CHAPTER XV
A VIRGIN—AND CROOKED DICE
WHEN McGuire had come into the room Monty had both knife and cutlas out and was making dangerous swipes with the cutlas.
His shirt, rolled above the elbows, was open to the waist. The gold crucifix dangled and gleamed on his hair-covered breast as he stood, feet wide apart, looking quickly from side to side, his earrings jangling to the sharp splutter of oaths.
Nobody appeared to have much real wish to fight with him; for the prize was hardly worth blood when rum and gin, brandy, wine and liquors of many kinds were at hand. When the men were well drunk other things might follow.
In moments of license the attention of most men gravitates first to their stomachs; other passions are easily awakened when bellies are filled with hot drinks and heavy food. For every one that rushed at Jeanne, ten had sought out stuff to drink.
The men, drinking, or pausing with hands filled with something stolen, taunted and teased Monty. It was fun to hear him curse excitably. Some among them may have felt sickened by what their fellows talked of; but growing drunk, they talked the same themselves.
There was futility, certain if not indeed violent failure, in one or two men trying forcibly to oppose anything the others wished. They were aroused, half-crazed by the stimulation of excitement and were ready to fight—were ready for anything but any kind of restraint.
They might yield to the fellow who forcibly appropriated a treasure unto himself, but they would have flared dangerously had any one suggested that no one among them should touch the treasure, the loot, the women.
A mad beast sleeps in every man, and not very soundly; and hard men that have no families behind them, no feared power above them, no laws to face in front of them, are not now much different from what men were when as animals they had no homes, no priests, no magistrates.
McGuire was for a time like a specter at a bacchanal, helpless and apart. He knew the men about him far better than they knew themselves, and he was aware that nothing by way of force and certainly nothing by way of appeal could move them in the least except to resistance and anger. The half-smile was frozen on his face and the droop of his eyes in some subtle way changed until there was no sleepiness about it, but rather seemed to shelter a cruel and furtive meditation.
He knew that he was helpless to do anything more effective than get himself killed; and while he had no unusual urge at that time to shelter a life never greatly swaddled from danger, there was little of romantic audacity in his nature. He was not a swordsman; he was not a knife-fighter; he was not even skilful with a gun; he had nothing of the sternness in his character that makes the leader and by a firm presence puts those about him in a mood for obedience.
True, flushed with rage, he had cried to Brundage:
“I'll kill that dog!” when Sam-O had murdered the Kanaka; but Brundage had caught his arm, jerking him around.
Later McGuire had edged toward the cabin door through which Corydon was shooting. He hoped, somehow, to get in there. It would have been suicidal to try; the men he was leaving would have killed him as soon as they saw what he wanted to do. He would have tried, but Brundage had taken him by the neck, thrusting him back and muttering coldly:
“Wait. You can do nothing.”
Now, also, he could do nothing. Brundage would not try. The two Kanakas were brave loyal boys in their own way, but they needed the talismanic presence of Hurricane Williams to fly at odds. Had Old Tom and Benny stayed sober—but they were shouting loudly, damning the Heraldr, praising the brandy.
And Eve was not dead; McGuire at first had thought that she, too, had escaped that way; but she stirred, beginning to be aroused by either the faint wearing off or the noise and trampling about her.
He leaned against a tier of shelves that had a sort of combing to keep books from sliding off in the ship's roll. Men were tearing pages out of books, drunkenly twisting them for pipe-lighters—for cigar-lighters, too. They had plundered the tins, breaking more of the cigars than they smoked.
Everything their fingers touched was destroyed, at least marred. Flower-pots by the stern windows were overturned, the earth and plants trampled underfoot. They banged the piano, one after another, or three and four at once, thumping it with driving fists, grinning delightedly at the noise. Already they had broken into the ships' stores and were wolfing down tins of meat—or else, not liking the first mouthful, flinging can and all at the windows, sometimes splattering the bulkheads and carpet.
Clobb was talking in a loud voice. Men pressed around him, admiringly. They would get away with the Heraldr all right, he said. Let those people in the stateroom alone—till they got hungry. There would then be some tricks for that crippled ape-man to do. Laughter flatteringly answered him. Clobb had an affectionate arm about the negro; and Sam-O had his right arm in a sling. It would never be of use to him again.
