Books: Harrigan
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Max Brand >> Harrigan
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"I can't look, McTee," he muttered. "I'm sick inside--sick--sick!"
The last words came in a growl from the hollow of his throat. The
blacksnake whirled through the air again and fell with a sharp slap
like two broad hands clapped together, but Borgson did not cry out. His
body writhed mutely, and down his back appeared a red mark. The whip
whirled again and fell, this time bringing a stifled curse for a
response. Once more it whirled, and this time merely cracked in the
air. Again and again an idle snap in the air. Broken by that grim
suspense, Borgson yelled in terror.
Kamasura laughed and glanced at the circle of sailors like a ringmaster
in a circus in search of applause. The whip now whirled rapidly over
his head and fell again and again, and every stroke brought a fresh and
louder scream from the mate. Another sound, rhythmic and barbarous,
punctuated those shrieks of anguish. It was the singing of Kamasura,
who as he wielded the lash remembered a chant of his native land and
shouted it now in time with the blows of the blacksnake.
On the upper deck Sloan lay prone on his face, sobbing with terror;
Harrigan kept his face hid and clutched at his head with both hands;
McTee stared straight down upon the scene of the torture with burning
eyes. Inside the wheelhouse Kate crouched beside the bunk on which
Henshaw was stretched, staring straight above his head. The fever had
deprived him of the last of his senses.
"Your hands!" he muttered at length.
She placed them upon his forehead. She had done that repeatedly during
the past day, and each time the effect had been marvelously soothing to
the old man. Now at the touch he drew a deep breath of relief.
"Even in hell," he whispered at length--"even in hell you come to me,
Beatrice! I knew you would!"
He caught her hands at the wrists; his fingers, despite his fever, were
deadly cold, and a chill ate into her blood.
"I hear them yelling--the souls of the damned," he said quietly. "You
can't hear it?"
"No, no!" she said. "I cannot hear!"
"Of course not," he went on with the same lack of emotion; "for, you
see, you've come from heaven, and the coolness of heaven is in your
hands, Beatrice. Put them against my temples, so! For every bit of the
love I have given you you are permitted to repay me with coolness--
coolness and comfort in hell!"
Suddenly he broke into exultant laughter, a sound more terrible than
the wild wails from the deck.
"See!" he said, and his eyes twinkled as he stretched out a gaunt arm
toward a corner of the room. "There's Johnny Carson lying naked on a
bed of blue fire. Ha, ha, ha! Have you been waiting long for me to
come, lad?"
She shut out the hungry, hideous light of his eyes with the palms of
her hands. Now the screaming on the deck ceased abruptly.
"Beatrice!" he cried with a sudden terror.
"Yes," answered Kate.
"Ah," he said, and patted her hands endearingly. "When the silence
came, I feared maybe you were leaving me. You won't do that?"
"No. I'll stay."
"So! Then I'll sleep. But waken me when they begin yelling again. They
thought I'd come down to the same hell I sent them to, and that they'd
watch me burn. But I fooled 'em, Beatrice, by loving you. You're the
chip of wood that keeps me afloat--afloat--afloat--"
And he drifted into sleep, while she leaned against the bunk, almost
unconscious from fear and exhaustion.
CHAPTER 35
Kamasura, in nowise loath to bring his work to an end, stood back and
laid on the whip with redoubled vigor. The lash spatted sharply against
the raw and bleeding flesh. The screams sank into moans, and the moans
in turn declined to a mere horrible gasping of the breath. Even this
ceased at length, and the quivering of the body stopped. Kamasura
leaned over and slipped his hand under the body in the region of the
heart. When he straightened up again, he made a gesture of finality
with his crimsoned hands. The mate was dead.
They cut his body loose at once and pitched him over the rail, then
turned their attention to Van Roos. Sam Hall was the inspired man this
time, and according to his directions they lashed the body of the big
mate on the same blood-spotted hatch cover where Borgson had lain a
moment before, but this time the victim was placed upon his back. Hall
himself attended to the tying of Van Roos's head, and he performed his
work so ably that the mate could not change his position in the least
particle. He was literally swathed in ropes; so much so, in fact, that
it was difficult to see how he could be tormented. Sam Hall, however,
insisted that this was what he wanted, and the crew consented to let
him do his work.
"You've heard something, an' you've seen something," said Hovey at this
juncture to Campbell; "but what you've seen and heard isn't nothin' to
what'll happen to you unless you start handling the engines of the
_Heron_. Why, Campbell, I'm goin' to give you to the firemen!"
