CHAPTER X
A DRUNKEN NIGHT AND AT DAWN A FIGHT
IF ONE did not have to eat or think this would not be such a bad world. I have had to do a little of both at times. Good, or even bad, gin will take the place of food if one can get roundly, soundly drunk. But each man has his failing, his weakness, and on that day mine was an invincible sobriety. My knees may have been a little disjointed, my fingers fumbling, my toes numb and sleepy; but that did me no good.
It was not only that I had listened hour on hour to Dula Davenant, and learned some of the things that God alone knew and that I sat another hour on hour looking at her, wondering why she did not appear as wicked, as evil, as terrible, as she was. She might take on that appearance if I shared my secrets with her.
I never would. I would have told her I loved her before I would have admitted that it was due to me that Williams was wounded.
Davenant had shot him because by stupid design I had pretended to have no loyalty to Williams, and also pretended to know how to navigate. Davenant had taken the shortest means of getting him out of the way. I knew it was Davenant because there had been but three revolvers on the ship. I had one. Williams had another. Davenant had pushed back his coat and shown me the third one time in talking of Grahame of Dakaru.
I had supposed Shaylor had taken my gun and hid or flung it overboard to evade detection. Brains are fine, fine things for those who know how to use them. I had been no better than an idiot.
But that did not keep me from getting hungry along late in the afternoon of that longest of earth's days. We could not stay penned up in that narrow cabin—at least I couldn't—without something to eat.
I remembered Hawkins's clamorous cries for food, and I ventured forth. I should do some clamoring too. I almost had the hope that Shaylor would get in my way.
After listening two hours to Dula, I was—or for a time felt that I was—a changed man. I rather thought that I hoped Davenant would shoot at me; and, of course, miss. That would make me justly angry, and I would shoot, too; and, of course, not miss. Perhaps he never shot except from the rear.
That thought made me a little uneasy. I had only two eyes, but I made an effort to look in all directions. I became very stealthy, or tried to become velvet-footed as a watchful cat. But it was probably more as if I was walking on club-feet.
I poked my head out of the companion and warily as a turtle looked about. The poop was deserted. Even the wheel was lashed. We were sailing almost straight for the setting sun. That was wrong.
Williams had said go to Savaii. Shaylor probably thought that he could bump into the mainland. He and Davenant were going back to get rid of Williams, get refitted and go to Dakaru. Of course, I guessed, that was what they were up to.
Let 'em pray for cloudless days and night, then. I smashed the binnacle with the butt of my revolver and broke off the compass needle. For once in my life I acted without thinking.
Again, impulsively, I threw off the lashing. The ship was close-hauled, and would come around into the wind in a minute. We might not get to Savaii, but at least we would stop going in the wrong direction.
So it was that before I realized what I was doing I had, so to speak, declared war. It is always easy to declare war. Of course it had been foolish to destroy the binnacle if I was about to declare war; but I did not realize then that it was war. That had been the act of declaration.
I probably intended to smash it and run. But having smashed it I threw off the lashing. By that time I didn't feel like running. So it is that little things lead to greater. I was getting warmed up nicely.
The men were clustered forward in the waist. Shaylor was there, and Davenant. Shaylor turned with a yell and came bounding. I didn't know what he had been doing. I supposed urging the men to rush Hawkins on the forecastle, though I hadn't then noticed him, or rather noticed missing him.
Shaylor came, cursing. Others followed him, but they did not curse. He stopped half-way up the starboard ladder. I asked him to stop. In fact the bullet whizzed rather close to his head and made everybody duck.
I had had no intention of shooting. The crazy ship had come aback and was rolling drunkenly; so that may have made him think that I was half—or more—drunk, and didn't know what I was doing. Well, I really didn't.
He backed down that ladder in a hurry. Having got into such a muddle, I served notice to all the world that I would shoot the first man that tried to come up either that or the port ladder.
Shaylor wanted to argue, but he used too many swear-words. They offended me. He was not fit to talk with a gentleman. I do not remember distinctly, but I would guess that I told him that, too.
Davenant tried to talk to me, but all I could wonder about was whether or not he would try to use his gun. Quite frankly, but perhaps with a little unsteadiness of tongue, I said I thought I would have to shoot him.