Men were crowding back into the cabin where the table had been let down and laid with snowy crisp linen and silver. Some one had brought tin cups out of the forecastle and these were on the table too, beside thin-frosted water-glasses and tall-stemmed wine-glasses which were continually being knocked over. Hungry men would feast that night. Everything was going forward with raucous bustle. Portuguese had been sent to the galley for hot water. Each man would swim in rum punch.
In the stateroom men paused and passed before Monty, too busy with their own affairs to care about the treasure he was trying to save for himself. Some stared at him curiously, mumbled or bantered.
He had lifted the unconscious girl into the chair where she now made low sounds and moved. His fierceness was dominating, particularly on men hysterically hilarious about other things. Often he would look down at her with a great deal of the expression in his face that artists have given to the devil. Monty's head was bound, as always, with red cloth knotted at the back. He had a sharp-pointed beard and bushy eyebrows. His tinkling circular earrings swayed low on the sides of his jaw. She had awakened out of her trance, looked at him and fainted again.
Clobb broke out in a fury. He snatched a leatherbound book from the Crab's mutilating hands and crashed him to the deck with a drive of fist that would have split a bulkhead; then kicked him again and again, cursing him.
The Crab, illiterate, had no doubt been attracted as a monkey to a gleam by the bright gilt lettering on the back of the morocco binding and had taken the book down and torn the pages from it to hold over the lamp chimney and get a light for his cigar.
But didn't the blasted Crab know it was ungodly luck to tear even a lettered corner from Holy Writ? The Crab did.
Nothing could be more ominous. A Bible might lie about in the toughest forecastle through a year's voyage. The men that read it would be respected—at least when they talked of what they read; and never a page of it would be desecrated lest a storm rise out of a calm night and put the ship on a reef that was never seen before and would never be found again.
Not a man saw the incident without sudden hush falling on him; but it soon passed in curses for the Crab, then merged into a babble of crude reassuring interpretation that as the Crab couldn't read and hadn't known what the book was, nothing dreadful could properly happen. So, soon, in laughter and song, roaring and drinking, the incident passed.
McGuire watched what was happening. He was cold. The stifling stateroom and cabin crowded with hot bodies were suffocating. But he was cold; and he felt inert though cruel thoughts danced through his brain. He was sweating and chilled, at once half-mad and motionless. He tried to moisten his lips, but his tongue was dry. Men shouted at him merrily as they passed. It was a great day. Suddenly he pushed into the grasping ring about a freshly brought basket of gin-bottles. He snatched one from a fellow's hand, struck the short neck dexterously against the edge of the buffet, breaking the glass neatly; and he drank. It was not courage that he sought at the broken mouth of a square-face. He knew what he was about. He wanted his tongue loosened. Yet something that he did not understand and scarcely wished to resist had urged him not to drink, but that urge was less than the consuming passion burning in his veins.
As he flung the nearly emptied bottle carelessly past a man's head at the open window he pressed toward Clobb and caught at his shoulder.
Clobb turned with a scowl; but he had a liking for McGuire and his face and manner changed to heartiness and words burst into talk of how the Heraldr had been taken. He bid almost childishly for McGuire's praise.
“Brundage's a navigator,” said McGuire. “Ought 'o shove him an' the instruments into some room an' keep these fellows out. Lots o' reefs round here.”
The negro was listening thoughtfully. Clobb was in no mood to prepare for the morrow.
“Reefs—an' what Crab done,” McGuire added.
Sam-O, second in command of the Heraldr, instantly declared the need of a navigator.
“An' Brundage don't drink—much,” McGuire went on.
“Can't stay on my ship!” Clobb roared in humor, and laughter went up.
Dicer's perky face was thrust into the group:
“W'at's the row?”
“We're talkin' about using you for a jury rudder,” said McGuire.
“None hof of that. Hy'm ha hof'cer now. Hain't Hy, Skipper? Hy throwed the pin what fetched that Corydon kid, didn't Hy, Skipper?” To McGuire, “Ye wants to s'y sir' to me!”
McGuire slapped him in the face with one hand and pulled a knife with the other. Dicer retreated, shrieking threats, daring him to come, viciously cursing.
