CHAPTER VIII
TROUBLES, TROUBLES EVERYWHERE!
I REALIZED in a few days that Dula Davenant was making a companion of me. I came near saying “a friend,” which shows how quick men are to assume too much from the slight, if not dubious, attention of women—if the women are attractive.
She was often near me. She spoke to me casually and stood as if trying to say something more, but hesitating.
I did not understand. It embarrassed me just a little. Not much, for she was pretty without being at all like other women whom I had thought pretty.
Perhaps my taste is generous. Besides there are so few uninteresting women in the world. None if the dominant chords of their personality are struck. Though a woman is far from being a lyre in my fingers to play on as I please. More often I am soft clay in hers.
I asked myself what she was wanting; and myself gave no answer. With a sense of agitation, a real flutter, I at last perceived that she was treating me as the lesser of two evils. She came near me, stood near me, talked and pretended to talk to me to avoid Red Shaylor, late of the Roanoke.
The first person Red Shaylor had seen when he opened his eyes in Williams's bed had been Miss Davenant; and she had filled them. He had slept for hours without becoming conscious. And she, since there was work and lots of it for the tired men, had, without rest herself, but with that woman's substitute for rest—a careful toilet—sat by him to watch.
I do not suppose there was any kindness in her, any tenderness at all. Just passion, and not that as the word is generally used.
I believe she would have let Red Shaylor, or any other man, die without a flicker of her eyelid if it had not been that every protoplasmic cell of her belonged—in that utter way that women once in a lifetime, never twice, perhaps most of them never the once, give themselves to some man—to Williams.
That he did not want her was of no consequence. No more than the wanting, the intense desire, of other men would have changed her attitude toward them. She loved him.
Love to a woman usually means petting. But that isn't love. It is merely gratification of the desire to have her fur stroked, and pink ribbons put around her neck, and bowls of thick cream for her little red tongue to lick, and a soft cushion before a hearth. Women pretend the cushion and hearth show the domestic instinct. Then, along comes a stranger. Love bursts open the heart of the petted woman, and out into the storm and mud, to be perhaps a lean alley-cat and grow gaunt and hungry, the woman goes. That is sin—and only the sinful know that fierce, heedless, sacrificial love-passion that in life is all that the poets claim for it in romance. So Dula Davenant loved.
For that reason she sat in Williams's cabin and watched beside the man Williams had pulled from the water, and perhaps stroked his hard, rough forehead and thought of Williams.
Red Shaylor was an oak of a man, gnarled and hard. His hair was sandy; not red, for instance, as mine.
He had an old scar, big as half a hand, on the side of his head, filling the space between cheek, temple and ear. Maybe somebody caught him from the side when he wasn't looking, but did not hit hard enough.
His face was molded thickly and firmly, every feature prominent and well shaped to the point where refinement would have begun had the features not been so thick. The face looked as if it might have been molded roughly by a good artist who had abandoned the clay, having perhaps become dissatisfied, or convinced that after all his ideal could not be worked into that lumpish countenance.
Shaylor was big-chested. He was scratched and blackened with bruises.
He told us that his name was Red Shaylor. There was a certain harsh pride in the way he said it. None of us knew of him. He seemed rather to think that some of us might have heard his name. He had been going up and down the sea for twenty years, he said.
Men called him Red Shaylor. He repeated that. It couldn't have been because of his hair, and certainly not because of his complexion.
Dula said that when he awakened he lay motionless a long time, looking at her. She thought he was paralyzed or something, for he did not answer even when she repeatedly spoke.
He explained later, with a curious watchful air as if to see whether everybody was listening—it was an air that we soon got used to, for he talked much—that he thought he had died, and couldn't imagine why he was not in hell.
He had heard of Williams. Dula had told him, no doubt with a good deal of the restrained pride which I noticed—I was looking for it, or any other signs—when she mentioned Williams or referred to him.
I know Shaylor did not notice the pride. He noticed nothing that required the least psychological penetration. He was made of coarse clay; the thing called delicacy, either of mind or body, was as remote from him as from a rhinoceros. By that I do not mean what mere vulgarity implies. But, for instance, when Williams came in the first thing Shaylor said was, after half-turning and rising on his elbow and staring with a sort of loose-jawed curiosity:
“So you are Hurricane Williams, are you?”
And if there had been nothing else that manner and question made Dula Davenant hate him. I, who had followed Williams in, hated him too.
Williams ignored the question, ignored the manner, asked how he felt and did not appear to listen to the answer. With a surprising directness he caught Shaylor's wrist and felt of the pulse, sent for food and went out. Without a word, without looking back, she went out too.
“Say, Mate, who is she?” Shaylor demanded, sitting up.
“I've heard that her name was Miss Davenant.”
“His woman?”
“Whose?”
“This Hurricane Williams's. Blast me, why he's a little man. I thought”
“Yes, it's the general opinion. Among those who never ran under his bow.”
“What you talkin' about?”
“That Williams must be a giant. We've got a giant on board, too. His name's Hawkins. Ask him how big Williams is. You'll learn something interesting.”
