SUNSHINE
The miracle of a new day’s sunshine—golden over green earth, foam-collared shore and shining sea—brought another miracle almost as great as that which had transformed somber night to radiant morning. This miracle was the complete reversal of the situation at Snug Harbor, and the return of peace and happiness. But all this cannot be told in two breaths. We must not run too far ahead of our story.
So, to go on in orderly fashion we must know that Ezra’s carefully prepared supper turned out to be a melancholy failure. The somber dejection of the three old men at table, and then the mise
rable evening of the captain and the doctor on the piazza, talking of old days with infinite regret, of the present with grief and humiliation, of the future with black bodings, made a sorry time of it all.
Night brought but little sleep to Captain Briggs. The doctor slept well enough, and Ezra seconded him. But the good fortune of oblivion was not for the old captain. Through what seemed a black eternity he lay in the bunk in his cabin, brooding, agonizing, listening to the murmur of the sea, the slow tolling of hours from the tall clock in the hallway. The cessation of the ticking of his chronometer left a strange vacancy in his soul. Deeply he mourned it.
After an infinite time, half-sleep won upon him, troubled by ugly dreams. Alpheus Briggs seemed to behold again the stifling alleyways of the Malay town, the carabaos and chattering gharrimen, the peddlers and whining musicians, the smoky torch-flares and dark, slow-moving river. He seemed to smell, once more, the odors of spice and curry, the smoke of torches and wood fires, the dank and reeking mud of the marshy, fever-bitten shore.
And then the vision changed. He was at sea again; witnessing the death of Scurlock, the boy and Kuala Pahang, in the blood-tinged waters. Came the battle with the Malays, in the grotesque exaggerations of a dream; and then the torments of the hell-ship, cargoing slaves. The old captain seemed stifled by the reek and welter of that freight; he seemed to hear their groans and cries—and all at once he heard again, as in a voice from infinite distances, the curse of Shiva, flung at him by Dengan Jouga, witch-woman of the Malay tribesmen:
“The evil spirit will pursue you, even beyond the wind, even beyond the Silken Sea! Vishnu will repay you! Dead men shall come from their graves, like wolves, to follow you. Birds of the ocean foam will poison you. Life will become to you a thing more terrible than the venom of the katchubong flower, and evil seed will grow within your heart.
“Evil seed will grow and flourish there, dragging you down to death, down to the longing for death, and yet you cannot die! And the blind face in the sky will watch you, sahib—watch you, and laugh, because you cannot die! That is the curse of Vishnu on your soul!”
In the captain’s dream, the groaning and crying of the wounded and perishing men aboard the Silver Fleece seemed to blend with that of the dying slaves. And gradually all this echoing agony transmuted itself into a sinister and terrible mirth, a horrifying, ghastly laughter, far and strange, ceaseless, monotonous, maddening.
Somewhere in a boundless sky of black, the captain seemed to behold a vast spiral, whirling, ever-whirling in and in; and at its center, vague, formless yet filled with menace, he dimly saw an eyeless face, indeed, that still for all its blindness seemed to be watching him. And as it watched, it laughed, blood-freezingly.
Captain Briggs roused to his senses. He found himself sitting up in bed, by the open window, through which drifted the solemn roar and hissing backwash of a rising surf. A pallid moon-crescent, tangled in spun gossamer-fabric of drifting cloud, cast tenuous, fairy shadows across the garden. Staring, the captain rubbed his eye.
“Judas priest!” he muttered. “What—where—Ah! Dreaming, eh? Only dreaming? Thank God for that!”
Then, with a pang of transfixing pain, back surged memories of what had happened last night. He slid out of bed, struck a match and looked at his watch. The hour was just a bit after two.
Noiselessly Briggs crept from his room, climbed the stairs and came to Hal’s door. The menace of Kuala Pahang still weighed terribly upon him. Something of the vague superstitions of the sea seemed to have infused themselves into the captain’s blood. Shuddering, he remembered the curse that now for years had lain forgotten in the dusty archives of his youth; remembered even more than he had dreamed; remembered the words of the nenek kabayan, the witch-woman—that strange, yellow, ghostlike creature which had come upon him silently over his rum and gabbling in the cabin of the hell-ship:
“Something you love—love more than your own life—will surely die. You will die then, but still you will not die. You will pray for death, but death will mock and will not come!”
The old captain shivered as he stood before the door of Hal’s room. Suppose the ancient curse really had power? Suppose it should strike Hal, and Hal should die! What then?
For a moment he heard nothing within the room, and his old heart nearly stopped, altogether. But almost at once he perceived Hal’s breathing, quiet and natural.
“Oh, thank God!” the captain murmured, his soul suddenly expanding with blest relief. He remained there a while, keeping silent vigil at the door of his well-loved boy. Then, satisfied that all was well, he retraced his steps, got back into bed, and so presently fell into peaceful slumber.
A knocking at his door, together with the voice of Ezra, awoke him.
“Cap’n Briggs, sir! It’s six bells o’ the mornin’ watch. Time to turn out!”