"Hovey," answered the engineer calmly, "the only place I'd run this
ship would be down to hell--your home port. That's final!"
The bos'n was white with rage.
"I'd like to tear your heart out an' feed it to the fish," he said,
stepping close to Campbell, and then, remembering himself, he moved
back and grinned: "But the men will find something better to do with
you."
He crossed the deck and held up a bucket of water toward Harrigan and
McTee. He raised a dipperful and allowed it to splash back in the
bucket.
"Well?" asked Hovey.
They merely stared at him as if they had not heard him speak.
"All right," said Hovey, quite unmoved, "there's plenty of time for you
to make up your minds. But if you wait too long--well, we'll come and
get him. And the girl, too!"
He laughed and turned away.
"I thought," muttered McTee, "that we could end it by simply dying--but
I forgot the girl."
"The girl," answered Harrigan, "and--and them! She's got to die before
we're too far gone. You'll do that to save her from--them?"
McTee moistened his parched lips before he could speak.
"One of us has to do it, but it can't be me, Harrigan."
"Nor me, Angus. We'll wait till tonight. Maybe a ship'll pass and see
us lyin' like a derelict and put a boat aboard, eh?"
"But if no ship comes, then we'll draw straws, eh?"
"Yes."
Two sharp, sudden cries now called their attention back to the waist of
the ship to the blood-stained hatch cover where Van Roos lay.
Sam Hall had approached the big mate with a knife in his hand. He
kneeled beside the prostrate body and fumbled at the face an instant.
No one had been able to make out the significance of his act. Then the
knife gleamed, and twice he plucked with one hand and cut with the
knife. The two sharp cries answered him. Then he rose; two little
trickles of blood ran down the face of the mate.
"Well?" asked Jacob Flint. "When does the game begin?"
"The game is just started," said Hall, "an' the sun will do the rest.
I've cut off his eyelids!"
They stared a moment in amazement, and then an understanding broke on
them. Every tribe of savages in the world has been accredited with this
ingenious torture which blinded their victim and usually drove him mad.
The sun was now climbing the sky rapidly, and already fell on the face
of the mate. The tropic sun which scorches and burns the toughest of
skins was now directed full on the pupils of his eyes.
The sailors sought comfortable positions and waited for a long
exhibition of pain, but they were mistaken. The torture acted far more
quickly than even the whip. There was no outcry. Not once during his
struggles did Van Roos make a sound from his throat, save for a quick,
heavy panting. Perhaps by contrast with the yells of Borgson, which
were still in the ears of the men, this silence was more horrible than
the most throat-filling shrieks. They could see Van Roos twisting his
head ceaselessly and vainly to escape that blinding light. His ruddy
face became swollen like the features of a drowned man. And that was
all that happened--only that, and the panting, the quick, choppy
panting like a running man. Finally one of the sailors rose with a
mallet in his hand.
"Where you goin'?" asked Hall ominously.
"Going to finish him."
Hall caught the fellow's arm.
"Listen!" he whispered, and such was the silence that the hoarse
whisper was audible all over the deck. "Don't you hear?"
And with one hand he kept beat for the quick breaths of the tortured
man. At that moment there was a long sigh, and the breathing stopped.
Hall strode angrily forward to his victim, but when he reached the
hatch, Van Roos was dead. A blood vessel must have burst in his brain,
and death was as instantaneous as though a bullet had struck him. So
they cut him free, and his body followed that of Borgson over the rail.
Then the eyes of the mutineers turned aft toward the wireless house,
and then back upon Campbell. Six victims remained. One of the firemen
slipped close to Hovey on naked feet. He did not speak, but his long,
thin arm pointed toward the engineer.
"Not yet," said Hovey, "not yet! Tomorrow if he doesn't give in, we'll
turn you loose on him."
The fireman grinned and went back on noiseless feet to his companions
to spread the good tidings. Hovey approached the wireless house.
"We've got one show left to offer, but we're savin' it till tomorrow,"
he said. "So brace up, hearties, and keep cheer. You'll see Campbell go
a way worse than either of these tomorrow."
"Wait," called Harrigan, suddenly roused. "D'you mean to say that you'd
try your hellwork on a kind man like Campbell?"
"A kind man like Campbell?" echoed Hovey, and then laughed. "A kind
man?"
And he retreated with no other answer, and left the fugitives aft to
the merciless, sweltering heat of the sun. By the time the sun went
down, they were so fevered by the need of water that they had not the
strength to bless the cool falling of the dark; they still carried the
fire of the sunlight in their blood.