“Look here, what you givin' me? You never heard o' me? Red Shaylor they call me. That's his woman, huh?”
“As a matter of fact, he's not so very little as you call it; round a hundred and eighty. But all his weight's inside of him. Jumps out now and then. Talk with Hawkins.”
“Say, I've asked you three times. Is that his?”
The word he used may be only suggested. It is the vilest that coarse tongues apply to the woman utterly degraded. I was neither shocked nor surprised; it was perfectly natural that he should say that.
“Do you know how you got on board?” I asked.
“I caught that topmast you threw over. Good work an'”
“No. You were dragged up by your toes. This Hurricane Williams—the little man—went over the side after you. In that sea, too.”
Raulson, the cook, came in with a tray and I went out.
In the confusion of work and incidents and weariness—but not nervousness, my body had lost its power to be thrilled or agitated; nothing mattered; I was sober—I don't remember just the sequence of happenings, and probably wouldn't use it if I did.
I had forgotten my mutinous agreement with Davenant. His was the better memory. There was, in a slight way, a shock to me in being reminded. Much had happened since then. And the joke I had been in mutinous talk at that time was now quite remote.
“This man Shaylor—it will be easier with him?” Davenant inquired, his eyes askance and the rows of white teeth showing through the black herbage of his face.
I think that Davenant tried to be familiar, perhaps intimate. He did not know how. It is really an art, or rather a gift.
I noticed the same involuntary coldness in Dula. She had much that was not voluntary, but even when she tried to talk familiarly with me there was an unconscious hesitancy. With Davenant the effort was quite close to awkwardness, if there can be such a thing in a person who nevertheless seems entirely composed and at ease.
“This man Shaylor,” Davenant had said. “It will be easier with him?”
“Shaylor? Shaylor?” I asked with rising inflection, as if much surprised. “After Williams pulled him out by the nose! Why, Mr. Davenant, Williams saved his life!”
He looked at me studiously. There seemed something to be said for that point. It may have been that he knew what happened the afternoon Shaylor came on board; or it may have been that in his cynical understanding of human nature he believed that thirty pieces of silver had been more than was needed to bribe Judas.
Bending sails on to a schooner at sea in a light breeze with swells running high, is not the easiest work for even old hands. And Williams wanted the sails on. He was being carried off his course.
I must say it for Raikes, that he did his best, ably and willingly. I must say for myself that I shirked as much as I could, having a very strong aversion to any kind of work aloft—or below. Any place.
Williams needed the help of a real seaman. Of several. Shaylor had had six or seven hours' rest, and there was nothing the matter with him but a little stiffness and a few bruises; though a more humane skipper would probably have allowed him to rest for a week.
Williams sent one of the men to tell Shaylor to come on deck. I don't know what manner of message the fellow delivered; but he came back with these words:
“The bloke says for you to bleedin' well go t' 'ell, sir!”
Not a muscle of Williams's body moved. He did not hesitate. He simply said snappishly, but no less so than in giving the first order:
“McGuire! On deck! Tell him.”
I found Shaylor sitting up, on his face the satisfied grin of a man waiting for trouble. He was one of those bucko mates that love women and blows about equally; one of those men whose hard life has taught them to take and give with their fists.
“Oh, it's you,” he said. “That guy tell 'im what I said?”
“He probably softened it down a bit. What did you say?”
Shaylor loosened a score of curdling oaths.
“Yes, he softened it down quite a bit. Supposing you come on deck and tell him that. I can't remember it all. He ought to hear it.”
“By God, I'd tell him!”
“I am sure you would. Yes, I am very sure of it. And I want to hear you.”
It would be difficult to say just how Shaylor's attitude impressed me. I believe I understood it; that is, had his view-point.
He probably thought of Williams as that man who figured in the half-drunken gossip of sailors' boarding-houses and saloons: The outlaw who hadn't the courage to be a pirate and make his stake; the “nigger” lover; the bully. And possibly Shaylor was filled from the same sources of resentment as is a pretty woman when she hears of one whose personal charms have brought her more notice. That had an influence, I am sure.
For another thing, as the lone survivor of the Roanoke, Shaylor naturally felt himself entitled to certain consideration. The lone survivor is almost always for a time regarded as something of a hero. And being by nature one who resented a bullying order from anybody not authoritatively above him, and seldom averse to a fight, he answered indignantly.
In retrospect I really sympathize with his feeling. Williams would offend anybody. He was direct as a bullet, more unfeeling than a huntsman among his hounds. The result of the influences I have mentioned, and possibly others I have not thought of—to say nothing more of Shaylor's general character—was that he was angry.
“I'm Red Shaylor,” he said, squaring his shoulders.
“My dear Mr. Shaylor, I haven't a doubt in the world of it. If anybody else should pop over our rail an' insist on his being Red Shaylor, I would call him a liar. Yes, sir. I would!”
He stared at me. I almost put it down that he stared at me through parted lips. At least he seemed unable to stare without loosening his jaw.