Clobb and Sam-O both put a hand on McGuire. There must, they said, be no blood let on the Heraldr: they were all good fellows and shipmates.
“Then keep that piece o' shark's gut away from me,” said McGuire. And at once to Sam-O, “You can't swim much—that arm shivered—an there are reefs!”
That settled it.
Brundage, much like the genii of Arabian fables, was hardly named before he was at hand and none had seen his coming. He then stood just inside the door, pipe in mouth, thumbs in belt. A cutlas dangled at his side.
They called to him. He came slowly, erect, with a grim composure that neither Clobb nor the negro liked; but he was dangerous if meddled with and they knew it. Besides, he was the only man among them that could navigate. They knew that, too. He nodded coldly to what was said.
McGuire spoke to Clobb:
“Captain, how'd it be pass the word they're to keep out o' the navigator's room?” To Brundage, “Pick a room nobody wants an' put the instruments in there—take Mrs. Gorvhalsen's room.”
It fell in very well with Brundage's scheme of things to be navigator and direct the ship's course though he had no need of instruments just then to make for the harbor he wanted.
The three of them went into the cabin where most of the men had gathered in high glee, preparing for the banquet, though every man was already stuffed full of food and loaded to the scuppers with drink. Already, too, the snowy linen was stained with things spilled, marked with dirty hands, blotched with tobacco-ash, and had holes burned in it.
The sun had hurried down into the sea. All lamps were lighted. A breeze moved in wavering ripples across the flat water; but the Heraldr without anybody at the wheel slowly drifted around and around with no way on her.
McGuire went over to Monty and stood among the three or four that then idly gaped at him and the girl.
Monty's aggressive fierceness seemed to have served him as well as he wished; there was no indication that his wish to do first as he pleased would be seriously challenged, and he had shown the heedless purpose that has won heaven for even worse men when better employed.
His quick eyes, weeks before, had settled on the flower-like beauty of Eve. The utter innocence and sweetness of her stung fancies untouched by the more gaudy woman, and no sooner was he made a confidant in the plot to take over the ship than, come what might and die who must, he was hard-set that his would be the first arms to grasp her.
Eve, when she had been aroused and looked into his face, gasped inaudibly and fainted again. Monty, with an arm about her, having put down his cutlas, was trying to pour a half-glass of raw brandy between her lips. He spilled the whole of it on her face and breast and dress. The fumes struck her senses. As though trying to keep from consciousness she turned her head from side to side, instinctively evading something. Her hands groped in feeble defensiveness. She mumbled:
“Don't—don't—please—don't hurt me.”
Monty threw the glass to the deck, stared at her a moment with an expression of helplessness and looked up questioningly a little bewildered at the men about him.
Then McGuire took a step forward.
“Monty?” he said in an enigmatically soft voice, a curious line of half-mocking, painfully forced amusement running across his mouth.
Monty was hesitantly watchful, puzzled, a little troubled. McGuire, as slowly and unagitatedly as one must be who approaches to stroke a dangerous animal, moved closer, holding Monty with eyes and smile.
His hand went out in a lazy movement and the fingers plucked the gold cross on Monty's breast, and it came up before his eyes, closed against them. And McGuire, grinning till his teeth showed in ironic savage mockery, moved the crucifix jigglingly back and forth right against Monty's face as in low-voiced jeering he cried:
“She's out of a convent, Monty. Out of a convent! Why don't you offer her this—this—this! Try her with it, Monty. Try her”
Monty stared—his jaw hung brokenly—as if he had never before seen the little molded figure of ivory with dots of red stain at side, feet, hands and thorned brow, suspended on the cross of gold. His hands moved up slowly, stupidly toward it; but McGuire jerked fiercely and broke the strong cord that held it about Monty's neck.
“Get away—get away!” he jeered, pushing him carelessly, as Monty in dull trance-like gesture reached for it.
Monty, quickened, cursed and snatched at it; but McGuire, still grinning, gave a sudden shove so that Monty staggered back, recovering himself with hand to knife, drawing it. But McGuire had leaned across to Eve. She, dazed, pale, sat weakly with hands pressed to cheeks; her wide blue eyes looked up piteously like the eyes of a gentle wounded creature. Her lips were wide apart as though to speak, but they did not move.
