CHAPTER V
SHARP KNIVES CLICK IN THE MOONLIGHT
THEN one midnight Matt Ward's roared order to throw a man into chains was knocked up. The captain was carelessly overridden by the lumbering black giant of a Dane who sent brandy forward with his compliments to the man.
Ward was not of the mettle to clash on Gorvhalsen; and he washed down his humiliation with hot liquors. From then on the crew despised him, and he was enough of a sailor to know it. He had become purely a sailing-master, and no captain.
It had come about that a heavy hand tapped McGuire's shoulder, arousing him from lazy meditation. He turned and looked into the face of the old-timer, Smith.
“Ain't I seen you afore?” Smith demanded. His attitude was accusing.
“Me? Depends on where you've been. I don't wear a magic cap, you know. Nor I'm not a ghost—yet.”
“I was in Havannah Harbor”
“Oh, yes. Cuba. I've never been to Cuba.”
“Naw. Havannah Harbor—Efate—an'”
“Where's that?” McGuire asked, eager to learn.
“New Hebrides. An'”
“Oh, down there.” He nodded, enlightened, but no longer appeared interested.
“An I was there when that bark, the Mariana put in.”
“Mariana? Yes—yes—I've heard o' her, I think.”
“Heard hell! You're that same red-head off her, sure's the devil's alive,” Smith blurted.
McGuire listened, smiling, untroubled, hardly interested, as Smith went on to explain that the fellow who came ashore off her at Havannah bore a very suspicious resemblance to 'your own red-headed self.”
“I'll go you,” said McGuire quickly, tapping him on the shoulder. “You turn me up as a pirate, get the reward an' we'll split. Anything for money. How's that, Smith?”
It was very nearly too much for him. He had no mental equipment for handling such a remark. He had expected the quick angry denial of guilt or the shiver and startled expression of inadvertent confession. Smith had been brooding thoughtfully for several days over McGuire's red-headed lankiness; but this evasion was almost too subtle to be recognized as evasion at all.
“By thunder, you look him!” said Smith.
“By thunder,” McGuire mimicked, “you can bet he's proud o' that—or ought 'o be!”
“You know what happened,” Smith went on, telling over what he had told to grouped sailors again and again. “We're six o' us white men ashore. Traders an a mish'nary an' me. We wonders what a ship like her's doin' blackbirdin', for only nigger-catchers ever come there. Then we could see she was bein' beached to fix a leak an' thinks no more about it, as any ship has to hit the beach when she's got a hole in 'er. But the Betty Rand, blackbird schooner, comes in. That pirate boards the Betty an' makes 'er chop her two sticks down—both masts!”
“Red-head?” McGuire asked, interested.
“Naw! Red-head? Naw ! Hurricane Williams hisself. We guessed right away that she was the Mariana, the stole bark. He didn't want the Betty to do any guessin either—to get out an' say as how she's seen a big iron bark. We heard afterward as how she'd been chased by a gunboat. An' I believe you are that feller what was with him! Ain't you? You come ashore an' them cannibals there was like pups—jus' pawin' an' followin' you. Ain't you?”
“No-oo-o,” said McGuire lazily, leaning against the rail, an empty pipe in one hand, the other requestfully extended toward Smith. “No-o—no. Could not have been anybody that looked like me. No cannibals ever glad to see me—I'm too skinny. How's it for a bit of a smoke?”
Smith pushed aside the requestful hand.
“Say, I think you are that feller. Now ain't you?”
He peered hard, unfriendly, trying to force a confession.
McGuire sucked smilingly at the empty pipe as he drew a nubbin of tobacco from his own pocket and began crumbling it in the palm of his hand.
Smith laid hold of his shoulder, gripping hard:
“Say, ain't you?”
McGuire poked tobacco into his pipe-bowl. Nothing else interested him.
“Ain't you? Damn it, ain't you that feller?”
McGuire looked up, amused, and said unconvincingly:
“Yes, of course.”