“What's the matter with ever'body on this craft? All got your ballast shifted. Who in hell could come on board an' say he was Red Shaylor? I'm him. Never saw such damn fools.”
I bowed discreetly before the gale, and reminded him of my wish, the wish of all the crew, that he would go on deck and personally deliver his message to Williams. I assured him we would all rejoice, possibly cheer.
“Think I'm 'fraid o' that?”
I said it was impossible to think so. And added craftily that it would be impossible to think so if he went on deck, as I suggested.
Then up rose Red Shaylor and hurriedly got into the shirt and tarred trousers that had been placed beside his bed. The play of his naked muscles as he dressed was impressive. He was a powerful man.
Barefooted, he stamped out, his shoulders drooping and his arms swinging with resolution. I came pattering after, eager not to miss a word.
Williams was standing on the forecastle-head looking aloft.
Shaylor came up and stopped truculently.
Williams did not notice him. But every man of us saw, and watched.
“Say, d'you send for me?” Shaylor demanded.
Williams glanced at him; then directly, meaningly, but only as if he saw a familiar seaman, told him to take charge of bending on the mainmast sail, adding that these were green hands and he would have to show them what to do. He pointed to the sail, folded at the foot of the mast, and with a gesture put three or four men—myself among them—at Shaylor's disposal.
That was all. Williams turned his head aloft to where Raikes was setting the block for the leech-line and swearing eloquently at a sheave that refused to move. He had begun to swear at the precise instant that Williams looked up.
Raikes suddenly pretended great difficulty in getting on with the work. A moment before, though with only one eye, he had been watching as hard as any of us.
Red Shaylor hesitated. He stared at Williams for a handful of seconds, looked aft toward the sail, up at the mast, again at Williams; and all might have been well had he not by the merest chance allowed his eyes to rest for a moment on my face.
I gave no sign at all. But that reminded him that I had heard his boast.
I haven't a doubt but that men in sober minutes have done murder to make good drunken boasts. Though they carelessly break any other kind of a promise, they respect their own boastings.
Shaylor began. Because he talked rapidly, self-infuriated, he probably got out a half dozen of his hard, curdling oaths—then he went backward down the forecastle ladder, having straightened up to evade the flash of a fist at his face, and thereby receiving the one intended—with a hundred and eighty pounds behind it—for his stomach. Shaylor doubled up much like a rag dummy and, because he had no footing behind him, fell as if actually knocked through the air.
It was a smashing blow and a crashing fall. But it did not kill him. It should have, but men of that day had their souls sealed up in tougher flesh than is common now.
I had seen Williams in fights of all kinds. I never knew him really to be taken off his guard, unaware. That was probably because he was always tense, always strained, always suspicious, and had the remarkable faculty of throwing himself in any direction as suddenly as an arrow leaves a bowstring. The irony of having to knock down a man whom he had but a few hours before pulled from the sea was merely another of those queer, cynical bits of fortune that were always coming upon him.
It was not a cheer that came from the men. There were impulsive exclamations, congratulatory. Too repressed to have been insincere; too suddenly spoken for being intended to please Williams. That is, they had had no time to be prepared to cheer the winner. It was all over in five seconds, if not less.
I was surprised to see their sympathy was with Williams. I had not been with him when he and Hawkins fought.
No doubt the fact that Shaylor refused work when they were short-handed had something to do with it. Then too men are always inclined to admire the one who deals a swift knock-out. Nothing could have been swifter than Williams's blow.
The fact that Shaylor fell from the forecastle-head was incidental. He would have been knocked to any deck.
Under any circumstances, that their sympathy should have been with Williams was unexpected. Rather I would have thought them ready to cheer if he had been bound to a mast and flayed.
For the second time that day Shaylor recovered consciousness on our deck and found himself bruised and nearly filled with salt water. Two or three buckets full were thrown over him, and he was then left alone, ignored. There was no time to nurse him. He was dead for all that any one knew or tried to find out. Well, if he was, why waste time on him? If he wasn't he'd come around all right.
Many a man had died under a skipper's fist or boot in those seas, and whoever was curious enough to read the log found he had fallen from a yard-arm and broken his neck. True enough, a few hours before Williams had worked over his body intensely and apparently as hopelessly as a demon-caught soul weaving ropes of sand to climb from hell.
A few minutes later, ten or fifteen or somewhere around that, Shaylor came to. I was working with the mainsail, but I had kept a curious eye on him. It took him a moment or two to realize where he was: a second or so more to remember what had happened. The expression on his face was almost amusing.
I can't say that Williams noticed him. There was little that he did not notice, even when he wasn't looking. But I know that he spoke to the fellow who had just been relieved at the helm and was coming forward, and who stood behind Shaylor—at that moment sitting up—when he, Williams, said:
“Go on that boom and bear a hand.”
Shaylor heard the command given to another man, and misunderstood. He answered, “Aye, aye, sir,” struggled dizzily to his feet and went across the deck to work.