CHAPTER 36
"This man Campbell," said Harrigan, "he's a true man, McTee, and he
stood up to White Henshaw for my sake--for the sake of me and his
Bobbie Burns. They plan to take him to hell tomorrow, Angus, and I've
an idea that there's one chance in the thousand that I could steal in
on the dogs tonight and bring him back with me."
"Can they do anything worse to him than they're doing to us?"
"Maybe not, but my heart would lie easier, McTee. I'll wait for the
fever o' the sun to go out of me head an' for the crew to get drunk an'
a little drunker."
So they waited while the noise of the nightly carousal waxed high and
higher, and then died away by slow degrees. At length Harrigan stood
up, gripped the hand of McTee in silent farewell, heard a whispered
"Good luck!" and slipped noiselessly down the ladder and started across
the deck in the shadow of the rail. From any portion of the main cabin
eyes might be watching him; there was only the one chance in ten that
the lookout whom Hovey had certainly stationed would not perceive him
as he crept along under the shadow. Accordingly he went blindly
forward.
If the lookout saw him, at least there was no outcry, no general alarm.
He stood flat against the wall of the main cabin at length and
rehearsed a plan, listening the while to the lapping of the waves
against the side of the ship. Then he stole step by step up the ladder
to the upper deck. His head was already above the ladder when he heard
the light padding of a bare foot and saw a figure around the corner of
the cabin.
Harrigan ducked out of sight and clung to the iron rounds ready to leap
up and strike if the sailor should descend the ladder, though in that
case the alarm would be given and his errand spoiled; but the sailor
was apparently the lookout set there by Hovey. He stayed at the head of
the ladder a moment, humming to himself, and then turned and walked on
his beat to the other side of the ship. Harrigan slipped onto the deck
and ran noiselessly to the side of the cabin. Here he flattened himself
against the wall until the sentinel had again made the turn of his
beat, and as the latter moved dimly out of sight through the darkness,
the Irishman stole down the deck toward the forward cabins.
The first two windows showed dark and empty; if there were anyone
inside, he must be asleep in the drunken torpor into which most of the
crew seemed to have fallen. The door of the third room, formerly
occupied by the second mate, stood ajar, and here by the dull light of
an oil lantern, he saw Campbell tied hand and foot to a chair. He was
placed close to a little table whereon sat a bottle of whisky, a siphon
of seltzer, a tall glass, meat, bread, water--everything, in fact, with
which the senses of the starving man could be tormented. And near him,
sitting with elbows spread out on the edge of the table, was one of the
firemen, grinning continually as if he had just heard some monstrous
joke. The expression of Campbell was just as fixed, for his small eyes
shifted eagerly, swiftly, from the food to the water, and back again.
The fireman--the same tall, gaunt fellow who had demanded that Hovey
turn over Campbell to him and his companions that day--now leaned
forward and raised a dipper of water from a bucket which sat on the
floor, and allowed it to trickle back, splashing with what seemed to
Harrigan the sweetest music in the world. Hovey must have taught him
that trick, and its effect upon Campbell was worse than the beating of
the whips. The fireman let his head roll loosely back as he laughed,
and while his head was still back and his eyes squinting shut in the
ecstasy of his delight, Harrigan leaped from the shadow of the door and
struck at the throat--at the great Adam's apple which shook with the
laughter. The blow must have nearly broken the man's neck. His head
jerked forward with a whistling gasp of breath, and as he reached for
the knife on the table, Harrigan struck again, this time just behind
the ear. The man slid from his chair to the floor and lay in a queer
heap--as if all the bones in his body were broken.
"Harrigan! Harrigan! Harrigan!" Campbell was whispering over and over,
but still his eyes held like those of a starved wolf on the food. The
moment his ropes were cut, he buried his teeth in the great chunk of
roasted meat.
Harrigan jerked him away and held him by main force.
"Be a man!" he whispered. "We've got to take this food and this water
back to the wireless house--if we can get there with it. Take hold of
yourself, Campbell!"
The engineer nodded. Voices came close down the deck; instantly
Harrigan jerked up the glass globe which protected the lantern's flame
and blew out the light. They crouched shoulder to shoulder.
"I thought he was in here," said a voice at the door.
"He was," answered Hovey's voice, "but I guess they took him below--
they said it was too cool for him up there. Ha, ha, ha!"
