The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction Megapack 01

by George Allan England

  “Blow, boys, blow, for Californ-io!

  There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told,

  On the banks of Sacramento!”

  “H-m!” grunted the doctor. “Poor old captain! God, but this will finish him! That Hal—damn that Hal! If something would only happen to him now, so I could have him for a patient! I’m a law-abiding man, but still—”

  In the cabin Briggs sank down in the big rocking-chair before the fireplace. He was trembling. Something cold seemed clutching at his heart like tentacles. He looked about, as if he half-thought something were watching him from the far corner. Then his eye fell on the Malay kris suspended against the chimney. He peered at the lotus-bud handle, the wavy blade of steel, the dark groove where still lay the poison, the curaré.

  “Merciful God!” whispered Captain Briggs, and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. He suddenly stretched out hands that shook. “Oh, haven’t I suffered enough and repented enough? Haven’t I labored enough and paid enough?” He pressed a hand to his forehead, moist and cold. “He’s all I’ve got, Lord—the boy is all I’ve got! Take me, me—but don’t let vengeance come through him! The sin was mine! Let me pay! Don’t drag him down to hell! Take me—but let him live and be a man!”

  No answer save that Briggs seemed to hear the words of the old witch-woman ringing with all the force of long-repressed memories:

  “Your blood, your blood I will have! Even though you flee from me forever, your blood will I have!”

  “Yes, yes! My blood, not his!” cried the old captain, standing up. Haggard, he peered at the kris, horrible reminder of a past he would have given life itself to obliterate so that it might not go on forever poisoning his race. There the kris hung like a sword of Damocles forever ready to fall upon his heart and pierce it. And all at once a burning rage and hate against the kris flared up in him. That thing accursed should be destroyed. No longer should it hang there on his fireplace to goad him into madness.

  Up toward the kris he extended his hand. For a moment he dared not lay hold on it; but all at once he forced himself to lift it from its hooks. At touch of it again, after so long a time, he began to tremble. But he constrained himself to study it, striving to fathom what power lay in it. Peering with curiosity and revulsion he noted the lotus-bud, symbol of sleep; the keen edge spotted with dark stains of blood and rust; the groove with its dried poison, one scratch thereof a solvent for all earthly problems whatsoever.

  And suddenly a new thought came to him. His hand tightened on the grip. His head came up, his eye cleared, and with a look half of amazement, half triumph, he cried:

  “I’ve got the answer here! The answer, so help me God! Before that boy of mine goes down into the gutter—before he defiles his family and all the memories of his race, here’s the answer. Lord knows I hope he will come about on a new tack yet and be something he ought to be; but if he don’t, he’ll never live to drag our family name down through the sewer!”

  Savage pride thrilled the old man. All his hope yearned toward the saving of the boy; but, should that be impossible, he knew Hal would not sink to the dregs of life.

  The kris now seemed beneficent to Captain Briggs. Closely he studied the blade, and even drew his thumb along the edge, testing its keenness. Just how, he wondered, did the poison work? Was it painless? Quick it was; that much he knew. Quick and sure. Not in anger, but with a calm resolve he stood there, thinking. And like the after-swells of a tempest, other echoes now bore in upon him—echoes of words spoken half a hundred years ago by Mahmud Baba:

  “Even though I wash coal with rosewater a whole year long, shall I ever make it white? Even though the rain fall a whole year, will it make the sea less salt? One drop of indigo—and lo! the jar of milk is ruined! Seed sown upon a lake will never grow!”

  Again the captain weighed the kris in hand.

  “Maybe the singer was right, after all,” thought he. “I’ve done my best. I’ve given all I had to give. He’ll have his chance, the boy shall, but if, after that—”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  PLANS FOR RESCUE

  “For Heaven’s sake, captain, what are you up to there?”

  The voice of Filhiol startled Briggs. In the door of the cabin he saw the old man standing with a look of puzzled anxiety. Through the window Filhiol had seen him take down the kris; and, worried, he had painfully arisen and had hobbled into the house. “Better put that knife up, captain. It’s not a healthy article to be fooling with.”

  “Not, eh?” asked the captain. “Pretty bad poison, is it?”