It was characteristic of Williams to ignore what had happened. I don't know what, if anything, he may afterward have said to Shaylor. He must have said something, for Shaylor and Raikes divided the authority of mate between them.
I suppose each thought himself second in command; and neither was. There were no seconds in command, or thirds.
Shaylor asked me privately what Williams had hit him with.
“Do you really want to know?”
There was a touch of mystery in my tone.
He said that he did.
I whispered:
“His fist!”
It was Hawkins who estimated Shaylor as a bad one. The men forward, he confided with me, all said that Williams ought to have killed him. They couldn't understand his being given the deck.
“I've known 'em like him, Red-Top. They toady t' the skipper an' kick cabinboys overboard when nobody's lookin'. They carry a grudge same as you an' me carry a thirst. Never lose it. They got ever'thing that makes a fighter but the stuff that makes a licked man win.
“He's told Raikes he'd get 'im—get Williams. It's bad that woman's on board. Seen the way he looks at 'er? No?
“Me and Raikes ain't gettin' chummy. But” he raised a thick forefinger to the side of his head—“see them ears? See the size of 'em? Well? Them's ears! The Lord knowed what He was doin' when He put 'em there.”
“Well?”
“An' I'm tellin' you that fellow'll make trouble. He's been talkin' with the fellows. Tryin' to find out how they like Williams.”
“And?”
“They hate 'im, o' course. Why, Raulson cries on my shoulder ever' night, tellin' me about the money he's makin' back in Turkee. But he has to quit tellin' me about his cookin' an' goin' into details. I'm hungry 'nough as it is.
“Say, an' Davenant says good mornin' to me, same as if I was a duke or somethin'. I've never seen him speak to anybody but you an' that girl. 'Fraid he'll be contaminated, I s'pose.”
I asked if Davenant had not talked with him. Hawkins said never but once. After the fight with Williams “he asked how I liked the weather an' looked at my nose. Oh, he did say he'd see to it 'at I had justice. W'at's that? Justice? I said:
“'Thankee, sir. I'd sure like to 'ave some.'
“How'd that monkey-faced, double-coated black-beard that moves like he was 'fraid he'd break somethin' goin' get justice out o' Hurricane Williams?”
The sentence was in one breath, and Hawkins puffed from the effort. A long pause. Then the point to the conversation came out as Hawkins started to waddle off.
“S'posin' you say somethin' to Williams about Shaylor. Won't you, Red-Top?”
The simple way out was to say that I would; though nothing that could be said by man or oracle would make Williams more strainedly alert, more constantly suspicious. I doubt if he really trusted me, who could probably have been urged into treachery, bought, if somebody had offered something I wanted; not mere money and trinkets. If somebody had offered me the chance to live under a coconut-tree near a rum mill, on an island where there were no mosquitoes or missionaries,—why, if a man is tempted beyond his strength should he be condemned for seeming weak?
But I was not tempted in the least to carry Hawkins's warning to Williams. He seemed to resent such tattling; perhaps in the same way that he would have resented it had I furtively, confidentially, whispered into his low-bent ear that I suspected the ocean of being salt.
Dula Davenant liked the deck. Davenant himself spent long hours of both night and day stretched on his bed in a kind of reptilian immobility; brooding, no doubt. Looking ahead to Dakaru and dreaming of a nabob's wealth.
She was on deck most of the time. Williams was too. Her eyes were never off him.
In the week that went by after the storm she got into the way of coming up near me if I chanced to be loafing or at the wheel. It must have been that she wanted to compensate me for the obvious dislike Shaylor began to show for me about the time he learned I was, or was considered, Williams's jackal.
He went out of his way to use his authority when he had the deck, or didn't have it. But I knew more about “soldiering” than any field-marshal; so that didn't worry me much. Shaylor's irrepressible wish to bear himself in upon her notice caused him to speak to me when she was standing near, and to do so in a way that would have made a less discreet man fight.
Since I am telling this story, probably I should arouse more respect for myself by telling how I made Mr. Shaylor back water, take in sail, put down his helm and go about. Probably it should make no difference that nothing of the kind happened. The nearest approach to it was late one quiet night, when by some lapse of attention on the part of the wind it got almost dead astern and whistled softly as a shy lover below a lattice window. I don't know what Shaylor was doing. Probably he was up in the bows hobnobbing with the lookout. Anyway he came on to the poop and at once became filled with excitement.
I was sitting on the skylight, smoking. Dula was sitting beside me. The wheel was lashed. We were probably a point and a half off the course.
Before I knew that he really meant to touch me he had grabbed me by the neck and flung me to the deck. He rushed forward to kick me, and all the while he roared mightily, proclaiming to listeners on the stars—if there were any—that I was this, that and something else worthless to a ship.
But he did not kick me. Even a worm will turn though an elephant's hoof is coming down; and I had a gun under my shirt. Shaylor saw it. He could scarcely help but see it in the moonlight when it was jerked out and pointed at him.
I didn't shoot. I seldom do the things I should. Nor did Shaylor kick me. We both forgot the presence of a woman, and I used some highly colored words too. In a moment's pause, when each was taking a little breathing-time, he said:
“'Fore I get through with you, you'll know I'm Red Shaylor!”