Smith did not know what to make of that. He turned loose of the shoulder and hesitatingly eyed McGuire. The play of words and manner were baffling. He walked off thoughtfully.
Smith himself knew prison fare and the chill of the barber's clippers on the skin of his head, the weight of seven links to the ankle. He was a runaway convict. The old “lags” who might recognize him were dying off rapidly, but the fear of being caught was never far from him.
After a long meditative hour he decided to go aft on the morrow and have a word with Captain Ward. If Ward, as some thought, was out to find the Mariana, he would be interested. Anyway, there was the chance of a good thousand pounds and the gallows for the red-head; for though Smith had seen the fellow at Havannah Harbor only from a distance, he was sure red-head and McGuire were the same.
But that evening in the forecastle deck-house, with pannikin against the steaming kid, Smith reached for a hunk of meat, stabbing it with a sheath-knife, and his arm was struck up.
“Keep your dirty hands out o' that!” he was told in a coldly insulting tone.
It isn't the words that make a fight, but the tone.
Smith lifted a snarling face. His fist, fanged with a long tooth of metal, was at his left shoulder as he slipped menacingly from the edge of the bunk.
Men in the close quarters pressed toward corners and the doorway to be clear of the fight.
Though it was still day outside, the shadowing spread of canvas had increased the deck-house gloom, and a lantern threw off a dirty yellow glow. Brundage, his lean face outlined against the glow, looked down evilly.
Smith cursed him. The human animal, not less than the brute, must snarl and fight at the least hint of an offer if he would hold his place among the pack; and though men fight to the death for life, they throw their lives like dice at the flicker of an insult.
“Botany Bay canary!” said Brundage slowly, contemptuously.
He stood erect, tall, rather old, but tough like a tree not yet weakened inside.
“What's that?
What's that?” Smith cried with raising pitch of menace.
Years of freedom can not often hide the mark of the hulks from one who has himself been an old “lag.”
“I've marked you,” Brundage went on. “Your leg's got the swing o' iron jewelry, and by the cut o' your jib I'd say you were jerran of a joey!”—afraid of a government officer.
Had Smith been cooler of head he might have retorted with like insult. Slang of the hulks was in itself incriminating. But he had lately revisited prison ships in memory, and fear boiled within him.
There was no way out of the quarrel except such as a knife would cut. Had he been given a choice, Smith would have taken no other way. The unfriendly man who had his secret—he did not pause to think that Brundage had merely made a guess—had lost the right to live.
Smith was at him with an oath and a flourish. Brundage, with a backward sweep of his left hand to clear onlookers, thrust out an arm and knife in a fending blow.
Voices cried protest. The glint of loosened steel makes a man's nerves rattle together, and in the sudden push to stand clear as blows flashed, the sailors jostled and shoved the fighters. The quarters were too close for men who, as much as they wanted to see the knife-play, dreaded the gleam of blades that might bite into them. A knife that wants blood has a wide mouth.
The mess-kid was overturned. Some slipped to their knees with their feet in the mess and scrambled wildly about the legs of Brundage and Smith. There was headlong flopping into bunks, kicking and cursing. Men shouted for the fighters to go on to the forecastle deck.
Steel clicked, edge to edge. They each had a left hand clinched to a bunk's edge to steady their feet, and their brows came down over narrowed eyes agleam and deadly. Knives darted strikingly, with Smith the more ferocious, Brundage the cooler. He guarded like a fencer.
Old Tom, one of the Yankee whalers, shouted shrilly from his bunk; then he watchfully lashed out with booted feet, knocked Smith backward, and jumping up, faced Brundage.
The voice of Old Tom was high and hard. He was no peacemaker. If they wanted to fight, there was the forecastle deck. They could go there an' be mince-meat, for all he cared. But blast 'em for spoilin' the supper of honest men. There was little enough to eat—might the devil take them Chinks anyhow.
“Will you take it in the moonlight?”
Brundage asked it, looking past Old Tom.
“I'll that—'r now!” Smith shouted, with bitter words.