Perhaps I should have shot him, then and there. But I didn't. I preferred to talk about it.
One of my curses, and I have been subjected to many, is my weakness for talking. Williams was a silent man. His energy went to his fists.
However, Davenant did not know whether or not I would shoot. A man that wabbles from ankles to wrists is likely to do anything. But the rolling of that beastly schooner, with her sails aback, really did have something to do with my wabbling.
Davenant had come close to talk to me. Perhaps he blanched under his black whiskers. I distinctly had the wish to cut them off and see.
He asked if I would shoot an unarmed man. I told him those were the safest kind to shoot. I pointed the gun at him. It unsteadily swerved and veered around until I had about every other man there ducking and sidestepping anxiously, but it really was Davenant I was aiming at.
He knew it, too. In fact, he obeyed my instructions not to move. He was right at the foot of the ladder, and there was probably more danger of my falling down on top of him than of hitting if I shot.
But he was impressed, anyway. He insisted that he was unarmed. I told him to turn around and lift his coat tails. He did.
“Higher. Way up,” I said, peering down.
Then I realized that my eyes were a little blurred, that things I looked at intently would not be still and had a tendency to duplicate themselves—to show two where there should have been but one. My eyes got that way once in a while, which was annoying.
However, if I had seen two gun-butts in his pocket I would have shot. But I couldn't see any. Which was in a way disappointing as well as reassuring. I rather wanted to shoot him.
Anyway, I shot at the deck. Each fellow must have thought I was shooting at him. They all jumped and ducked and tried to dodge out of sight.
It was very funny. I enjoyed it so much that I shot again. Davenant was the only one who stood still. Shaylor had darted in under the ladder. I stooped over, poked the gun between the steps and made him come out.
Then I shouted for Hawkins. No answer. I yelled loudly, and paused. No answer.
I yelled for Raikes. His little furtive form emerged cautiously from behind the mainmast.
“Do you want me t' come up 'ere?” he called.
I said I most certainly did; and where was Hawkins?
“I'll tell you 'bout it—all 'bout it,” he said, running to the ladder.
“Look hout f'r 'im, McGuire,” a voice 'way forward yelled. “'E betr'yed 'Awkins!”
Oh-ho-ho! I understood in a flash. Raikes could go neither up nor down, but half-way on the ladder he cringed. I leaned forward to jab the gun-muzzle into his rib, but nearly fell, so I contented myself with weaving it about in the general direction of his stomach.
“Let me explain!” he wailed.
I told him that in two minutes he would be telling his story to the devil, so he might as well rehearse. He began to talk, but I shut him up to ask if he could pray, and insisted upon hearing him. He started to pray, but it didn't suit me. He was too sincere.
“So you killed Hawkins!” I cried at him.
He protested wildly that he had not. He had saved Hawkins. Hawkins was not dead. He was down in the forecastle.
Shaylor would have waited till Hawkins fell asleep and pounced him. Raikes removed the ax so there wouldn't be any bloody work done, and no reason for killing Hawkins. So help him God, he was telling the truth!
“Dyrty little ly-ar!” yelled the cockney voice from up forward.
Raikes went on: When Hawkins slept and the ax was out of reach, Shaylor and three men had gone up and overpowered him. They got him down, and a fight set in that had very nearly jarred the timbers loose.
They tried to tie him up, but Hawkins had broken away, plunged into the forecastle, shut the door, ripped a planking from a bunk and was there daring anybody to come and get him. He had been threatening to set the ship on fire if food wasn't passed to him, but nobody dared take it. Raikes said that Shaylor had promised not to kill Hawkins if he, Raikes, would get the ax away from him.
I looked down to ask Shaylor if that was true. He was gone. But Davenant remained by the rail. It was growing a little dusky, and the darkness was sifting down over the ship like a faint cloud of fine dust. Davenant denied knowing anything about the matter.
Perhaps Raikes had not lied. He swore by all the oaths I submitted to him that he had not. I made him swear by everything from his grandmother's grave to the Bible, of which he knew nothing, that he had told the truth.