I went to the wheel and Dula went below. She had remained until the last word was spoken. There was no timid fleeing from curses and harsh voices in her. She heard it all, and saw.
I don't know what manner of women Shaylor had wooed and won in his life. Probably the kind that merge themselves into the shadows of piles on wharves and wait in darkness so men may not clearly see what records have been etched into their faces. Anyway, he actually seemed to think that Dula was, if not impressed, certainly not repulsed by his outbursts.
And, if it was a thing to be thankful for, I have him to thank that she and I became rapidly something like friends. True enough there was already a ghostly secret between us, but it had not been of much influence.
Incidentally, Shaylor reached Williams's ear first with his complaint. Had he delayed twenty years, he would still have been first.
I knew better than to carry a grievance of the kind to Williams. One should have broken bones, or best of all a broken neck, if he expected Williams to show even a remote sympathy.
I don't know what happened, but I imagine that Williams listened to him, listened with back half-turned as if paying no attention, yet poised in a curious stoop-shoulder attitude with weight on one foot, ready to pivot and strike. It was a long, long time before he relaxed from that sort of pose when I talked with him alone. Treachery was something he expected and seemed to invite by a strained, but nevertheless deceiving, appearance of carelessness.
I haven't the faintest idea what reply he made to Shaylor. He never mentioned the incident to me, except so obliquely as to seem to have no connection with it.
“McGuire, why are you always around that woman?”
Women were all alike to him. He would trust no one of them to be undeceitful and worse, unless she were in a coffin with the lid screwed down. But then he knew the feel of a hangman's knot, and had had the trap give way from under his feet, all because of the lies of a woman—a woman he had loved.
“This woman,” I said, “keeps other people's secrets better than her own.”
He looked inquiringly.
“I don't know why Davenant's bound Dakaru-ward. But some o' the things she's tried to keep from God, I know. A woman usually shows her worst side to Him—when she loves!”
Williams made an impatient gesture of disgust.
“Give me time, give me time, Skipper. Rome wasn't built out of strawless bricks. And they had lots to drink. She'll talk to me one of these lonesome nights if Red Shaylor doesn't put in his oar.
“He calls himself Red Shaylor. Do you catch that, Skipper? It isn't because of his hair. It isn't because of his face. Must be because of his hands.
“I'd guess he's knocked men to hell from other places than the rigging of a wrecked ship. A red-handed dog, and proud of it.”
Williams said something that included “good sailor.”
“Yes, and I'm a good shot with a revolver. Can hit anybody that gets close enough to kick me. Supposin' the Lord had made 'em big enough to do it—how would you like to be kicked? Well, my hide's just as tender as anybody's.”
I was boasting, no doubt. A fellow often lets his tongue act valiant. I can ruthlessly, slap-slam-smash, kill mosquitoes and flies—but things that bleed? It makes me rather queasy at my stomach to think of that, though if events happen fast and my blood is warmed up I can make as much noise with a gun as anybody.
But I wasn't to make much with mine on the Sally Martin. That night, during the two or three minutes that I slept the sleep of the conscienceless, some one stole the gun, took it right out of my bed.
It isn't much trouble to work a schooner. Nothing like a square-rigger. There would have been plenty of time for everybody to loaf but in his boyhood Williams must have used one of those copy-books that require the young pupil to write down fifty times that “the devil finds work for idle hands.”
And the men growled. Of course. Look out for sailors that don't curse skipper, sea, ship and selves.
The men did not talk with me; but Hawkins was one of them. They accepted him. He sang and told long monotonous yarns, and had that fine disregard for the truth that deceives no one, but interests all.
“I hope you give a cannibal indigestion!” he said to me when he discovered that he had been shifted to the helm when Red Shaylor had the deck. “All us fellows for'ard hate him—. No. This Red bloke. Williams don't fight with his jaw.”
Probably because Williams wanted to make sure the course was held, he kept Hawkins and me alternating at the wheel, four hours on and four off, with an occasional lapse through the day when he was on deck himself. Then we had to work, always work. It was swab, scrub, worm and parcel, fling the log-chip, work at chafing-gear—and so prove to the forecastle that we weren't being petted. More of Williams's craziness.
Only he probably never thought of proving anything to the forecastle. He could find more to do on that boat than any other brute of a captain would have discovered on a full-rigger.
Thrown with Raikes through the night hours, we talked a little. Only I never quite liked the light in that impudent solitary eye of his. Probably he did not like the dull stare of mine. But he talked.
Mid-watch at sea are the hours of confessional, of confidences. A little craft, winged with white, floats over the black waters that are fretted with evanescent fires like myriad gems sparkling and vanishing; and the ship groans and moans and creaks so that a fellow if he has imagination at all must talk a bit to take his mind off ghosts and things.
Raikes said he went to sea at twelve. At sixteen he was A. B. and had had two ribs broken and an arm cracked by a bo's'n. At seventeen an eye was gone. A mate had kicked him, after knocking him down. Probably because he wasn't a husky.
