CHAPTER XIV
DEATH RAPES THE FLAME WOMAN
ALL through the night light winds rose and fell. A half-hour's breeze would come, veer, pass away; and the Heraldr, having flapped aback with the wheel spinning this way and that, rode sluggishly. Out to the north a blunt fire-tipped cone burned like a large red misshapen star.
Few of the mutineers went on deck at all, unless they staggered there, scarcely knowing what they were about; maybe wanting a little fresh air, and getting knocked unconscious by it. When the door had given way the men crowded rushingly through.
Already many of them were decorated with loot from the staterooms, into which they had swarmed, fiercely eager to get their hands on anything that had belonged to some one else; and what they did not want they marred and tore. Jeweled trinkets of the women were snatched, fastened on to shirts. Toilet stuffs were flung in mirth over fellows who had their backs turned. Jeanne's powder was sprinkled on bearded faces. Ribbons and strips torn from her dresses were bound around heads and waists. Hard men love bright colors.
Already, too, some had broken into the arms locker and revolvers were stuck into belts made of torn gowns. Cutlases were seized, carried or worn with much swaggering. Something of good natured savagery settled on the men. They were ridiculously like children that have raided a garret and found old horse-pistols, swords and tarnished gilt trappings of martial grandfathers.
They did not fear an attack from anywhere; but arms to fighting men are ornaments, and fighting men prize ornaments as the gold and gilt, the ribbons and polished metals, plumes and shakos, braid, feathers, bright buttons, varnished leather and gaudy little medals have indicated from the beginning of armies.
Old Tom and Benny had kept side by side through, the fight, pressing close, looking hard, excited, but taking no part in the blows.
Brundage looked watchfully at them with thoughts of his own turning over slowly at the back of his head; but they had no sooner smelled whisky in Matt Ward's room than Old Tom jerked the upturned bottle from a fellow's bearded mouth and put it to his own.
Brundage, staring through the doorway over the heads of men, turned away when he saw that. The Yankee whalers would soon be drunk and of no use in seizing the ship from the mutineers and running her straight for the volcanic beacon light.
A man known as the Crab because of his sidling gait and stooped shoulders came rushing out of Ward's room in a hurry to be everywhere, miss nothing. He had a cutlas in one hand and an emptied bottle in the other; and bumping into Brundage, drew back the cutlas to strike before seeing who it was.
“Give hit 'im!” Dicer yelled at the Crab.
But the Crab grinned his lack of a wish for a fight as he looked squarely into Brundage's black cold eyes. Brundage turned away; nor did he look back though he caught Dicer's whisper to the Crab:
“Hi'd 'a' cut 'is blasted 'ead hoff f'r 'im!”
As the door of Gorvhalsen's stateroom had opened, Sam-O, then Clobb, were the first in. French Monty leaped through with a yell. Others pressed at their backs. The voices of many were unloosened again.
Eve lay huddled down on the floor as if dead. In the calm the Heraldr had got her stern to the west, and the sun just ready to fall to the horizon-line sent yellow light through the open windows, covering her and the carpet about her with radiance as if to mark one favored of Heaven. Had she not been unconscious she might have sought death in a frantic heedless leap through the stern windows, preferring the vengeance of God rather than the mercy of men. Her little face was peacefully bloodless with the soft repose of a death-like sleep upon it; and the blonde wisps lay like delicate traceries over her forehead and cheek.
Monty sprang to where she lay, and stood over her, a foot on each side of her body. He was armed in each hand, and every man who came near risked being sliced.
All the while that the men had beaten on the door Jeanne stood by the little cabinet. She was motionless with hand extended toward a cluster of small bottles; her hand was poised there ready to seize on one that would give her courage to face what would come if the door's lock did not hold. She loved life and wanted it; for life had been sweet to her with comfort and luxury, too; and scarcely a man of all she knew indifferent to her beauty. She stood as if waiting a signal, tense, desperate, afraid of everything, hesitant between a choice of cruel terrors, and her quietness was not calm, but the rigidity of fear. With her eyes at the door against which the hard blows fell, she seemed to be gazing at a basilisk, turned into stone and could not move. Her purple waist was torn; the silken whiteness underneath showed through; and with lips apart, half to scream and half for frantic breath, she waited, feeling that something must happen as something had always happened to protect her.
Suddenly the hot black face of the negro was there across the room. She caught the blur of other forms and faces; and something swifter than thought touched her with relief that it was not Shring rushing at her with dirty beard and broken teeth.
She clutched among the bottles, her fingers striking and overturning the one she wanted. It seemed trying to evade her. The flush of panic swept her and she tried to cry out but could only gasp and snatch for it as for something dearer than life. The bottle was in her hand, her fingers were at the cork—a sense of darkness, of being pressed to death came to her, suffocating. The rushing men were that close. As she flung the glass to her lips and swallowed stranglingly—they caught her. For a moment she was shaken this way and that like a doll in the mouth of dogs. Her waist was ripped from the shoulders, the silken things below it were torn away and the fair white flesh was given to the eyes of the men.
Scream upon scream fled Jeanne's mouth. Terror and pain were at every nerve she had. Her lips were burned and swollen instantly and down from the side of her mouth where the liquid had spilled, a long red streak appeared. Her pain was that of pure fire. She did not care what they were doing with her, did not know; but writhed and struggled, shrieking madly, trying to clutch her own throat and stomach.
Sam-O fell away. He had a broken arm to begin with, and Clobb when words and curses failed drove the flat of the cleaver alongside his head, knocking him back. The negro grunted hoarsely, staggering to a bulkhead with the gesture of shrinking from a second blow.
The woman was Clobb's. By the right of muscle and iron he had won her. A powerful arm gripped Jeanne close to him and the meat-cleaver swayed over his shoulder warningly. No one would challenge him. His lips were drawn back, the teeth glistened fang-like as a wolf's; the one eye gleamed from his swollen, bruised, battered face. Besides, he was their captain now.
Jeanne moaned in screams, twisting, struggling. She knew nothing except that she suffered.
Already the men were busy with looting the stateroom and feverishly drinking. The glass doors of the buffet had been kicked out the more easily to scramble among the bottles.
Clobb caught her up into both his arms and tried to soothe with gentleness what he thought was her fright. His voice was hoarse. She needn't be afraid of him. Why all the fuss? Hadn't she shown she liked him?
He had lifted and was holding her firmly. His arms were stronger than her convulsive death agony. He put his mouth to her swollen, blackened, burned lips, and the odor and taste of acid stung.
A bewildered sense of being cheated wrote itself on his bruised face. He glared, incredulous and angry, and felt her body and legs stiffen quiveringly in his embrace. She was dead.
And when he realized what was done, he shivered. He was aghast with a kind of horror that made him fearful of having contested with Death for a woman's body; and flung her from him with a brute-like sickened cry.
Men turned and gaped, stupidly questioning.
Then Sam-O laughed, high, hard, mocking; but he waved a bottle friendlily at Clobb, who seized it, gulping, sucking at the glass mouth.
Men came and stared at her, said things, and turned away to drink. Their voices were thunderous in excited glee over capturing the Heraldr, they shrieked and yelped, clapped each other's backs and drank on.
Presently Dicer slipped forward with sly quick glances over his shoulder and snatched from among the rags into which the purple waist was torn the diamond pin she had worn over her heart. He thrust it into his pocket and scooted off, grinning.