Sailors muttered wonderingly and slipped away to spread the news and talk of it freely among themselves. They knew that Brundage was forcing the quarrel and could not imagine why. But never yet were men unthrilled by the thought that other men might die in a fight they could watch, unendangered.
The moon lifted herself around two bells, nine o'clock. She came up like a great plate of white-hot metal with a part of the rim melted away and rose rapidly into the twinkling sky.
The mate's watch had taken the deck at eight o'clock. Brundage and Smith were in it.
There was clustering of men in the dark splotches of sail shadows and low talk of what was coming. Word had got about. The starboard watch, instead of turning in and getting a little sleep, waited restively.
Bets were made on which man would live. The little gambler, Dicer, plunged with much of the winnings from his crooked dice to put blankets, shirts, knives and things, all on Smith. He was a thin-nosed, scrawny, rat-like fellow, and jeered and bullied men who had nothing to bet.
McGuire silenced him. “I'll bet two fingers off my right hand 'gainst the little one off your left,” said he carelessly, but with an arresting sincerity.
Dicer eyed him questioningly.
“An' we'll appoint Clobb an' Sam-O to collect from the loser. How's that, Dicer?”
Men taunted Dicer. Always he wanted to gamble. Here was a chance. The big negro grinned cruelly. Clobb smote McGuire's back approvingly.
“W'at t' hell I want wit your dirty fingers!” Dicer cried.
“All I got.” McGuire held out an empty hand. “You want 'o bet. I'm accommodatin'. Always oblige a friend like you, Dicer.”
“You go t' the devil. Hi'm no idjit!” he answered, studiously inspecting his claw-like hand as though painfully imagining how it would be without a finger.
An eager furtiveness settled down on the crew after it had listened to Old Tom, whose hard thin voice told of the arrangements. He had taken charge. No one asked him to; but he wanted the thing done right.
He said that just before the watch on deck was relieved at twelve o'clock Brundage and Smith were to be on the port side of the forecastle, foot to foot; and at the first stroke of the bell, begin. Might they both cut holes in themselves, spoilin' the supper of honest men!
The awning over the poop had been taken down. The women were on deck, sitting together, faces to windward.
Gorvhalsen tramped about, talking with Matt Ward, who listened broodingly, his eyes again and again going toward Jeanne Vaughn.
The first mate, Adams—the initial letter had been dropped by the forecastle—warily watched the wind, for the captain was, or was trying to appear, a crank about keeping the yards trimmed and treated the mates with increasing coolness.
The moon looked down brilliantly. Whispering foam murmured like a host of lips as it ran along the Heraldr's side, marking her course with faint sparkling fire on the black waters that quickly washed out the wake.
Brundage returned uncommunicative hard glances to the curious men who offered talk, and he took a short turn up and down the main deck, alone.
McGuire fell into step beside him. McGuire's fingers, recently with idle coolness presented to Dicer's gambling-fever, were unsteady as he put match to pipe-bowl. He had, he said, made Smith uncertain. The man would forget the Mariana. The fight was needless.
“Let 'im off, Jake. If I'd known what you were goin' to do, I wouldn't 've told you. Let 'im off. I'll joke him till he never wants to hear o' ye again.”
“He's got my chance,” said Brundage. “And he knows the use of a knife. Now shove off. Seeing us together he may get leary.”
“But, Jake—”
Brundage walked away.
McGuire went forward, depressed. For a pirate with a thousand pounds on his head he was much troubled by the killing of a man.
The port watch edged restlessly forward, waiting; then broke into tiptoed shuffle at the first stroke of the midnight bell. A wide circle of strained faces swiftly appeared around Brundage and Smith.
The suspense of a fight's beginning held them to low hoarse whispers, cursings as they jostled for room to see into the swaying pool of moonlight that shifted with the dip and rise of the ship. The vagueness of the moon gave a spectral glow.