I shouted for somebody to let Hawkins out. But it was not a question of letting him out. He wouldn't let anybody in. Raulson, who was more or less of a friend anyway, ventured to offer Hawkins some food to get him to open the door a bit.
Shaylor had lapsed inconspicuously into silence and remained out of sight. Probably he sensed, thick-skinned though he was, the growing dislike of the crew for him and did not dare try to make trouble then, for there was no concealing the sentiment of the men.
More or less protected by the shadows of the coming night, some of them began to say jeering things, and mock the “Red” part of his name. The victor always has applause. The beaten man is jeered by those that quaked an hour before.
Then came out of the darkness forward:
“Ahoy, Red-Top!”
That big, roaring, hearty voice filled the air.
“Come on aft, Ben. I'm in control o' the ship. An' got a dozen bottles waiting to have their necks broke!”
But at that moment I nearly broke my own neck, and also nearly jumped over the side. A gun was fired almost directly behind me, and simultaneously a heavy form either fell or leaped down the port ladder. Hawkins roared to know what was all that shooting row.
I had some moments of suspended animation right then and there. My heart stopped beating, my breath stopped, my wabbly body stiffened in cold fright. I know only too poignantly that I am not made out of the stuff of heroes; but had there been any heroes in my place they would have been scared too.
It was fortunate that I was not sober. I never would have recovered. As it was, it took hours of steady drinking to quiet my nerves.
Dula had heard the shots I had previously fired. She had come out anxiously, and paused, listening, out of sight, at the companion entrance. She had remained there for some minutes, with rising respect for what she mistook to be my bravery and daring.
As I talked with Raikes, I had ignored the port ladder. In the dusk, Shaylor had tried to slip up so as to sneak across the deck and get at me from behind. Dula had seen, recognized him, shot—and missed. But in one bound Shaylor had leaped to the deck below.
I have no zest in telling what happened that night. At dawn, for one of the few times in my ragged life, I was ashamed. For the only time in my life I vowed not to take another drink—and kept the vow for a little while.
Vows and pledges are foolish things. Some people might as well sign a pledge not to jump for the moon as not to reach for a bottle. I could have sworn faithfully to leave the moon alone. But some might as well sign a pledge not to take a breath as to turn their mouths aside when the stinging, thrilling, fiery, deifying, glass lips are offered them. And what to me is mere breath beside the siren kiss of hot liquor?
Hawkins came aft. Harmodius and Aristogiton—whoever those fellows were—never exchanged such greetings on the gallows as we exchanged on the poop. He waddled up the ladder, waving his plank like a broadsword and bestowing his defiance upon all the world, sun, moon, stars—and Shaylor.
I welcomed him with arms wide-spread. He looked me over carefully, appraisingly, and by the interposed plank held me at a distance until he had inquired as to what was left to quench his thirst. Then I became a dear friend and was nearly smothered.
He reminded me that certain tinned stuff was stowed in the pantry aft—to keep it from being looted. I fished the key from Williams's pocket.
Williams lay very still. His breathing had become stertorous. He had, Dula said, opened his eyes frequently—also asked for water. He was matter-of-fact about it. Once he had started to make some kind of remark, such as—she thought—“Why are you here?” but he had stopped, and closed his eyes.
She could not tell whether he slept or not. He bled much. She watched to wipe the blood away from his mouth.
Hawkins and I held high revel. We placed a lantern at the head of each ladder so nobody could slip up on us. He gave up his plank for Davenant's revolver, which was found in his room.
Where the chill, dignified, frigid-eyed Davenant spent the night I do not know, and I was not in a mood to care.
Hawkins must need shoot the revolver two or three times to see if it worked, and I, not to be outdone, shot into the black water two or three more than he. We ate and drank and talked very loud.
Hawkins tried to coax Shaylor to come up, promising him a fair fight. But Shaylor did not break the darkness with voice or presence.
At last we remembered Raikes, and demanded that he come forward and be chopped into fish-bait. He declined by silence. I offered monetary rewards, thousand pounds or something like that, for Raikes's body. But no one brought it forward. Hawkins, waving a bottle of gin, offered it in exchange for Raikes—to whomever should bring him up.
All the crew must have been watching us from the dark waist. Hawkins was undoubtedly amusing, and I tried to be.