Their steps disappeared down the deck. After that Harrigan dared not
show a light in the cabin window. He and Campbell located the meat and
bread, which were given into the engineer's keeping, while Harrigan
took the bucket of water. They slipped out onto the deck and hurried
aft, keeping close to the side of the cabin, for the starlight would
show their figures to any watchful eyes. At the rear edge of the cabin
Harrigan halted Campbell and whispered: "There's a guard here. I got
past him in the dark, but two of us loaded down like this can never go
unseen down that ladder. We've got to get rid of him."
And he pulled out the knife which he had kept with him ever since the
outbreak of the mutiny. They waited without daring to draw breath until
the sailor came padding by with his naked feet. Harrigan crept out
behind him, and when the sailor turned at the rail, the Irishman leaped
in and struck, not with the blade, but with the haft of the knife; he
could not kill from behind.
If it had been a solid blow, the sailor would have crumpled silently as
the fireman had done a few moments before, but the impact glanced and
merely cut his scalp as it knocked him down. He fell with a shout which
was instantly answered from the front of the ship.
"Down the ladder! Run for it!" cried Harrigan to Campbell, and as the
engineer clambered down, he stood guard above.
The sailor leaped up from the deck and lunged with a knife gleaming in
his hand, but Harrigan slashed him across the arm, and he fled howling
into the dark. Before Hovey and his men could reach the spot, Harrigan
had climbed down the ladder with his precious bucket and was fleeing
aft to the wireless house.
As he reached it, lights were showing from the main cabin, and there
were choruses of yells announcing the discovery that Campbell was
missed. But Harrigan and the rest of the fugitives scarcely heard the
sounds. The Irishman was busy measuring as carefully as he could in the
dark dippers of water which the others drank.
There was no sleep that night, partly from fear lest the infuriated
mutineers should at last attempt to rush the wireless house, partly
because they ate sparingly but long of the meat which Harrigan carved
for them, and the bread, and partly also because of a singular odor
which they had not noticed when they were tortured by thirst and
hunger, and which now they observed for the first time. It was
peculiarly pungent and heavy with a sickening suggestion of sweetness
about it. None of them could describe it, saving Harrigan, who had been
much in the country and likened the odor to the smell of an old straw
stack which lay molding and rotting.
It seemed to increase--that smell--during the night, probably because
their strength was returning and all their senses grew more acute. It
was a torrid night, without moon, so that the blanket of dark pressed
the heat down upon them and seemed to stifle the very breath.
With the coming of the first light of the dawn they noticed a peculiar
phenomenon. Perhaps it was because of the evaporation of water under
the fire of the sun, but the _Heron_ seemed to be surrounded with a
white vapor which rose shimmering in the slant rays of the morning. But
even when the sun had risen well up in the sky, the vapor was still
visible, clinging like a wraith about the ship. They wondered idly upon
it, and wondered still more at the heat, which was now intense. They
were interrupted in their conjectures by the call of Kate summoning
them to the wireless house where Henshaw lay apparently at the last
gasp.
He had altered marvelously in the past two days. That resemblance which
he had always had to a mummy was now oddly intensified, for the cheeks
were fallen, the neck withered to scarcely half its former size, the
eyes sunk in purple hollows. He murmured without ceasing, his voice now
rising hardly above a low whisper. Kate sat beside him, passing her
hands slowly over his temples, for he complained of a fire rising
within his brain.
His complaints died away under her touches, and he said at last, calmly
but very, very faintly: "Beatrice, there is one thing I have not yet
told you."
"Yes?" she asked gently, though she averted her eyes, for all the long
hours he had filled with the stories of his crimes upon earth were
poured into the ear of the spirit of his Beatrice, as he thought. One
last and crowning atrocity was yet to be told.
"I have left out the greatest thing of all."
He paused to smile at the memory.
"You remember Samson's death, Beatrice? And how he pulled the house
down on the shoulders of his enemies?"
"Yes."
"That was a wonderful way to die--wonderful! But I, Beatrice, look at
me, child!--I have surpassed Samson! Listen! You will wonder and you
will admire when you hear it! When I got the word that you were dead, I
knew two things: first, that the prophecy of my death at sea would come
true, and secondly that my gold must perish with me. You will never
guess how long I pondered over a way to destroy my gold before I died!
You will think I could have simply thrown it into the sea? Yes, but the
ship was filled with men ready to mutiny, and they were hungry for my
wealth. They would never have allowed me to destroy that gold! So I
thought of a way--ah, it was an inspiration!--by which I could destroy
my body, my wealth, and the lives of all the mutineers at once. Like
Samson, I would pull the house on the heads of my enemies. Ha, ha, ha!"