Silently he held the crucifix toward her, giving it to her. She could not at first realize that what she saw was true, but radiance grew within her eyes; for, vision or fact, it seemed a miraculous sign. She glanced from it to him, not quite sure. His hand moved closer; her arm stirred doubtfully.
She grasped it, touching his hand with fingers cold as though lifeless. Her wondering face was toward him, trustingly. The loud clatter and roar of many voices in harsh words and harsher laughter came through the door; the frequent sharp clash of broken glass, too. With the crucifix to her lips she bent over, weeping, huddled in the big chair.
“Now, Monty, my son,” said McGuire quickly, catching an arm through his, “let's have a drink.”
As if awakened out of a bad dream, Monty stared this way and that. Strange oaths rattled off his tongue.
“—knew all the time, Monty, you were keepin' these dogs away. But she—she was scared an' didn't understand till she saw”
The emotional Frenchman feverishly seized a bottle of cognac and appeared to be nearly strangling even before it reached his mouth.
The gaping men who had seen were quickly mouthing the incident in the cabin. They excitedly declared that McGuire had taken the girl from French Monty, had frightened him off by jiggling the “charm.” The crew, or most of them, came noisily streaming through the door to see, to jeer, to laugh, to have a little fun.
Dicer was at the corner of the table, rattling his box and casting with half-drunk fellows for their loot. He snatched up the little ivory cubes and hurried, squeezing and elbowing well to the front, his shrill voice going.
They came with drunken taunts for Monty. They rushed stumblingly in, curious, good-natured, loud, insulting—already after novelty. They forgot why they came before they were well into the room. They had thought to find Monty and McGuire quarreling, but it meant nothing but a second's surprise to see that McGuire and Monty were drinking side by side from gin and brandy bottles.
As they had begun to come, McGuire, his imagination flaring, had been saying:
“—brother just got to Heaven, Monty—in white-flame armor now, like a warrior saint. An' he's already plucked the sleeve o' God, and is pointin' right down here to the Heraldr. You an' me, Monty, we know the man that touches—”
His voice was drowned before he realized that the room was filling with men.
They wore bright torn clothes around their heads and waists. Sam-O had a yellow silken scarf for a belt. In his ears were glittering pendants from Jeanne's jewel-box. A half-breed of some kind had found them. Sam-O got them from him on the threat of taking ears and all if they were not yielded up as a gift. The Crab had tied pieces of ribbon in his beard. One fellow in merriment wore a woman's silken nightgown over his clothes. Clobb had Matt Ward's flat cap, no doubt as a sign of captaincy.
The Portuguese and half-breeds when they had thrown all the bodies overboard, having been kicked to that work by the lordly white men, got themselves well filled with hot rum so as not to be afraid and they had been so inspired with courage that they pulled off the dead whatever attracted their fancy. One of them wore Corydon's white blood stained linen coat, probably because it had large pearl-shell buttons.
They grouped around Eve's chair, just circling there because they stared at her and were crowded by others who pushed in alongside, wanting to see too.
Tobacco-smoke soon clouded the lamps, giving an eery dimness to the room. Monty tried to push through to be near her. He was so excited they thought he was going to make a fight of it, and was seized, held, talked to, argued with drunkenly as shipmate to shipmate. He got more and more feverish, and was bantered by some of the humorous fellows until he became wild, furious, and unwisely cried in all earnestness that a curse would fall on him who put a finger to her.
At that a howling roar, derisive, side-splitting, jarred the beams overhead.
Monty's lips crackled terrible things at them. His excitable passionate temper was ever easily aroused, and now half-crazy he flung expressive, angry, fearful words. It was great sport to hear him damn them, call them name of a name, pigs and sons of pigs, dirty, dirty cows; to offer to kill them all together or three at a time.
Oh-ho-ho-ho! They knew how he felt. One man slapped another on the shoulder. They bent over, reeling. They leaned back, staggering. And they laughed. They shouted. They howled.
McGuire, passing around the group, slipped easily between those in his way, made for the door into the cabin. He looked for Brundage but did not see him.
Three or four men, too drunk to rise but still interested in what was going on, sprawled in chairs or swayed with arms on the table, blinking around them, fumbling with their cups, drinking on and on. Blear-eyed, they craned around to look, trying to ask what was going on in there.