Anyway, presently we heard a squawk, unmistakably from Raikes, and frantic cries for mercy. A moment later he was being half-carried, half-thrust up the ladder by Cockney George and Raulson. They wanted the gin; but what they really wanted was to see Raikes tormented.
The schooner, like a derelict, rode the seaway, with the wind slapping her sails every which way, while the rudder played back and forth at any chance surge of a wave. A mad night on a crazy ship, it was; and Hawkins, reaching down with one powerful arm, literally lifted Raikes by the neck and planted him on the deck, where his legs gave way and he crumpled abjectly.
Very solemnly, and I believe at first more or less sincerely, we debated whether to cut off his ears or his toes first. Probably if Raikes had been a man of normal size Hawkins would have mashed his head with one fist-blow.
I had Raikes crawling around all over the deck on his knees, praying for his life. I don't tell that in pride or for humor; but because it happened. I have a vague remembrance that some stinging, hard, angry woman's voice said:
“You are a fine pair of beasts!”
But that may have been the apocryphal remark of a shamed conscience. Probably not, though.
Raikes never ceased protesting that he had saved Hawkins; and Shaylor declined to answer from the shadows when I called upon him to know if it were true. We did not believe Raikes, of course.
Hawkins brought the brutal sport to an end somewhere around midnight with the remark:
“Aw, he can't help bein' a skunk”—calling it “sk-nunk.”
“Now? the Lord's aw-right,” Hawkins went on with a serious air—he was serious, too—and with certain impressive, but restrained, though rather vague, gestures.
“The Lord knowed what He was doin' when He made sk-nunks, same as when He made me an' you, Red-Top. In His immish.
“I'm goin' lick shat Shaylor—I'm goin' lick shat Shaylor-sailor. I'm goin' beat 'im zo black an' blue he can't fin' 'imself in z-dark. Here, Raikes, old sk-nunk, z-down your troubles, an' git 'o off her. I'm goin' lick shat Shaylor in mornin'.”
With that Hawkins gave Raikes the bottle from which he had been drinking, and the poor little quaking rat drank as if his throat had become a huge siphon; then he tumbled down the ladder and into the darkness.
Just when I fell asleep I can not, of course, remember. Hawkins slept by my side, but it was not his prodigious snoring that awakened me.
The sun came blindingly up into my face, and I felt as if my head had been split during the night. The two lanterns still glowed with sentinel loyalty at the ladders' top, though it was only the flame one saw and not the light.
But Dula was slowly, wearily pacing the deck. She was tired. She was exhausted. She was haggard and worn. She had kept the watch on the deck while we two drunken beasts snored like overfed hogs. I suppose her little slippered feet had kicked us in vain, and that neither scratchings nor scoldings had aroused symptoms of life. I prodded an elbow' into Hawkins's ribs—again and again. He shifted himself from stomach to side, but I prodded his back; and at last he raised his head, side- wise, unsteadily, and by very apparent effort succeeded in getting one eye partly opened.
She wore her cape, but an arm was outside of it, and—significant of her vigil—she held the gun. She saw us, saw that we were awake at last, and for some moments stood looking at us with an expression that left nothing contemptuous to be said. Then she turned and glanced forward, where men were already astir, perhaps had been astir through the night, watching, waiting, sustained with a certain morbid curiosity not to miss anything, no matter what.
For a second or two her eyes looked out across the water. Nothing but water; not a speck, not an object but water. It was as barren and bleak as if God had pardoned all the doomed of earth and overlooked us; or perhaps could not forgive such drunken stupors, such tragic secrets, such evil purposes, such lives of abounding sin as the Sally Martin, like a dead ship, sheltered amid her timbers. Then Dula looked at us and said wearily, blastingly:
“Mr. Williams could not rest through the night. He was worried over what might have happened to his—his—friends!”
Tired, exhausted, scarcely able to keep her feet, she went to the companion and half-stumbled down.
I looked at Hawkins and Hawkins looked at me. There we sat, with bursting heads and hot, aching eyes, throats brown and dry as if lined with baked clay.