  “Extremely fatal.”

  “Even dried, this way?”

  “Certainly! Put it up, captain, I beg you!” The doctor, more and more alarmed, came into the cabin. “Put it up!”

  “What does it do to you, this curaré stuff?” insisted the captain.

  “Various things. And then—”

  “Then you die? You surely die?”

  “You do, unless one very special antidote is applied.”

  “Nobody in this country has that, though!”

  “Nobody but myself, so far as I know.”

  “You’ve got it?” demanded the captain, amazed. “Where the devil would you get it?”

  “Out East, where you got that devilish kris! You haven’t forgotten that Parsee in Bombay, who gave me the secret cure, after I’d saved him from cholera? But that’s neither here nor there, captain! That kris is no thing to be experimenting with. Put it up now, I tell you! We aren’t going to have any foolishness, captain. Not at our age, mind you! Put it up, now.”

  Unwillingly the captain obeyed. He hung the weapon up once more, while Filhiol eyed him with suspicious displeasure.

  “It would be more to the point to see how we’re going to get the boy out of his trouble again,” the doctor reproved. “If you can’t meet this problem without doing something very foolish, captain, you’re not the man I think you!”

  Briggs made no answer, but hailed:

  “Ezra! Oh, Ezra!”

  The old man’s chantey—it now had to do with one “Old Stormy,” alleged to be “dead and gone”—promptly ceased. Footfalls sounded, and Ezra appeared. The cut on his cheek showed livid in the tough, leathery skin.

  “Cap’n Briggs, sir?” asked he.

  “The doctor and I are going to take a little morning cruise down to Endicutt in the tender—the buggy, I mean.”

  “An’ you want me to h’ist sail on Bucephalus, sir? All right! That ain’t much to want, cap’n. Man wants but little here below, an that’s jin’ly all he gits, as the feller says. Right! The Sea Lawyer’ll be anchored out front, fer you, in less time than it takes to box the compass!”

  Ezra saluted and disappeared.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without Ezra,” said the captain. “There’s a love and loyalty in that old heart of his that a million dollars wouldn’t buy. Ezra’s been through some mighty heavy blows with me. If either of us was in danger, he’d give his life freely, to save us. No doubt of that!”

  “None whatever,” assented the doctor, as they once more made their way out to the porch. He blinked at the shimmering vagrancy of light that sparkled from the harbor through the fringe of birches and tall pines along the shore. “Going down to see Squire Bean? Is that it?”

  “Yes. The quicker we settle that claim the better. You’ll go with me, eh?”

  “If I’m needed—yes.”

  “Well, you are needed!”

  “All right. But, after that, I ought to be getting back to Salem.”

  “You’ll get back to nowhere!” ejaculated Briggs. “They can spare you at the home a few days. You’re needed here on the bridge while this typhoon is blowing. Here you are and here you stay till the barometer begins to rise!”

  “All right, captain, as you wish,” he conceded, his will overborne by the captain’s stronger one. “But what’s the program?”

  “The program is to pay off everything and straighten that boy out and make him walk the chalk
-line. Between the four of us—you and I and Laura and Ezra—if we can’t do it, we’re not much good, are we?”

  “Laura? Who is this Laura, anyhow? What kind of a girl is she?”

  “The very best,” answered Briggs proudly. “Hal wouldn’t go with any other kind. She’s the daughter of Nathaniel Maynard, owner of a dozen schooners. A prettier girl you never laid eyes to, sir!”

  “Educated woman?”

  “Two years through college. Then her mother had a stroke, and Laura’s home again. She’s taken the village school, just to fill up her time. A good girl, if there ever was one. Good as gold, every way. I needn’t say more. I love her like a daughter. I suppose if I could have my dearest wish—”

  “You’d have Hal marry her?”

  “Just that; and I’d see the life of my family carried on stronger, better and more vigorous. I’d see a child or two picking the flowers here, and feel little hands tugging at my old gray beard and—but, Judas priest! I’m getting sentimental now. No more of that, sir!”

  “I think I understand,” the doctor said in another tone. “We’ve got more than just Hal to save. We’ve got a woman’s happiness to think of. She cares for him, you think?”