McGuire moved rapidly. He caught up a wire tray, snatched tins and bread from the table; picked up a bucket of hot water freshly brought from the galley for the punch, and throwing open the door of Mrs. Gorvhalsen's room, set the water carefully in a corner. He tumbled the food from the tray and again filled it. He snatched a revolver from the belt of a fellow half-dozing in a chair. It was loaded. The man tried to protest, starting up quarrelsomely, and sank back under the butt of it.
“'Ere whash goin' on?” a voice from the table demanded.
“He said you were drunk,” McGuire answered on the instant. “I'm stowin some o' this stuff away—have something to eat to-morrow.”
The last explanation was not heard. The man was glaring in haughty disapproval at his shipmate who, supposedly, had been insulting.
McGuire worked busily, throwing into the room whatever he could get his hands on that might be of future value there. He picked two other revolvers off the floor, but they were unloaded; and he was scurrying about to find cartridges when an out roar in the stern stateroom made him pause.
A hearty outburst, like a cheer, followed by a buzzing babble showed that the men there had suddenly become happily excited over something that was bound to have trouble in it to be so eagerly accepted. He closed Mrs. Gorvhalsen's door carefully and started aft.
But the men were coming back, half-dragging Eve with them. Dicer was grinning importantly and well to the front. She hung a dead weight in their hands and moaned in sobs for mercy.
One of the men helping to force her along wore her brother's blood-stained coat, but she did not notice it. A fellow had snatched the crucifix from her hands and would have put it into his pocket, but men on each side stormingly told him it was Monty's. Forecastle men hate a thief. The fellow with a shout flung the cross backward toward Monty. He had been let go by his shipmates, and picked the crucifix from the deck, cursing as he reached for it.
It was Dicer who by unpremeditated inspiration had squawked:
“Le's shyke dice f'r 'er!”
That had touched and aroused exactly what they wanted. That would be feverish sport and fair. Dicer had shrilled over and over:
“That's fair!”
They were hot, sweating and grinning.
“Put 'er on the table—in the cabin!”
That had set them in motion. This was to be a game worth the playing. Each man was to have his chance. It was fair. Faces leered eagerly, one into another; bodies swayed, feet stumbled. There was lurching and shoving, but good-nature.
Dicer rattled his leather box excitedly under their noses. Eve was grabbed and they started out with her. They were not rough with Eve. Some even tried to soothe her as they stumbled drunkenly with her weight on their arms. They were not gentle. They simply did not want to damage by wrenching or bruising the prize they were to gamble for. They talked loudly, some at her. Others boasted.
Dishes and bottles were overturned and pushed aside, and two men sprang on to the table and stood unsteadily while others lifted Eve up to them. They tried to make her stand, but she had no strength. The two men held her up, coaxed, swore at her. She hung limply with her swollen stained face turning to them and the men below her, pleading. She begged, she prayed; but they had neither eyes nor ears. Her face fell into her hands, and when the men let go of her, she dropped, lay on her knees and side, swaying slightly, moaning piteously.
Some men hastily poured full cups of raw liquor into themselves. Old Tom, too drunk to stand alone, held on to a stanchion and stared dully at nothing. Some called for him to line up—they were going to throw for the girl. His tongue was too thick to make himself understood, but he clung the tighter to the stanchion as though some one might try to pull him into one or another of the groups forming on each side of the table. Benny was dead drunk and on the deck.
McGuire, seeing what was now going on, pulled at the open collar of his shirt. He felt the need of air and of something to hold him from sagging. But he was not excited. He had never been more calm outwardly or had his thoughts more vivid.
His brain was aflame. Over-imaginative at all times, he caught the impression that a supernatural malevolence was cheating and would continue to cheat every effort he might make. He was himself half-drunk, and there came the chilling superstitious wonder that in being so he had broken the holy charm that would otherwise, somehow, have protected Eve.
He remembered the boy's long-drawn prophetic dread of what would happen, and by recalling that was confirmed in the feeling that the Heraldr and all who were in her were without hope.