Her words had seared us with scorpion scorn; words true, at once true and terribly ironical. After all, the men who do the brave and gallant and faithful things are not such as found themselves floatsam in the South Seas of those days—and we had only lived up to our reputations; but not even we had wholly lost the very fine virtue of shame.
But with a jealous effort to hide the fact and in a certain brazen attempt to be jocular I said—my head waggling unsteadily as I said it; and my eyelids struggling to shut themselves:
“Ben, ol' mate, you're a drunk'n dog.”
“I know it,” he said from the depth of his diaphragm, huskily sincere.
Then there was silence.
Now I have more pleasure in telling what happened. But this is far from being a story of regeneration. Hawkins and I were many times drunk again, and swore never to be sober—swore with, those unfortunate oaths it is not possible for mere weak man to keep.
And in the days that immediately followed I wished for something, anything from rum to vitriol, anything at all, to keep me from feeling the unspoken, even polite, distaste for me that Dula showed. More than ever, she became impenetrable.
Strange how it could be so when she had bared her heart in an hour's confessional fury; but it was so. The mystery of woman's art made it so.
We had to meet many times, say many words, but I was a stranger to her. Hawkins had never been anything else; nor did he think—or at least he pretended not to think—that her face had beauty, her presence a warning, flaming, invisible fire.
So he did not notice the chill impersonality that she threw about herself when speaking with him or standing near him. There were many good reasons why she should have treated him, at least, a little differently, a little less disapprovingly.
Hawkins took command of the ship. He was one of those men, often met and always surprising, who had hidden forces in them. He did not lose his humor—if something I grew to suspect of being largely unconscious may be called humor—but he revealed a tyrannical will, more directly threatening than Williams's, but almost as insistent. That is, instead of radiating a menace, he expressed it in words.
A sudden sincerity, mental, physical—perhaps spiritual—descended on him. He never lacked courage, but he seemed to acquire, as if bestowed gift-like, that marvelous “something” that often comes to apparently commonplace men when they assume responsibilities.
He took charge of the ship. Williams had been succeeded by Shaylor; for a drunken hour I had invested myself with the skippership; then Hawkins, without at all claiming the honor, assumed it. He gave orders from the poop, and no man stirred, though all heard him.
Davenant, immaculate despite a night far from his silken bedding and scented bottles—I had inspected his room when looking for the gun—nevertheless maintained his groomed dignity, and stood enigmatically alone, watching, listening, unmoving. The crew sat and stood listless, stirless. Shaylor sat on the rail, his face turned aft; and he, motionless.
Hawkins stared down at them. I expected to hear him bluster, perhaps to draw the gun. He did draw the gun—and fling it to the deck. Then slowly, decisively, unhurriedly—he was awkward on the ladder anyway—he went down.
With blinking eyes and trembling breast I watched. Whether to think he had lost his sanity or to believe he, like some of the old-time wandering heroes, had suddenly discarded his wastrel rags and disclosed his real personality, was something that rather troubled my befuddled state of mind.
He walked directly for Shaylor. The crew saw what he was doing and edged over to that side. They came slowly, carefully, not attracting attention, and seemingly indifferent as to what happened—so long as they could be spectators.
Shaylor slipped off the rail and waited. Hawkins stopped within three feet of him and repeated the order. Shaylor struck, and the blow hit.
Hawkins had none of the evasive ability that saves a fighter from the driving knuckles. He was immense, awkward, stubborn and strong.
He had gone down into the waist looking for a fight, and he found it. He had gone down with his face bruised and battered and scabbed from yesterday's fights with Shaylor; but Hawkins himself Was a different man from that on the day before.
Shaylor beat and beat upon Hawkins's body, and dodged effectively. He might as well have been beating at a wave.
Hawkins pressed on. He struck and sometimes he did not miss. An amazing coolness seemed to possess him, as if all this battering was to be expected and really did not amount to anything after all. Not every blow reached him, for though he could not duck or dodge his thick, upraised arms were like interposed beams.
Shaylor hit him in the belly, and his heavy gasping could have been heard a hundred yards away. For a time he guarded his belly and let his face stand the shock of Shaylor's fists.
Hawkins was too long-suffering not to know what he was about. He had been beaten twice in a stand-up at fisticuffs, and realized that as a boxer he was nowhere Shaylor's equal.
