Books: Harrigan
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Max Brand >> Harrigan
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"D'you call this clean?" rumbled McTee. "All over again!"
And Harrigan dropped to his knees without protest and commenced
scrubbing again. As he worked, he hummed a tune and saw the narrow jaw
of McTee jut out. Harrigan smiled.
He had scarcely finished stowing his bucket and brush away when the
bos'n brought him word that he was wanted in the fireroom. Masters's
face was serious.
"What's the main idea?" asked Harrigan.
The bos'n cast a worried eye fore and aft.
"Black McTee's breakin' you," he said; "you're getting the whip."
"Well?"
"God help you, that's all. Now get below."
There was a certain fervency about this speech which impressed even
Harrigan. He brooded over it on his way to the fireroom. There he was
set to work passing coal. He had to stand in a narrow passage scarcely
wide enough for him to turn about in. On either side was a towering
black heap which slanted down to his feet. Midway between the piles was
the little door through which he shoveled the coal into the fireroom.
All was stifling hot, with a breath of coal dust and smoke to choke the
lungs. Even the Greek firemen sweated and cursed, though they were used
to that environment. An ordinary man might have succumbed simply to
that fiery, foul atmosphere. It was like a glimpse of hell, dark,
hopeless.
It was not the heat or the atmosphere which troubled Harrigan, but his
hands. His skin was puffed and soft from the scrubbing of the bridge.
Now as he grasped the rough wood of the short-handled scoop the
epidermis wore quickly and left his palms half raw. For a time he
managed to shift his grip, bringing new portions of his hands to bear
on the wood, but even this skin was worn away in time. When he finished
his shift, his hands were bleeding in places and raw in the palms.
As he came on deck, he tied them up with bits of soft waste in lieu of
a bandage and made no complaint, yet his fingers were trembling when he
ate supper that night. He caught the eyes of the rest of the crew
studying him with a cold calculation. They were estimating the strength
of his endurance and he knew at once that they had been through the
same trial one by one until they were broken.
He could see that they hated the captain and he wondered why they would
ship with him time and again. He watched their expressions when Black
McTee was mentioned, and then he understood. They were waiting for the
time when the captain should weaken. Then they would have their
revenge.
The second day was a repetition of the first. He began with scrubbing
down the bridge. The suds, strong with lye, ate shrewdly at his raw
hands. Still he hummed as he worked and watched McTee's frown grow
dark. When he was ordered below to the fireroom, he wrapped his hands
in the soft waste again. That helped him for a time, but after the
first two hours the waste matted and grew hard with perspiration and
blood. He had to throw it away and take the shovel handle against his
bare skin. He told himself that it was only a matter of time before
calluses would form, but what chance was there for a formation of
calluses when the water and suds softened his hands every morning?
On the third day he was a little more used to the torture. His hands
were hopelessly raw now, but still he made no complaint and stuck with
his task. That night he secured a rag and retreated to the stretch of
deck between the wheelhouse and the after-cabin, where he squatted
beside a bucket of water and washed his hands carefully. Both hands
were puffed and red; one of the creases in the left palm bled a steady
trickle. He washed them slowly, with infinite relish of the cool water,
until he felt that peculiar sensation which warns us that we are
watched by another eye.
He looked up to see a young woman standing above him at the rail of the
after-cabin. She had been watching him by the light from the window of
the wheelhouse.
CHAPTER 4
"Let me bandage your hands," she said. "I have some salve in my room."
Her voice was a balm to the troubled heart of Harrigan. His knotted
forehead relaxed.
"Are you coming up?"
"Aye."
He ran up the ladder and followed her to a cabin. She rummaged through
a suitcase and finally brought out a little tin box of salve and a roll
of gauze. As she stooped with her back to him, he saw that her hair was
red--not fiery red like his, but a deep dull bronze, with points of
gold where the light struck it. When she straightened and turned, her
eyes went wide, looking up to him, for he bulked huge in the tiny
cabin.
"What a big fellow you are!"
He did not answer for a moment; he was too busy watching her eyes,
which were sea-green, and strangely pleasant and restful.
"Do you know me?" she asked with a slight frown.
"'Scuse me," muttered Harrigan. "I thought at first I did."
He abased his glance while she took one of his hands and turned it palm
up.
"Ugh!" she muttered. "How did this happen?"
"Work."
"Do you mean to say they make you work with your hands in this
condition?"
"Sure."
"Poor fellow! That black captain!"
Her voice had changed from a peculiarly soft, low accent to a shrill
tone that made Harrigan start.
"Poor fellow!" she repeated. "Sit down."
The campstool creaked under the burden of his weight. She pulled up the
chair in front of him and placed his left hand on her knees.
"This is peroxide. Tell me if it hurts too much."
She spilled some of the liquid across his palm; it frothed.
"Ouch!" grunted Harrigan involuntarily.
She caught his wrists with both hands.
"Why, your whole arm is trembling! You must be in torture with this.
Have you made any complaint?"
"No."
She studied him for a moment, scenting a mystery somewhere and guessing
that he would not speak of it. And she asked no questions. She said not
a word and merely bowed her head and started to apply the salve with
delicate touches. For the result, a confession of all his troubles
tumbled up the big man's throat to his tongue. He had to set his teeth
to keep it back.
She became aware of those cold, incurious eyes studying her face as she
wrapped the gauze bandage deftly around the injured palms.
"Why do you watch me so closely?"
It disarmed him. Those possibilities of tenderness came about his
stiff-set lips, and the girl wondered.
"I was thinkin' about my home town."
"Where is it?"
He frowned and waved his hand in a sweep which included half the points
on the compass.
"Back there."
She waited, wrapping up the gauze bandage.