The sense of helplessness was the burden that bore down on him until it came close to the reaction of blind fury. But something of the clarity that attends madness, giving intensity to one or a few ideas and obscuring all else, was near to him. He would get Eve out of their hands or kill her. He felt no revulsion or shrinking from the thought. There was no horror in the idea, and at the time it seemed so natural as to be received by his brain without a shock.
She had come into his life with imperceptible growth until she filled it. He had watched her turn from a shy, awkward, colorless child into a woman with youth, loveliness, trusting innocence, all blended in a glow on her face; and had seen the face looking up to him with frank though unconscious confession of love. He knew her as one above and beyond him: the thought that she would ever be nearer to him than a lovely memory never, at any time, had touched his mind. So gently she had entwined his affections about herself that he was caught unawares and deeply loved her before he realized that she was no longer merely an entertaining sweet little girl to be looked upon in kindly amusement from afar.
His imagination in the vivid hour of her torture saw her as a child-saint, to be adored, not touched; and it hurt where never a wound had been before to know that she trusted and had faith in him.
He had succeeded in clearing a stateroom by getting it turned over to Brundage and had put food and water there. He had shaken the emotional Monty to his very soul. He had hoped somehow to raise such commotion out on deck that the fellows would go staggering and shoving to see what was going on, then he would have tried to get her into the room. But Dicer, inspired by the devil and the fact that he was clever at cheating, had fired the men to gamble for her.
The men were divided into two groups. Sam-O was rattling the box, thumping it hard to stir the dice before making his throw.
McGuire leaped forward and shoved his way in among the men across the table from the negro.
“Get on the other side,” voices shouted.
“Too many here now,” he was told clamoringly.
Twenty-two men were ranged about the table; ten on one side, eleven besides McGuire on the other.
He shoved a man who stood beside him:
“Go yourself. Too far for me to walk.”
A fellow from the more numerous group edged around the table.
Then with many a preparatory rattle and oath invoking good luck, Sam-O flung down the dice-box and raised it. Silence and a bending of faces to read:
“Four—four-six”
Fourteen.
The highest possible throw was eighteen; the lowest, three.
“Good work, black boy!” “Can't beat that!” “Yippee!”
“Now, Dicer, roll 'em out,” said Clobb.
The little gambler picked up the dice and threw them into the box. He cupped it for a moment with both hands as he shook it up and down, then he removed one hand and shook heartily, dropping the box mouth-down. And men read:
“Five-six—six!”
Sam-O and the ten men with him on that side of the table were out of the game. They had lost. The eleven lined up on the side that had made the winning cast again divided themselves. McGuire stood with Dicer and two others; Clobb and four men were of a side.
Dicer passed the box. Clobb threw first.
“Three—five—ace!”
A shout of derision went up at him, except from the men on his side. They cursed their luck.
Dicer threw and won easily.
The four men were then split: McGuire and Dicer on one side, the Crab and a hairy-faced fellow with some kind of a lumpish growth under his jaw on the other.
Dicer won again.
“Didjer ever see such luck!” men remarked with envious eyes on the feverish lean-fingered gambler.
It was now between Dicer and McGuire and men began rapidly to bet. McGuire was a favorite. They did not think Dicer could win four times, straight running. Not one of them imagined that he cheated.
Monty, who had been no party to the gamble, sullenly edged closer and closer. But they did not notice him. All were intent on the fall of the dice.
At one end of the table, crouching with her face on her arms, Eve shivered and moaned unceasingly.
Dicer dropped the little ivory squares into the leather box and passed it to McGuire. He shoved it back, saying:
“You first—throw 'em!”
Dicer drew in his scrawny neck and stared suspiciously. His eyes angrily questioned McGuire's face.
McGuire leaned lazily, low on the table with an arm extended along it and one hand down at his side. He looked sleepy, his heavy lids were almost closed, but he was not smiling. Dicer spat contemptuously on to the deck:
“W'at yer think yer doin'? Puttin' ha Joner hon me er somepin'?”
As he spoke he cupped his two hands over the box for a moment, shook it upside down and back, then rattled the dice briskly. He was just turning the box to bring it down on its mouth when McGuire reached out and caught his arm.
“Wait a minute—wait a minute,” he said easily, and brought his other hand up with a knife in it.
Quickly he drew the point of the knife across the table, cutting the crisp linen:
“See that mark? You spill the dice clear across it—ever one of them—an don't reach for 'em, either—or I'll put this through your heart!”