But he pressed on, moving this way and that, on, on, with Shaylor against the rail and closed in. Shaylor was a powerful man, but a powerful man under a mountain is somewhat enfeebled. From that moment it became a fight of gouge and claw and twist and squeeze, knees, teeth, finger-nails, elbows were used—even gasping breath, mouth to mouth, was used in clipped, hurried curses.
Whether he planned and watched for the chance or luck gave it to him I do not know, but Hawkins got his arm about Shaylor's neck—clamped it into the elbow; then with slow, weary, almost monotonous blows of his free arm, struck the man's face again and again and again and again.
The only variation was when Shaylor protectively tried to put up his arms. Hawkins then struck in the stomach. But it was the face he sought to smite, and he did—blow on blow. He still got them in return, for though Shaylor sobbed, actually sobbed, “Oh, for God's sake!” yet he lashed out frantically.
There was no mercy on the ships of those seas. Nobody had the right to ask it. It was an impertinence—as if the victor should respect the feelings of the beaten!
At last Shaylor, exhausted, whipped to his very backbone, refused to struggle or strike. He covered his face as well as he could, writhed about, sobbed inarticulately, but was too beaten to fight—even so much as a rat will fight though crunched between the jaws of a terrier.
“I knowed you'd funk out!” Hawkins gasped as he let the frightfully beaten man go.
Hawkins himself was marked as bloodily; but victory is an amazing tonic. Shaylor held staggeringly on to the rail. It was probably the only time in his life, since boyhood anyway, that he had been battered like that; and he was the sort of man who quit—or wanted to quit—when really whipped.
It was putting foot on the vanquished man's neck to say that he funked it. That was too strong and raw a word. Simply because he did not have the stuff 'way down deep inside of him that would not let him quit, no matter how badly punished, was no reason for calling him a coward.
But Hawkins had to have some revenge. He was entitled to something especial, since outward appearance scarcely distinguished the champion. So he said that. After all he had the supreme right to say it.
Hawkins gasped until he got his breath back. He stood dripping blood and panting, but no—he wouldn't touch the rail to support himself. Not much!
Again Hawkins repeated his order. The men jumped forward smartly. Hawkins was no longer a ponderous clown. Shaylor, too much a seaman to question the law of the deck, obeyed.
That was a very miserable day for me. I felt as if I had been beached; or, worse, cast out by friends. I could still see them and hear their voices, but they were changed.
That is, Dula and Hawkins were changed. Excepting Raulson, I had not been friendly with the others. They had always rather veered off from me. But though Hawkins surprised them strangely, I am sure they liked him. Having won his right to the poop, they respected it.
“I don't know where Savaii is,” said Hawkins, “but that's where we're goin'.”
After much bungling we started off—not knowing where we were, and scarcely more than the general direction we were going.
Dula said that Williams wanted to see me. I went down, and was alone with him.
He lay very quietly, his eyes open, glaring at me. I must have been a disgraceful-looking object. Besides, I felt guilty.
Speaking low, but not weakly—not at all!—he said that he was not even dangerously hurt. He believed the bullet had pierced the lung? but passed through, not lodged there.
It made him dizzy, much as one has vertigo from holding the breath, when he stood or sat up. There was nothing better to do than lie still. It was exasperating to have to do that, but it could not be helped.
He had unaccountably slept—fainting was not to be admitted—and felt rested. He mentioned in a kind of an aside that it was the first time in ten years he had slept a half dozen hours at a stretch.
He told me all that in a third less words than I have taken. It was the only time I had ever heard him explain anything. He was obviously holding himself in. He was as much as ever in a mood for temper, and toward me.
Did I, or did anybody else, think that he was helpless? I had been frantically eager to get drunk—with the least possible delay. He had heard what went on last night.
His rough, knotted hands crumped the linen sheet in a tight grasp. He probably wished he had his fingers at my neck, but instead he throttled the clean sheeting that Dula brought from Davenant's room.
The course was to be laid for the island of Savaii. Did I understand? I did. Tell Shaylor so.
“Shaylor! Then he doesn't know,” I said to myself.
Williams did not know. He w&s in a much more serious condition than he realized. I learned that he had tried to get up twice and fell back gasping, dizzy and choking with blood.