  Briggs nodded silently.

  “It’s quite to be expected,” commented the doctor. “He certainly can be charming when he tries. There’s only one fly in the honey-pot. Just one—his unbridled temper and his seemingly utter irresponsibility.

  “You know yourself, captain, his actions this morning have been quite amazing. He starts out to see this girl of his, right away, without giving his bad conduct a second thought. The average boy, expelled from college, would have come home in sackcloth and ashes and would have told you all about it. Hal never even mentioned it. That’s almost incredible.”

  “Hal’s not an average kind of boy, any more than I was!” put in the captain proudly.

  “No, he doesn’t seem to be,” retorted the physician, peppery with infirmity and shaken nerves. “However, I’m your guest and I won’t indulge in any personalities. Whatever comes I’m with you!”

  The captain took his withered hand in a grip that hurt, and for a moment there was silence. This silence was broken by the voice of Ezra, driving down the lane:

  “All ready, cap’n! All canvas up, aloft an’ alow, an’ this here craft ready to make two knots an hour ef she don’t founder afore you leave port! Fact is, I think Sea Lawyer’s foundered already!”

  Together captain and doctor descended the path to the front gate. In a few minutes Ezra, bony hands on hips, watched the two men slowly drive from sight round the turn by the smithy. Grimly the old fellow shook his head and gripped his pipe in some remnants of teeth.

  “I don’t like Pills,” grumbled he. “He’s a tightwad; never even slipped me a cigar. He’s one o’ them fellers that stop the clock, nights, to save the works. S’pose I’d oughta respect old age, but old age ain’t always to be looked up to, as, fer instance, in the case of eggs. He’s been ratin’ Master Hal down, I reckon. An’ that wun’t do!”

  Resentfully Ezra came back to the house and entered the hall. Into the front room Ezra walked, approached the fireplace and for a moment stood there, carefully observing the weapons. Then he reached up and straightened the position of the “Penang lawyer” club, on its supporting hooks.

  “I got to git that jest right,” said he. “Jest exactly right. Ef the cap’n should see ’twas a mite out o’ place he might suspicion that was what Master Hal hit me with. So? Is that right, that way?”

  With keen judgment he squinted at the club and gave it a final touch. The kris, also, he adjusted.

  “I didn’t know Hal touched the toad-stabber, too,” he remarked. “But I guess he must of. It’s been moved some, that’s sure.

  “I guess things’ll do now,” judged he, satisfied. “There’s many a slip ’twixt the cup an’ the lip, but there’s a damn sight more after the cup has been at the lip. That’s all that made Master Hal slip. He didn’t know, rightly, what he was up to. Forgive the boy? God bless him, you bet! A million times over!

  “But that doctor, now, what’s been ratin’ Master Hal down—no, no, he’ll never be no friend o’ mine! Well, this ain’t gittin’ dinner ready fer Master Hal. A boy what can dive off Geyser Rock, an’ lick McLaughlin, an’ read heathen Chinee, an’ capture the purtiest gal in this town, is goin’ to be rationed proper, or I’m no cook aboard the snuggest craft that ever sailed a lawn, with lilacs on the port bow an’ geraniums to starb’d!”

  Ezra gave a final, self-assuring glance at the Malay club that had so nearly ended his life, and turned back to his galley with a song upon his lips:

  “A Yankee ship’s gone down the river,

  Her masts an’ yard they shine like silver.

  Blow, ye winds, I long to hear ye!

  Blow, boys, blow!

  Blow to-day an’ blow to-morrer,

  Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!

  How d’ye know she’s a Yankee clipper?

  By the Stars and Stripes that fly above her!

  Blow, boys, blow!

  An’ who d’ye think is captain of her?

  One-Eyed Kelly, the Bowery runner!

  Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!

  An’ what d’ye think they had fer dinner?

  Belayin’-pin soup an’ monkey’s liver!

  Blow, ye winds, I long to hear ye!

  Blow, boys, blow!

  Blow to-day an’ blow to-morrer,

  Blow, boys, bully boys, blow!”