McGuire demanded no more than he had the right to require of the one who threw against him; but from much shaking on tops of sea-chests and other places of small surface the men were used to dumping the dice from the box, mouth to board, instead of rolling them out.
They thought McGuire's words only a superstitious quirk such as every fellow who meddles with chance games is pretty sure to have at least once in a while.
But Dicer knew what McGuire meant. By spilling the dice close to himself he had always been able to pick them up first and put them into the box—as a sort of courtesy for the man next to throw. Only he would take that opportunity to remove the two false dice that he had used and restore to the leather box the two honest dice he had palmed by cupping his hands over the mouth of the box.
His method was simple and he was dexterous.
Before making a throw the two false dice were concealed in the palm of his left hand. With two hands cupped at the mouth of the inverted box, it was easy to catch any two of the three dice into his right hand, at the same time releasing those in the palm of his left, and go on shaking with scarcely a flicker of pause during the transfer.
Because of the nimble dexterity required—and long patient practise had given it him—no one who did not know something of the trickeries of the dice-table would have suspected his cheating.
But Dicer was aware that McGuire more than suspected, and knew that if he were caught with those false dice in his box the irate cheated men would probably beat him half, if not entirely, to death, and begin again dicing for the girl.
“No you don't—keep your other hand off that box,” McGuire said warningly, still within his gambler rights if he chose to demand them; and he was making the demands quite clear. “Now throw 'em out—an pass this line.”
If they went past the line Dicer could not snatch them up as soon as they were read and drop them into the box—as a courtesy.
Dicer turned pale. He knew that McGuire would stab him in an instant. His hand trembled until the dice were set clicking. He wanted to pretend to let the box slip from his hand to the deck, but men were pressing too close all about him.
“Throw 'em! Throw 'em!” voices called at him. Men were impatient to have the result.
“Throw 'em,” said McGuire, and Dicer made his throw.
They passed the line. Voices jeered McGuire. His superstitious quirk had got him nothing of value. Those who had bet against him were exultant; for they read:
“Four—six—five!”
A very good throw.
McGuire caught up the dice quickly, dropped them into the box, gave it a shake, spilled them out in a long roll that sent them clear along the table. One even touched and was stopped by Eve's dress.
Breathless eager faces leaned forward:
“Five—five—six!”
“Sixteen
He was cheered drunkenly.
“She's your'n?”
Some, half-serious, offered looted gewgaws and trinkets to him, barteringly. Vile things were said in jest. Men prodded Eve, shouting at her.
As between himself and Dicer, McGuire had won honestly; though he had from the first attached himself to that little cheat because he knew the gambling would narrow down to the two of them. Dice can be read on only three sides at once; and the two false dice each had two sixes, two fives, and two fours; the duplicate opposite its true number. The lowest throw that could be made with them was nine—two fours of the false dice and the ace of the honest one. The chance of getting big numbers was greatly increased by their use.
McGuire, tensely motionless, looked at Eve. Monty was close behind him.
“Tyke 'er away!” was yelled in hearty humor; and other things also in humor.
Men were thirsty again. Gambling is parching work.
Dicer had recovered his ivory cubes.
McGuire reached out to her and tried to speak, but he had no words. Her face was buried.
Monty in the solitude of the stern stateroom had sworn to kill the man who won her; he felt the need of making fierce atonement. Also he was drunk. He edged squarely to McGuire's back, his knife furtively drawn; but the edge of a cutlas was thrust suddenly before his face.
Brundage, watchful, grim, had come down from the poop where he had been straining his eyes in the night, and for a long time he had been near the table, looking on, seeing everything, making no move.
“You're a judge o' steel, Monty,” he said with quiet deep-throated slowness. “What'd you think o' the edge on this?”
There was no escaping its edge, silvery bright, freshly put to a grindstone. The two Kanakas, with native weakness for liquor and native weakness of limb after meddling with it, were sprawled sense less in the lazarette. But Brundage had found old Sails, trembling with age and nervousness, timidily peeping about the deck, trying to keep out of sight and see what was going on. Brundage made him turn the grindstone, then brought him a bottle of wine and food. Sails carried it off like an animal to its hole and kept from sight.