His laughter was rather a grimace than a sound.
He went on: "See how cunningly, how carefully I worked! First I blew up
the three lifeboats so that there would be no escape for the crew. Then
I tampered with the dynamo so that it burned out, and they could not
send out a wireless call for help. That touch was the best of all.
Well, well! Then I went down into the hold, deep down, and I started a
fire in the cargo. And then--"
"Oh, my God!" stammered Sloan.
The others were white, but they gestured at Sloan to silence him. The
whisper continued: "And then I knew that they were done for. The wheat
would not break into a sudden flame, but it would smolder and glow and
spread from hour to hour and from day to day. The crew would know
nothing of it for a long time. But when they guessed at what was
happening, they would open the hatches to fight the fire with water.
Then what would happen? Ah, my dear, there was the crowning touch; for
when they opened the hatches, the current of air would feed the fire
and the ship would be instantly in flames. And so they would burn like
dogs with water, water all around them, and no boats to put off in--no
boats. Ha, ha, ha!"
He choked with his laughter and gasped for breath.
"If it were possible for a bodiless spirit to perish, I should think
that I am dying twice, Beatrice. The air is thick--this air of hell!"
He broke off short in his whispering and raised himself suddenly to an
elbow. With the coming of death his voice grew strong and rang clearly:
"They are in the corners--they are coming closer! Beatrice! Brush them
away with your fingers as cold as snow. Beatrice, oh, my dear!"
And he was dead as he fell back on the bunk.
Sloan was already on the deck outside the wireless house, shrieking
with all the power of his lungs: "Fire! Fire! The wheat in the hold!"
CHAPTER 37
And as Harrigan and McTee, followed by Kate and Campbell, ran out to
the open air, they saw the crowd of the mutineers surge across the
waist toward Sloan with upturned faces, wondering, and ready for
terror. Hovey broke through their midst.
"Hovey!" shouted McTee. "Look at the mist over the sides! Draw a
breath; smell of it! It is fire! Henshaw has set fire in the hold!"
It was plain to every brain in the instant. To every man came the
thought of the complaints of the firemen concerning the heat in the
hold of the _Heron_; the noxious odor like musty straw; the warmth, the
deadly warmth of the decks. A volcano smoldered beneath them, and the
mist was the sign of the coming outbreak of flames. And the mutineers
stood mute, gaping at one another, looking for some hope, some comfort,
and finding the same question repeated in every eye. McTee climbed down
the ladder to the waist, followed by the rest of the fugitives. Ten
minutes before they would have been torn to pieces by the wolf pack.
Now no man had a thought for anything save his own death.
"Hovey," ordered McTee in his voice of thunder, "tell these fellows
they must obey my voice from now on."
They roared, snatching at this ghost of a hope: "We will! We'll follow
Black McTee! Hovey has brought us to hell!"
In a moment everyone was in frantic motion. Campbell started for the
engine room to see what had caused the stopping of the ship. McTee
himself, followed by Harrigan and the stokers, went down to the
fireroom. It was fiery hot there, indeed. When the Scotchman swung down
the ladder into the hole, it was like a blast from a furnace, and the
air was foul with the nauseating odor of the smoldering wheat. The men
gasped and struggled for breath, and yet they began to work without
complaint.
All hands set to. The fires were shaken down and started afresh; the
coal shoveled out from the bunkers. Then a fireman collapsed without a
cry of warning. They carried him out to the upper air, and brought down
two of the sailors to take his place. And the sailors went without a
murmur. They were fighting for the one chance in ten thousand, the
chance of bringing the ship to shore before the fire burst out in flame
which would lick the _Heron_ from one end to the other within an hour.
McTee went up to the bridge to take the bearings and lay the course. By
the time his reckonings were completed, steam was up; Campbell had
remedied the trouble in the engine room; the propeller began to turn,
and a yell went up from the ship and tingled to heaven. When McTee came
down from the bridge to the waist, leaving Hovey at the wheel, a dozen
of the tars gathered about the new skipper, weeping and shouting, for
in their eyes he was the deliverer, it was he who was giving them the
fighting chance to live.
And how they fought! There was something awe-inspiring and almost
beyond the human in the fury with which they labored. It was in the
fireroom that their chief difficulty lay. The fireroom of a large
steamer is a veritable furnace, and when to this heat was added that
from the hold of the ship, it was truly a miracle that any living thing
could exist there.
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