  CHAPTER XXVII

  GEYSER ROCK

  Hal Briggs had little thought of trouble as he strode away in search of Laura. Very hot was his blood as he swung down the shaded street toward the house of Nathaniel Maynard, father of the girl. Some of the good folk frowned and were silent as he greeted them, but others had to smile and raise a hand of recognition. Still at some distance from Laura’s house, the boy caught sight of a creamy-toned voile dress among the hollyhocks in the side yard. He whistled, waved his hand, hurried his pace. And something leaped within him, so that his heart beat up a little thickly, as the girl waved an answering hand.

  Another look came to his eyes. Another light began to burn in their blue depths.

  “Geyser Rock!” he whispered. “By God, the very place!”

  Geyser Rock boldly fronts the unbroken sweep of the sea at Thunder Head. Up it leaps, sheer two hundred feet, from great deeps. Fifty feet from the barnacle-crusted line of high-tide a ledgelike path leads to the face of the cliff. From this ledge Hal often took the plunge that had won him local fame—a plunge into frothing surf that even in the calmest of midsummer days was never still.

  Few visitors ever struggle up through sumacs, brakes and undergrowth, to gain the vantage-point of the pinnacle. Rolling boulders, slippery ledge and dizzying overlook upon the shining sea deter all but the hardy. The very solitude of the place had greatly endeared it to Hal. To him it was often a solace and a comfort after his strange fits of rage and viciousness.

  All alone, up in that isolated height, he had passed long hours reading, smoking, musing in the tiny patch of grass there under the canopy of the white-birches’ filigree of green, or under the huge pine that carpeted the north slope of the crest with odorous, russet spills. Some of his happiest hours had been spent on the summit, through the tree-tops watching sky-shepherds tend their flocks across the pastures infinitely far and blue above him.

  Strangely secluded was the top of Geyser Rock. Though it lay hardly a pistol-shot from the main coast-road, it seemed almost as isolated as if it had been down among the Celebes.

  For that reason Hal loved it best of all, with its grasses, flowers, ferns and tangled thickets, its rock-ridges filigreed with silvery lichens or sparkling with white quartz-crystals. From this aerie Hal could glimpse a bit of the village; the prim church spire; the tiny, far gravestones sleeping on Croft Hill. The solitude of this, his own domain by right of conquest, had grown ever more dear and needful to him
as he had advanced toward manhood.

  Such was the place toward which Laura and he were now walking along the road, with tilled fields and rock-bossed rolling hills to right of them; and, to their left, the restless flashings of the sea.

  Laura had never been more charming. Her happiness in his return had flushed her cheeks with color and had brightened her eyes—thoughtful, deep, loyal eyes—till they looked clear and fresh as summer skies after rain.

  Everything wholesome and glad seemed joined in Laura; her health and spirits were like the morning breeze itself that came to court the land, from the golden sparklings that stretched away to the shadowed, purple rim of the ocean. The June within her heart mirrored itself through her face, reflecting the June that overbrooded earth and sea and sky.

  Hal sensed all this and more, as with critical keenness he looked down at her, walking beside him. He noted the wind-blown hair that shaded her eyes; he saw the health and vigor of that lithe, firm-breasted young body of hers. His look, brooding, glowed evilly. Fifty years ago thus had his grandsire’s eyes kindled at sight of Kuala Pahang in her tight little Malay jacket. And as if words from the past had audibly echoed from some vibrant chord in the old-time captain’s symphony of desire, once more the thought formed in his brain:

  “She’s mine, the girl is! She’s plump as a young porpoise, and, by God, I’m going to have her!”

  The words he uttered, though, were far afield from these. He was saying:

  “So now, Laura, you see I wasn’t really to blame, after all. ‘A lie runs round the world, while truth is getting on its sandals.’ That proverb’s as true here as in Siam, where it originated. People are saying I was drunk and brutal, and all that, when the fact is—”

  “I know, Hal,” she answered, her eyes troubled. “I know how this country gossip exaggerates. But, even so, did you do right in beating Captain McLaughlin as you did?”

  “It was the only thing I could do, Laura!” he protested. “The bully tried to humiliate me. I—I just licked him, that’s all. You wouldn’t want me to be a milksop, would you?”