Dula had told him everything was all right; that I and Hawkins were drunk but that we were being let alone. He had thought that she had gone to her room and to bed when she had been holding the deck for two drunken louts.
Hawkins and I talked things over. There was another compass in Williams's chest and some books on mathematics. Hawkins shook his head, saying he once had known a part of the multiplication table.
There was only one thing to do. He did it. I brought up the instruments and compass, and Hawkins brought Shaylor aft.
After some parleying, Shaylor agreed to make the best of a bad bargain and head for Savaii. Possibly he thought his position as navigator would give him a chance to get control of the ship again. And possibly he thought Hawkins was in earnest when he said that if Savaii wasn't raised there would be something happen, unpleasant.
Davenant was more of a problem. He had been restored to his stateroom. Imperturbably he went about his business of watchful, silent brooding. He made me nervous by the way he stared in my direction, but he said nothing—not a word.
Sometimes I fancied he smiled, that white, white smile of the even teeth. But I could never be sure.
Obviously Dula could not spend all of her time with Williams. She did spend most of it with him. And she, being afraid of Davenant—for Williams's sake, not her own—asked me to be with him when she was not.
“Does he suspect?” I had questioned, perhaps a little hopeful to get back to our basis of confidence.
“Oh,” she said quietly, almost indifferently, “I told him it was Francisco.”
This woman was interminably filled with surprises. Maybe I did not jump at that, but I was startled. I asked what Williams had said.
“He said—” She paused, and, showing a little animation, digressed to ask if Williams—she called him “Mr.” Williams—ever showed surprise or emotion? She seemed to have at once some regret and much admiration for that strange repression in his character. Without staying for my answer, she went on:
“He lay there watching me for the longest time, then said:
“'Davenant, was it? Davenant. Who is he?'
“And I told him.”
“Told him!”
“Yes.”
“Grahame—and all!” I cried.
It may have been fancy on my part; but I thought she showed a flushed trace of confusion. Perhaps she was fretted to remember how she had made me a confidant, and would have given much to have reclaimed her words. Anyway she shook her head and said coolly:
“Certainly not.”
“And Williams—what did he say?”
I was right on the verge of quivering with excitement. For one thing, my nerves were frazzled.
“Why,” she replied with a little wonder, “why, he didn't say anything more.”
I do not believe that Dula and Williams talked much, at least not at first. But she read to him, and it is easy to slip from reading to talking. I haven't a doubt but that Williams did his best to wish that she would leave him alone; perhaps he really did wish it.
Strange, incomprehensible, it was how this woman of fiery blood and even murderous heart took on a certain pride in humbleness around him. She was quick to anticipate his wishes, or what would add to his comfort.
As near as I could tell, her attitude was one of cheery quietness. There was no visible intrusion of her love. She might have been of a religious sisterhood and nursing him for the greater glory of Christ—with something of the tenderness that befits those who do good works in His name.
After all, tenderness in one woman is pretty much like tenderness in another, whether it be brought out by love of man or love of God; and I suppose that the chief difference between murderess and saint is that the saint did not happen to have a knife in her hand when she first learned how treacherous men could be.
We arranged it as best we could so that it would not appear to Williams that he was being guarded. He would probably have turned us both out and thrown the door wide open.
She had a stubborn little way at night of locking the door without his noticing it, and then sleeping in a chair. She said that he might want something. She locked the door so that she might sleep securely.
She was afraid of Davenant. Not for herself, but she evidently feared, as I did, that he would do whatever he could to prevent Williams's recovery. There was reason to suspect that Williams would make it very uncomfortable for Davenant.
Once Williams said to me, his eyes having followed Dula through the door:
“What do you think of her?”
I waved a hand in an impotent gesture, vaguely enigmatic. I had nothing to say. But he waited an answer. He ignored evasions. Nothing but answers appeased his questions.
I stumbled for ideas. Words, words, words—I could pour those out by the mouthful. His eyes remained on me. He had not asked an idle question. I had a sense of confusion, with a struggling impulse to tell the truth working to get itself into words.