The captain blinked and rubbed his eyes.
“Come in, Ezra,” bade he, mustering his wits. “H-m!” he grunted at sight of Ezra’s cheek-bone with an ugly cut across it. “The doctor up yet?”
“Yes, sir. He’s been cruisin’ out ’round the lawn an’ garden an hour. He’s real interestin’, ain’t he? But he’s too kind o’ mournful-like to set right on my stomach. Only happy when he’s miserable. Men’s different, that way, sir. Some heaves a sigh, where others would heave a brick.”
“That’ll do, Ezra. What’s there to record on the log, so far?” asked Briggs, anxiously.
“First thing this A. M. I’m boarded by old Joe Pringle, the peddler from Kittery. Joe, he wanted to sell us anythin’ he could—a jew’s-harp, history o’ the world, Salvation Salve, a phonograft, an Eyetalian queen-bee, a—”
“Hold hard! I don’t care anything about Joe. What’s the news this morning about—about—”
“News, sir? Well, the white Leghorn’s bringin’ off a nestful. Five’s hatched already. Nature’s funny, ain’t it? We git chickens from eggs, an’ eggs from chickens, an’—”
“Will you stop your fool talk?” demanded the captain. He peered at Ezra with disapproval. To his lips he could not bring a direct question about the boy; and Ezra was equally unwilling to introduce the subject, fearing lest some word of blame might be spoken against his idol. “Tell me some news, I say!” the captain ordered.
“News, cap’n? Well, Dr. Filhiol, there, fed his nag enough of our chicken-feed to last us a week. The doc, he calls the critter, Ned. But I think Sea Lawyer would be ’bout right.”
“Sea Lawyer? How’s that?”
“Well, sir, it can draw a conveyance, but it’s doggone poor at it.”
“Stop your foolishness, Ezra, and tell me what I want to know. How’s Hal this morning? Where is he, and what’s he doing?”
“Master Hal? Why, he’s all right, sir.”
“He is, eh?” The captain’s hands were clenched with nervousness.
Ezra nodded assent.
“Don’t ye worry none about Master Hal,” said he gravely. “Worry’s wuss’n a dozen leaks an’ no pump. Ef ye must worry, worry somebody else.”
“What’s the boy doing? Drinking again?”
“Not a drink, cap’n. Now my idea about liquor is—”
“Judas priest!” interrupted Briggs. “You’ll drive me crazy! If the world was coming to an end you’d argue with Gabriel. You say Hal’s not touched it this morning?”
“Nary drop, sir.”
“Oh, that’s good news!”
“Good news is like a hard-b’iled egg, cap’n. You don’t have to break it easy. Hal’s fine an’ fit this mornin’, sir. I thought maybe he might hunt a little tot o’ rum, this mornin’, but no; no, sir, he’s sober as a deacon. The way he apologized was as han’some.”
“Apologized? Who to?”
“Me an’ the doctor. He come out to the barn, an’ begged our pardons in some o’ the doggondest purtiest language I ever clapped an ear to. He’s slick. Everythin’s all right between Master Hal an’ I an’ the doctor. After he apologized he went fer a swim, down t
o Geyser Rock.”
“Did, eh? He’s wonderful in the water! Not another man in this town dares take that dive. I—I’m mighty glad he had the decency to apologize. Hal’s steering the right course now. He’s proved himself a man anyhow. Last night I’d almost lost faith in him and in all humanity.”
“It ain’t so important fer a man to have faith in humanity as fer humanity to have faith in him,” affirmed the old cook. “Now, cap’n, you git up, please. You’ll want to see Master Hal afore breakfast. Listen to me, cap’n, don’t never drive that boy out, same’s I was drove. Master Hal’s sound an’ good at heart. But he’s had his own head too long now fer you to try rough tactics.”
“Rough! When was I ever rough with Hal?”
“Mebbe if you had of been a few times when he was small it’d of been better. But it’s too late now. Let him keep all canvas aloft; but hold a hard helm on him. Hold it hard!”
The sound of singing somewhere across the road toward the shore drew the captain’s attention out the window. Striding home from his morning plunge, Hal was returning to Snug Harbor, “coming up with a song from the sea.”
The captain put on his bathrobe, then went to the window and sat down there. He leaned his arms on the sill, and peered out at Hal. Ezra discreetly withdrew.
No sign seemed visible on Hal of last night’s rage and war. Sleep, and the exhilaration of battling with the savage surf along the face of Geyser Rock, had swept away all traces of his brutality. Molded into his wet bathing-suit that revealed every line of that splendidly virile body, he drew near.
All at once he caught sight of Captain Briggs. He stopped his song, by the lantern-flanked gateway, and waved a hand of greeting.
“Top o’ the morning to you, grandfather!” cried he. There he stood overflooded with life, strength, spirits. His body gleamed with glistening brine; his face, lighted by a smile of boyish frankness, shone in the morning sun. His thick, black hair that he had combed straight back with his fingers, dripped seawater on his bronzed, muscular shoulders.
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