“What'd you think o' the edge on this?” Brundage had asked, and Monty swayed backward from it, not sure what Brundage meant but disturbed by the hard black eyes more than by the sharpened steel.
Brundage showed no anger; he gave no sign of having read Monty's purpose. What men saw the incident, if any, took it for a drunken joke.
They were drinking, watching McGuire and saying things. Some, grouped together with heads thrust forward, were beginning to listen to Dicer's wail as he held his hand out to them. Their brains, never quick, were dull at the moment. It was hard for them, who had watched closely, to understand what Dicer meant by saying that McGuire had cheated. But there were the dice for them to see.
McGuire caught a word or two of the shrill voice and guessed at just about what was coming. He turned quickly. Luck seemed with him. Monty was at hand. McGuire was going to carry Eve into a room.
“Don't let anybody stop me,” McGuire said.
Monty understood the tone better than the words.
Men were fumblingly examining the little lumps of ivory. Dicer's wail rose. Some heard nothing more than that they had an excuse for claiming that McGuire had not won the girl fairly, which was as much as they needed or wanted.
“Them's crooked dice han' 'e hused 'em!” Dicer screamed.
McGuire grabbed and dragged Eve from the table. She did not know who had caught her and shrieked in renewed terror. Men cried out at him. Clobb, one of the group around Dicer on the other side of the table, lunged drunkenly, snatching. His hand came away with a piece torn from her skirt. There was a rush. Yelling, Brundage struck a man across the face with the edge of his cutlas.
Dicer squawked hysterically, “'E cheated—kill 'im—kill 'im,” and ran with knife out.
McGuire had lifted Eve into his arms and was staggering for the door.
Sam-O rushed forward, his one hand out to snatch. Monty sprang to his back, digging at his throat with a knife-point. The negro fell and Monty with him. They rolled and tumbled against the unsteady legs of other men, so that some fell on them and many forgot what they were after. Monty slashed as a cat claws. Then Clobb brained him.
Dicer quick as an eel had got around the table and rushed fiercely at McGuire, whose back was turned and arms were filled. McGuire had got to the door and paused to open it. Dicer's hand went up to strike—but the top of his head seemed coming off.
He was jerked backward, clear from his feet; but he did not fall. Brundage's left hand was twisted in the long oily shreds of hair. Dicer squawked for help, for life, for mercy, as he was slowly twisted around so that he stood, face to the point of the cutlas.
The door shut behind McGuire, and men who were rushing for it brought themselves up motionless as they came before Brundage.
On the deck Sam-O was bellowing his pain. He had many long gashing cuts that blood ran from. He writhed cursingly, afraid to die. Some stared at him, just stared as they might have watched any other animal suffering, until one by one these men also began to look toward the door where Brundage's long left arm held Dicer fast by the top of the head.
Dicer had dropped his knife the better to touch Brundage's mercy with prayer.
“Let him go!” Clobb shouted, not for love of Dicer, but because he did not like the calm aloofness of Brundage, who seemed to regard himself as not among the mutineers. The answer came at once and without words. Brundage, as coldly as if killing a snake, ran the cutlas through Dicer's scrawny throat and the point came out at the back of his neck. But he did not fall. He swayed and squirmed with fingers clutching desperately at the steel instinctively as he died, trying to pull away the cutlas.
Brundage held him upright at arm's length by the hair and unhurriedly jerked twice before the cutlas came free. He slowly, carefully, wiped the blade on the body of the dead man, still upright, still jerking and squirming, then flung him away.
Brundage, tall, straight, turned slowly, his eyes striking from face to face with the impact of a challenge. He said nothing. There was no need to speak. If left to themselves these men would soon be beating in the door to get at McGuire. His eyes, dark and lidless, gleamed evilly. The twitching body of the little gambler lay in a red mirror of blood at his feet.
Drunk fellows, suddenly sobered a little, shocked by the chill brutality of his death and cowed by the manner of it, stood about dully. Some furtively looked at Clobb. A fight had to come. Every man knew that.
Clobb had his head down with neck drawn in as though about to rush. His big hand gripped the meat-cleaver. He was waiting for Brundage to say something. Brundage said it:
“All right, Clobb. Come on.”