He never met the bo's'n again. But he supposed they found the mate's body in a back street at Melbourne. Fifteen years has passed, but he, Raikes, knew him.
“I laid f'r 'im. Don't the Bible say an eye for an eye? I'd gouged 'is eye out, but I heard somebody comin'. Hope they found 'im dead, the !”
Raikes had gone around the world. He was an inconscionable little ruffian. He was second mate once. Maulmain. Sold some stuff out of the cargo and got caught. Went to jail. Came out without papers. Laid for some other mate. Got him drunk. Stole his papers. Good joke.
Another of my periodical jumpy moods was settling down on me. Raikes's voice was better than silence. Anything would have been better than being alone, even Shaylor's boastings. Someway, seamen are not ashamed of their crimes—if they are crimes.
At last Raikes asked what I had against him; asked it as a man does when he feels, or pretends to feel, regretful, as when it seems stupid for two people who might be friends to be at outs.
I mentioned that at Turkee he seemed to have guessed Douglas Moore was some one else. With scorn he denied all thought of having even thought to turn Williams up.
He was not so facile in denying that he had more or less joined with Davenant to do away with Williams. But not to kill him! No, no, no. How could I imagine such a thing? (As if anybody on board the Sally Martin, or on any other man's ship, could take Williams prisoner without killing him!)
Raikes cursed Davenant. With a sudden, confidential way, as if to surprise me into telling, he asked how in the world I had found out.
I stole an idea from Hawkins, and pointed to my ears. Then Raikes furtively warned me to warn Williams against Shaylor.
I suggested that he use his own legs and tongue. He had. Williams hadn't listened.
There never was such a man. Davenant was afraid of him. It seemed to impress Raikes as queer that Davenant should be afraid of anybody; but of course Williams was Williams.
I suggested that Raikes try telling Williams why we were headed Dakaru-ward. He whispered that he had done that too—only a few hours before. Williams had listened, said nothing, made no signs, no move, not a quiver even of interest, though Grahame of Dakaru was the father of Dula Davenant!
I made a sign, move and a quiver, almost a jump, and exclaimed:
“What!”
Raikes affirmed it.
“You mean this black siren is a sister to that yellow-haired girl!”
With that exasperating air of the man who knows, or thinks he knows, he shook his head. There was no white girl at Dakaru. He had never been there. But she was just a myth. The Davenants were after Grahame. He was rich.
That wasn't all. Did I know who Davenant was? No. He had a title.
He didn't know what title; but from under the bunk he had heard them talking about what if it should be learned in the colonies and at London that a man with his title was— Listen:
“That woman's goin' there to kill her own father!”
Hardened little water-rat that he was, there was horror in even his voice. My flesh was chilled as if, like some victim of cruel magic in the Arabian fables, I was being turned to stone. I shivered.
I said it was a lie. Not because I didn't believe it—but one has to say something. I wondered, was it the truth?
Hers was a cold, deadly, meditative purpose. The almost casual murder of Tom Gibson—how could that shake the foundations of a woman consecrated to the death of her own father? Ugh!
It was a warm, white night; but I was chilled. Something about the word Father makes the crime of the lifted hand monstrous.
But she did not seem monstrous to me. I felt that she should. I was amazed at myself. I was horrified yet more than fascinated.
On paper crime is all one color, red and damned; and the one who is guilty—at a distance too remote for personality to be felt—seems a terrible, unhuman, monstrous creature. Laws, customs, ethics, tabus, ignore personality. Theory denies it any extenuation whatsoever. But justice, with its dry, rigid formalism, is itself inhuman.
Heaven forbid that I should offer a word in defense of Dula Davenant. I am defending myself, not her. Had that black coat with symbolic crimson plush lining fallen from her and disclosed a leprous breast, I would have gone as far on the bowsprit as the tips of my fingers could find an inch of wood to hold.
I did not flee from the murderess, the sworn parricide, the monstrous daughter, wicked, cruel woman, daughter of a devil. I may have thought of her with chilling blood, but when she stepped into sight all that I thought drifted away in a sort of vague mistiness.
And it must not be fancied she was an enchantress, or that any strange bewitching perfumes numbed the senses, or charms of face made her not as other women. She was different, but after all only in that way that any one striking woman differs from another.
At a glance I had recognized certain satanic cruelties in Dula Davenant, veiled by the mysteries that are feminine. I had in a way rather the inclination than the will to evade her. Men are moths, and moths the souls of dead men—women and candles are that much alike.
Raikes had slipped down into the waist of the ship. I was alone at two o'clock in the morning. I tried to jig barefoot on the grating: my blood, icily, had stopped flowing.
I hummed aloud, and quit it abruptly.
I felt more like praying, but, not knowing how, I swore. Even the oaths came dully, sluggishly. There was no heart in them.
Under the high wind the schooner listed to starboard so that I did not dare lash the helm and go searching for something big enough to break the new lock on Williams's chest. Besides he was in his cabin. One footfall inside his door and he would be awake, even if he were asleep.
