Plundered Cargo/Chapter 19

by Robert Welles Ritchie

 

Chapter XIX

THE BALANCE SHIFTS

Dawn of his second day in involuntary command of a beached hulk, and Captain Judah Storrs had himself carried by two Chinamen up to the aerie of the Sierra Park's high bridge—carried because a useless burning arm forbade his climbing the steep ladder unaided.

Here was his aerie which he had occupied all the day before since, within an hour of their forced transfer from the Lonney Lee, he had put his crew of six yellow men to work in the stinking hold. Most of the night, too, for the matter of that; when dim oil lanterns in the hold gave light to the wretches clambering over and straining at the slimy hide bundles, with Hansen at the winch.

Captain Storrs chose the bridge for his aerie, prompted by two good reasons. One was that it gave him a view of the gulf behind the cove, a fine clear vista of miles of flat water stretching eastward in the direction of Guaymas and the other Mexican mainland ports. Second compelling factor lay in the circumstance that by locking the rear door to the wheelhouse Storrs had left but a single way of ascent to the bridge—by way of the steep ladder from the main deck below. Concealed under the cushion of his chair were two long bladed knives from the galley. Any head with a coiled queue pushing up the ladder to this lookout possessed by the captain would have to parry a knife stroke.

This morning of his renewed vigil, Judah Storrs was sorely ill, burning up with a fever which spread to all his members from the purple hole that had received Doctor Chitterly's rough surgical attention the day before. He had dosed himself with quinine discovered in a medicine chest in the late Skipper Lofgren's cabin; but all the drug apparently availed was to set his brain pan in motion like the walls of a bellows, expanding and collapsing with waves of black blindness between. Yet an indomitable will, which seemed to be a force apart from his stricken body, drove from him like lightning to play over the bent backs of the Chinamen in the hold.

He would get that cotton on deck and break it out for the opium before——!

Waxing dawn light found the wounded man on his high bridge forever turning his head to search the eastern horizon. He was looking for a sail or a plume of smoke there. That would be the signal of Hoskin's coming—Hoskin returning from Guaymas, after unexplained delay, to get the opium he had so tidily cached here in the dish cove of Sabina Island.

Let Hoskin come, and Captain Storrs would be helpless to prevent his taking what he wanted. Helpless! Without a weapon save two butcher knives concealed under a cushion. About as capable of resistance—so ran the bitter thought through the sick man's brain—as a rag doll with one arm torn off!

It was all clear to Storrs now. Karelia Lofgren's revealing words flung at him in the screech of a fury yesterday had uncovered the double dealing of that snake Hoskin. Captain Lofgren, true to his pact with Judah Storrs, had died when Hoskin determined to double-cross them both. And he, Judah Storrs, would have gone on a wild goose chase to Magdalena Bay—was, in truth, poised for that flight—had he not seen back in San Francisco at that last saving moment Hoskin's report of the abandonment of the Sierra Park, a wreck, at Sabina Island.

As for Spike Horn, Chitterly and the others, they were, after all, innocent of any guile. Just fools! One of them a dangerous fool.

I have stressed the presence of two knives under the cushion of Captain Storrs' perch on the bridge. Last slender props in a threatened moment of extremity. For those six Chinamen sweating and gagging in the hold lived only under the rule of fear. Let them once discover their master had no firearms to enforce his will upon them and they'd turn beasts. Judah Storrs knew this well enough. He was gambling on the thin chance the yellow men would remain blind to his helplessness.

Once their eyes were opened—well, he had those two butcher knives for the last epic moment.

Again the winch was cackling, and hides were feeding the sharks. Captain Judah's roving eye discovered unwonted activity aboard the Lonney Lee. He saw a long bundle with tarpaulin wrapping lowered into one of the boats alongside. His curiosity pricked him and he went back into the wheelhouse for a pair of binoculars. He ticked off aloud identity of the figures following down into that boat: the doctor—that dumb Iron Man—ah, Horn, worse luck! So it was the flute player they lowered away in wrappings. H-m-m! Might better have been that wolf pup Horn.

With a sort of ironic pleasure the crippled rake-hell on the Sierra Park's bridge followed with his glasses a pantomime on the beach. He saw Karelia Lofgren stride down from a long rock dike to join the group; saw two of the men scooping out sand with a fire shovel from the schooner's galley. Then the doctor removed his great hat and turned his face up to the blinding new sun while the others bowed their heads.