There was something almost unacknowledgably bitter for me in the truth. I wouldn't have acknowledged the bitterness—no, not even under his fists. Not even under what was more commanding than his fists, his eyes.
But the truth—that flung itself out. I was not aware of intention to say what I did. I simply said it:
“She loves you.”
His face, somewhat thinned, did not change expression. A moment of silence, then with chill brutality he said:
“Yes. I know.”
A pause.
“I wish you'd keep her out of here.”
My mouth, though silent, must have shown by its gaping just about what I felt.
“You told me that before. It didn't matter then. But now—McGuire, I won't trust that woman!”
So he, too, had felt her charm, and he resisted it determinedly. She had thrust herself into his attention. He could not escape her. But one of his resolution could by force of will if not of inclination, distrust her.
“You don't”
I started the question, but he cut it short.
“Impossible!”
“But she isn't”
“She is at heart just as treacherous and cruel as any other. If she were the angel you think her”
Angel! For a moment I lost what he was saying as my thoughts fluttered distractedly around that word.
“—the only way a woman feels she can show love for one man is by being treacherous to another.”
“That's because you hate them all,” I said weakly.
He answered as quietly as I had ever heard him speak, but coldly:
“You can't hate women. You can only pretend to.”
“Then you”
Again he anticipated my question, one that burst out involuntarily. I was disconcerted, and saying things in a way that I would never have dreamed of saying them to him.
“No,” he said tensely, but scarcely above a whisper. “It is you who love her.”
I was speechless.
“Of course,” he went on, but his voice was not sarcastic, “from a respectful distance.”
“I don't think she is an angel!” I cried confusedly.
“Then you do know why she is going to Dakaru?”
“Do you?”
“Yes. Raikes told me,” he said. “You too?”
I nodded. Raikes had told me. Someway I felt I was doing right, even protecting Dula a little—though why I should protect her is something for wiser men than I to explain—by not disclosing that she also had told me the same thing.
“And do you know why I am going to Dakaru?” he asked with something that resembled a smile.
It wasn't a smile, of course. But his lips did have a queer twist.
Of course I did not know why he was going.
He said:
“For two things. First to replace the schooner I stole. Then to apologize.”
“Skipper!”
He affirmed that incredible, utterly preposterous statement with a slight nod.
“You are mad!” I cried.
He did half-smile.
“Grahame! He has done everything against you. And he butchers natives—you know that,” I added.
Williams hesitated thoughtfully, then spoke slowly:
“I've learned about Grahame since then. He is a brute, but he is honest. I don't admire him, but I can't blame him.
“When he first went to Dakaru he treated the blacks kindly. He was new to the South Seas. He took whatever blackbirders brought—and the cannibals killed and ate his wife. The mother of that girl we saw.”
It was as if my body had crumbled and my brain was being knocked about like a shuttlecock. I did not know what to say. I did not have the faintest idea of saying anything; all the less composure because he appeared to be expecting my approval!
I did not feel approval or disapproval. Only astonishment. Everybody in the world was mad, stark mad—and Hurricane Williams was not implacable.
“Apologize!”
He used that soft, civil, easy, scrupulous word, the same word men used when they accidentally trod each other's feet on the dance-floor.
And Grahame—Dula's dead mother must have had something to do with that cannibal feast. Her insatiable ghost had ranged the world over. Taken a revolting, vicarious revenge. … It is so easy sometimes to be superstitious.
After all, Williams would do that. A curious reaction of the wrongs, injustices, he had endured would cause him to make frank restitution, even apology, when he had done a severe injustice to some one else. Probably it was only by doing so that he kept the courage to be merciless at other times. I do not know.
“But you are taking them there—they will kill him!” I stammered at last.
For the first time I heard Williams laugh. I do not care to hear anything of the kind again, though his laughter made scarcely a sound. I don't know what he laughed at. Dead men must laugh like that when they hear the clods clattering down on their coffins—laugh with a kind of sardonic mirthlessness that the people left behind should think there is anything worth while in life.
And perhaps Williams felt joyless amusement that anybody should think life or death was anything to care greatly about. Or it may have been that he laughed so soundlessly because God, or the gods, or whatever it is that gives man trouble, always invested whatever he did, or tried to do, with some kind of ironic paradox.