He kept a light burning all night. He was usually up two or three times, writing, reading, appearing on deck first at one place and then at another, vanishing silently—always barefooted. Not for stealth but because toes hold a deck better than cowhide.
Dula—Dula—Dula Davenant Grahame. Neither her name nor her face would get out of my head. It had no right to be there. I was less than the capstan to her. Put ears on the capstan, she would talk to it as well. I wished she would come on deck—I wished anybody, anything, would come on deck. Supposing some old shaggy sea-monster, with human voice and head, harkened to any wish and came chuckling over the taffrail? I turned my head quickly to make sure none was coming.
I have never got over the feeling that one should not be surprised if water-gnomes, and scaly people, draped with sea-weed, thrust themselves up out of the black water in the lonesome watch hours. A sea-maiden with black hair and eyes and long slim white arms—extended in languishing implorement. What sailor would hesitate? Perhaps those who are down in the log as suicides have caught a glimpse of the siren face, heard the whisper of her song. The sibilant, slithering froth in the night is like the furtive hiss of strange women, mute but eager for attention; and what more than the phosphorescent fire-laced splotches of ruffled water is like the vanishing glitter of gold-scaled, jewel-studded draperies about the invisible forms of fair, soft, warm bodies?
I came out of my senseless reverie with a shiver. Had I heard a step on the companion stairs, and had I turned and caught the blur of a withdrawing head? Too much imagination? I watched. I listened.
Forward was the low mumble of voices, and now and then I could catch an accent. It was all very far away; no companionship in that. I had heard and I had seen something—somebody! Yes, but in moods like that I was always hearing and seeing things.
And were those things the less real because they did not exist? Ask the man who shrieks to see a blood-red elephant climb the wall. Drunkard, says the wise men. The terrible deliriums are those of silent, sober men with a score of wasted years, a cluster of heavy, withered, dry memories about their necks. Of these the wise and pious know nothing. They will learn of them in Heaven by asking:
“Who are those queer, rough-looking saints that stand in such high favor so near the Throne?”
Will come the answer then:
“Those are the first chosen of the earth, the men and women God so filled with passion, with courage, with wild wayward impulses, with all that makes life reckless, heedless, mad, sending them to far places and into fierce dangers, making them clamor the night out with drunken dancing and shrill, mirthless laughter, filling them with bitter hates and loves more bitter, so that they knew no ease, no peace, no rest, knew nothing of gentleness and quietude, and they suffered there on that old mud-ball of a world all that you good people, vainglorious and comfortable because your passions and impulses were less gripping and griping, must suffer in hell before you, too, can get up near the Throne!”
That was a shot! It came from the deck below.
The wheel, spinning, left my hands. The ship lurched madly before the wind. So suddenly released, with a crazy veer she half-spun, reeled, rocking, as if to capsize. Frantic calls came out of the waist as the men dashed to the sheets. But I was gone.
I flung myself down the companion and landed sprawlingly. Silence, and no one in sight; for a moment that stretched itself tenuously into a great length of time no one stirred. There was not a sound.
More dreams of open eyelids? More imagination! True, that shot had been muffled, but I had heard it. I knew that I had heard it.
Then I heard a heavy, strained half-grunt—but nothing of a groan in it.
I jumped to Williams's door, calling his name as I flung it open.
He was sitting on the edge of his bed, his body distorted in the effort to pass his left hand below his right shoulder. His face was tense and drawn, but the teeth were clenched. His eyes struck me as if some actual physical force streamed from them.
“In the back. Asleep. Don't know who,” he said.
There was a little black spot with a trickling stream of red just below the right collar-bone; and it was painful. Sweat covered Williams's forehead, and it hurt to breathe.
I stood there in utter helplessness. I could do nothing. I knew nothing. I had no skill.
It was impossible to tell how badly he was hurt. For one thing, the bullet had not come through. For another Williams would not give whatever Furies harried him the satisfaction of seeing him wince.
He calmly tried to work his shoulder, felt about, pressed here and there, and except for the involuntary flinching that not even his will could check when he tried to breathe deeply, there was then little to show he had been wounded—but his lips were soon covered with blood.
Almost at once there was the high, excited babble of voices, the shoving, crowding, pressing of bodies. Everybody came. Word went over the ship rapidly.
I could not understand how I had been the first, how I had stood there so long, alone with him. It had not been long, and I must have come faster than I realized.
Besides, Dula Davenant, the only person aft that I really trusted—not so much at that moment as for what followed shortly—said that she had not been sure that it was a shot. Something had awakened her. She thought it was a shot, and listened.
She heard me come down; then it was quiet until I called Williams's name. She hastily flung her cape about her and came.
Williams tried to ignore her. She would not be ignored. He pushed her hands roughly away, and for one instant her eyes glittered; but I saw it was the glitter of resolution, not that of an offended woman.
I could write on and on forever and never put down quite all that I saw and felt and thought in those few minutes, looking from her to Williams and back again. She was quiet, but uneasy; and, too, felt helpless, futile; but was determined not to be—though there was nothing in the world to be done.