The click of steel was heard. The two men, both almost old, but hard-bitten and tough, crouched reachingly, each with his left hand thrust out stiffly behind. Like shadow-men, phantoms, they were poised cautiously, the knives crossing. Each put much pressure in the wrist to bear down the other's guard, then lunge for throat or heart. There was nothing of the hot-angered barroom scramble of wild sweeps and slashes. They were watchful, slow, murderous.
McGuire watched with low-lipped intensity. Clobb with a loud whisper echoed words that McGuire had put into his ear, and warned anybody that took a hand in this fight by tripping or shoving to expect to have his head loosened on his neck.
Dicer elbowed viciously to keep from being crowded and shouted low words at Smith.
The excitable Frenchman jangled his earrings as he followed in pantomime the movements of the fighters. Sharp, strange low-pitched oaths burst on his lips. Moonlight glinted from the crucifix on his naked breast.
“Call the starboard watch,” Adams had said, speaking impersonally into the waist.
Some one had answered: “Aye, sir, call the watch.”
A moment later Adams saw that something was going on forward. He called three men rapidly by name. No answer came back. Gorvhalsen and Matt Ward, quick to notice that something was wrong, paused.
Adams sprang down the ladder. Already voices with increasing excitement rose.
“A fight—I'll give 'em a fight!” he cried, jumping along the deck.
“Cut 'im open-yah-ee!—now you've got 'im—look out, Smith—look out—a-ee-eee.”
Words, phrases, mingled and were broken with the shrill, sharp, harsh brute sounds, inarticulate, that men have carried up with them from the jungles before language was formed.
Gorvhalsen, like a gorilla who has heard the noise of a tribe-battle from afar, scrambled swiftly down the ladder and over the deck.
Ward, with the traditional hesitancy of a captain to leave his deck because of a forecastle disturbance, paused; but he scarcely touched the ladder when he did go.
Adams had burst through the circle, giving blows and kicks to part a way; then checked himself, staring, as Smith reeled with arms outstretched and fell back. The hilt of a knife was firmly set between the left side's ribs.
Brundage, gashed on his own breast up near the neck, looked down intently at the knife's handle.
“'E tripped 'im,” Dicer squawked, or tried to, for his voice was smothered with a crashing blow in the mouth from McGuire's elbow. Dicer was a bad loser.
“Into irons with him!” Matt Ward roared, a hand leveled at Brundage.
Gorvhalsen stood by Brundage, looking him over. The huge black Dane, swaying, eyed him curiously, admiringly. Brundage dripped blood. Gorvhalsen said that the fight was fair.
“Look at the man, Ward. He needs brandy.”
Ward lost his head and cried:
“I'm captain here!”
Gorvhalsen ignored him; it was doubtful if he even heard, for he was asking Brundage what it was all about.
“An old grudge,” said Brundage coldly, disdaining even the warmth of defending himself, and indifferent to sympathy.
Gorvhalsen nodded approval. He took Ward by the arm and started off, half-dragging, half-leading him, talking pleasantly in high tones of the valorous way to end quarrels. He was big, dominant, careless, not even aware that he was humbling the captain.
Adams called out, “Into irons, sir?”
Gorvhalsen answered first:
“Irons, no. Not on my ship.”
So it was that Smith's soul found a hole in his heart and went zipping noiselessly off to be measured and weighed by God. Old Sails, nearly tottering from age, stitched the body carefully in worn canvas with iron links at the feet; but Smith was then dumped over without a yard being packed or a word said to ease his troubled ghost.
Matt Ward was too drunk for days to care who died or how many, much less in what fashion they were pitched toward hell. And the crew, without liking Gorvhalsen the more, cursed their captain for yielding an inch of his deck to any man.
Adams ran the ship, and Jeanne Vaughn, brilliant in colors, was with him much of the time; and when he was below, Swanson, second mate, had the deck, and then she was with or near him. Men came back from watches at the wheel to tell the forecastle how she had looked at them from the corners of her eyes; and, they said excitedly, sometimes she smiled and her eyelids fluttered.