“Oh, I'll bet he puts up a fancy prayer!” grumbled Judah Storrs. Just then came a hail from Hansen below.

“First bale o' cotton comin' oop, sir!”

Instantly the funeral ashore was blotted from the skipper's mind. He arose in his excitement and started for the ladder, then thought better of it.

“Break out that bale, Mr. Hansen, and see if you find anything in it.”

Storrs watched the Swede and a Chinaman attack with a crowbar the single band of strap iron remaining about the swollen bale. He saw several shaven yellow heads peep over the hatch coaming like the heads of curious rats. The man on the high bridge burned with impatience.

The iron strap snapped. A knife ripped open the burlap sacking, and leaves of soggy cotton fell outward like thick pages of a book. Hansen prodded and shredded the mass until all the deck under the cargo boom was a dirty white.

Suddenly he stooped and picked up a round iron box, such as might have been made by screwing together two boiler tube caps; a thing to span between thumb and little finger. Cackles of surprise from the watching Chinamen.

Hansen rooted out another box—another. Five in all.

“Bring those up to me,” Captain Storrs ordered. “And fetch a wrench from the engine room.”

He turned to bellow at the shaven polls lining the hatch coaming: “Back to work, you swine! Swing that tackle over! Lively now!”

Judah Storrs knew full well the seed of curiosity had been sown in fruitful soil and it would not be a matter of long before ugly cupidity would bloom.

Fifteen minutes later another misshapen bale oozed water on the deck. Under Captain Judah's chair high above five round tins had been piled: tins which had fitted neatly in their resistant containers and which were covered with red paper whereon gold ideographs glorified Heavenly-dream Compelling Flower Magic.

A prankish gust of wind caught one of these labels which had been loosened from a can by infiltration of water and whisked it out through the pipe rail before Captain Storrs' chair. The skipper saw it writhe and flutter like a wounded butterfly down onto the deck.

“Hansen!” he bawled to the Swede who was standing with a hand on the winch brake. The mate looked up dully.

“Grab that paper before——” The gaudy label stirred like a sentient thing, took brief wing, balanced on the hatch coaming and then dropped into the black maw where six Chinamen clambered about in slime. Skipper Storrs groaned in agony of spirit.

“Now the lid's off!” he whispered.

So intent had he been upon what was going forward below him that Storrs did not see the Lonney Lee's yawl put back from the shore with the girl Karelia substituting for that passenger who had been left beneath a mound of sand on the beach. Nor did he see the small craft put off again from the schooner and head for the Sierra Park, Spike Horn at the oars and the girl with him.

Splash of oars jerked Storrs' gaze overside just as the yawl was coming up under the pendant falls of one of the port davits.

“Why, by the great——!” The man on the bridge gazed open-mouthed. “That hell-cat of a Finn girl smells opium a mile away, huh!”

Karelia swarmed up the ropes and balanced herself easily on the steamer rail. Storrs saw the curl of her bare toes over the round of the wood; his eyes traveled upward and caught the glint of a revolver's chambers where they showed, with the butt, over her strap belt. Then his eyes met hers. A marvel: she gave him a vague half-smile.

Then came the burly figure of the man Storrs hated with a corroding hatred—for all that he might be innocent of any part in a plot to bilk anybody out of hidden opium. Storrs received his upward flung grin of salutation with a stony face.

Horn, too, wore a weapon under his belt, Storrs' very own, to recover which that moment the saturnine skipper would gladly risk his life. Just let him get his hands on that revolver and there'd be no doubt who was who aboard this blasted hulk!

One of the Chinamen was standing by the hatch when Karelia and Spike leaped to the deck. He made no sign of recognizing their presence but waited, slope-shouldered, hand out to steady the heavy block about to be lowered into the hold. Hansen, at the winch twenty feet away, had just thrown on the brake for lowering away when the two visitors started down the deck past the hatch.

It happened in a twinkling. The seemingly inert Oriental shot out one bare foot in Spike's path, and as he tripped a hand darted out to grasp his shirt and propel him over the coaming. Even as Horn pitched headlong into the gulf the revolver was twitched out from under his belt.

Karelia whirled and her hand went to her belt. A grinning yellow man pressed the barrel of the captured weapon against her breast. His free hand snatched out the revolver before her fingers could touch the butt.

“Nice Mis-see; be good,” the fellow crooned.