She glanced at me half-imploringly, but at once saw that it was useless to expect anything of men. Her face contracted in a little spasm of pain, and she closed her eyes tightly, opening them at once as she bent over and saw the black hole and trickling blood on his bare sunburnt body.
In frank sympathy she stroked his shoulder, with strong, gentle pressure urging him to lie down. He motioned to push her away. She stepped aside—but not a toe's length farther from him.
He was making an effort to keep his head clear, but vertigo was striking. He tried to rise, and reeled unsteadily. It was not faintness. He was dizzy. She pushed him back, and being dizzy he yielded, slightly groping.
“A dirty coward—to shoot 'im in the back!” came Red Shaylor's loud voice.
“He's dyin'.”
“No. Fainted.”
“Fainted! See Hurricane Williams faint,” a voice of scorn.
“Who's got whisky?”
“By the Lord God, he was a man!”
“Well, Mr. Shaylor, guess you're skipper now.”
“I guess he ain't!”
The voice was deep as thunder, slow, as Hawkins laying a pair of hands on two men in front of him, pulled them out of the way and, regardlessly, pressed Davenant against the bulkhead. There was an immediate hush. Hawkins's tone implied more than he said, and the implication was understood clearly by every one—possibly except Shaylor.
“I guess you ain't—nor never will be captain o' this ship,” said Hawkins, glaring at Shaylor. “You've said you'd get 'im, but there's us on here that'll get you, too.”
Angry buzzing and mumbling followed.
“You mean I done that!” demanded Shaylor.
Williams turned restlessly. His eyes were shut and he shook his head as if to drive away dizziness.
“McGuire. Get them out. Get them out. Everybody.”
“You mean I done that!” Shaylor cried again.
“Outside, all of you. Give way there. He needs air.”
I tried to be authoritative.
Slowly, as if no one was willing to move first and all were eager to see the end of the quarrel, the men moved, stepping backward, necks stretched to have their eyes nearer the behemoths that threatened fight. Davenant pressed flat against the wall, still composed, looking blacker than ever—for he had not dressed but came in white silk—leaned out and stared at Shaylor with sternly curious eyes.
Williams lurched upright.
“Get out!” he said, and tried to rise to his feet.
They all gave way, but Shaylor had loosened a stream of curses. Davenant paused in the doorway. He was ready to speak to me, but I pressed my hand against him and closed the door.
Shaylor's voice continued to be heard. Hawkins rumbled—then they were fighting. The blows and bumping of their bodies in the narrow passageway came to my ears much as if they had been two bulls fighting.
Williams was talking to me, or curiosity, if not anxious sympathy for Hawkins, would have caused me at least to open the door.
Williams, tortured and dizzy, straining himself to seem composed, lay on the bed, his eyes still closed. He did not know that Dula remained in the room, she stood so quietly.
“McGuire?”
“Yes, Skipper.”
“Take her into Lelela.” He was speaking of the ship. “Stores there. Mine. Under my bed—a case of rifles. Plungers in that chest.”
Williams, lest a mutinous crew should get hold of the rifles, had removed the firing-pins. Then quietly:
“You can't trust anybody. I don't know about Hawkins. Maybe he's all right. Shaylor, Davenant, Raikes—watch them. And that woman. McGuire, that woman”
There was a crash and shouts in the passageway—more than shouts; yells and a wild tumbling and clatter of blows.
“What are those fools doing?” he demanded.
Dula reached over and struck my arm, then motioned for me to get Williams to go on, finish what he had started to say of her.
My nerves were jangled. What could be going on out there? I had to see. I opened the door.
The rough breathing of men was the most vivid thing I noticed at first. It was as if a dozen wheezy bellows were puffing.
And Shaylor was cursing, his back to the bulkhead, men to the right and left of him, battered men, bluffed men. Hawkins's big face was streaming blood; he had been whipped. Others of the crew had leaped to help him. Shaylor had beaten them.
Rough, noisy braggart that he was, he had right to the name of Red Shaylor. With his fists he had beaten them.
I have heard it told that boasters and bullies will not fight. Most of those I have chanced across would fight. As a lion beats its sides with its tail, they rouse themselves with their own tongues. But somehow something always seems lacking in them. Perhaps it is because they drive only with their fist, and have little or nothing of that dynamic force of personality, often stronger than blows. Just as at that instant a surprising thing happened.
“Now, you ,” Shaylor cried exulting, “who's runnin' this ship?”
Williams was out of the bed, on his feet; he lurched to the door; he was unsteady, but his eyes were open. An abrupt short gesture with his right hand, and:
“On deck! Get there!”
He stood, grim and tense, blood on his mouth, giving the impression of crouching without doing so, as if ready to leap. The men hesitated awkwardly, then began to go up the companion stairs.
Not till the last man had foot on the stairs did he move; then, half-turning, reeled, fumbled blindly with hands to face, and fell. Hurricane Williams had fainted.