"When I was a kid, I used to go down to the harbor an' watch the ships
comin' in an' goin' out," he went on cautiously.
She nodded, and he resumed with more confidence: "I'd sit on the
pierhead an' watch the ships. I knew they was bringing the smell of far
lands in their holds."
There was a little pause; then his head tilted back and he burst into
the soft, thick brogue: "Ah-h, I was afther bein' woild about the
schooners blowin' out to sea wid their sails shook out like clouds. An'
then I'd look down to the wather around the pier, an' it was green,
deep green, ah-h, the deep sea-green av it! An' I would look into it
an' dream. Whin I seen your eyes--"
He stopped, grown cold as a man will when he feels that he has laid his
inner self indecently bare to the eye of the world. But she did not
stir; she did not smile.
"I felt like a kid again," said Harrigan, recovering from the brogue.
"Like a kid sittin' on the pierhead an' watchin' the green water. Your
eyes are that green," he finished.
Self-consciousness, the very thing which she had been trying to keep
the big sailor from, turned her blood to fire. She knew the quick color
was running from throat to cheek; she knew the cold, incurious eye
would note the change. He was so far aware of the alteration that he
rose and glanced at the door.
"Good-by," she said, and then quite forgetting herself: "I shall ask
the captain to see that you are treated like a white man."
"You will not!"
"I beg your pardon?" she said, but the hint of insulted dignity was
lost on Harrigan.
"You will not," he repeated. "It'd simply make him worse."
She was glad of the chance to be angry; it would explain her
heightening color.
"The captain must be an utter brute."
"I figger he's nine tenths man, an' the other tenth devil, but there
ain't no human bein' can change any of them ten parts. Good-by. I'm
thankin' you. My name's Harrigan."
She opened the door for him.
"If you wish to have that dressing changed, ask for Miss Malone."
"Ah-h!" said Harrigan. "Malone!"
She explained coldly: "I'm Scotch, not Irish."
"Scotch or Irish," said Harrigan, and his head tilted back as it always
did when he was excited. "You're afther bein' a real shport, Miss
Malone!"
"Miss Malone," she repeated, closing the door after him, and vainly
attempting to imitate the thrill which he gave to the word. "What a
man!"
She smiled for a moment into space and then pulled the cord for the
cabin boy.
CHAPTER 5
The cabin boy did duty for all the dozen passengers, and therefore he
was slow in answering. When he appeared, she asked him to carry the
captain word that she wished to speak with him. He returned in a short
time to say that Captain McTee would talk with her now in his cabin.
She followed aft to the captain's room. He did not rise when she
entered, but turned in his chair and relinquished a long, black,
fragrant cigar.
"Don't stop smoking," she said. "I want you in a pleasant mood to hear
what I have to say."
Without reply he placed the cigar in his mouth and the bright black
eyes fastened upon her. That suddenly intent regard was startling, as
if he had leaned over and spoken a word in her ear. She shrugged her
shoulders as if trying to shake off a compelling hand and then settled
into a chair.
"I've come to say something that's disagreeable for you to hear and for
me to speak."
Still he would not talk. He was as silent as Harrigan. She clenched her
hands and drove bravely ahead. She told how she had called the
red-headed sailor up to the after-cabin and dressed his hurts, and she
described succinctly, but with rising anger the raw and swollen
condition of his fingers. The captain listened with apparent enjoyment;
she could not tell whether he was relishing her story or his slowly
puffed cigar. In the end she waited for his answer, but evidently none
was forthcoming.
"Now," she said at last, "I know something about ships and sailors, and
I know that if this fellow was to appeal against you after you touch
port, a judge would weigh a single word of yours against a whole
sentence of Harrigan's. It would be a different matter if a
disinterested person pressed a charge of cruelty against you. I am such
a person; I would press such a charge; I have the money, the time, and
the inclination to do it."
She read the slight hesitation in his manner, not as if he were
impressed by what she had to say, but as though he was questioning
himself as to whether he should give her any answer at all. It made her
wish fervently that she were a man--and a big one. He spoke then, as if
an illuminating thought had occurred to him.
"You know Harrigan's record?"
"No," she admitted grudgingly.
McTee sighed as if with deep relief and leaned back in his chair. His
smile was sympathetic and it altered his face so marvelously that she
caught her breath.
"Of course that explains it, Miss Malone. I don't doubt that he was
clever enough to make you think him abused."
"He didn't say a word of accusation against anyone."
"Naturally not. When a man is bad enough to seem honest--"
He drew a long, slow puff on his cigar by way of finishing his sentence
and his eyes smiled kindly upon her.
"I knew that he would do his worst to start mutiny among the crew; I
didn't think he could get as far as the passengers."
Her confidence was shaken to the ground. Then a new suspicion came to
her.
"If he is such a terrible character, why did you let him come aboard
your ship?"
Instead of answering, he pulled a cord. The bos'n appeared in a moment.
"Tell this lady how Harrigan came aboard," ordered the captain, and he
fastened a keen eye upon the bos'n.
"Made it on the jump while we was pullin' out of dock," said the
sailor. "Just managed to get his feet on the gangplank--came within an
ace of falling into the sea."
"That's all."
The bos'n retreated and McTee turned back to Kate Malone.
"He had asked me to sign him up for this trip," he explained. "If I'd
set him ashore, he'd probably have been in the police court the next
morning. So I let him stay. To be perfectly frank with you, I had a
vague hope that gratitude might make a decent sailor out of him for a
few days. But the very first night he started his work he began to talk
discontent among the men in the forecastle, and such fellows are always
ready to listen. Of course I could throw Harrigan in irons and feed him
on bread and water; my authority is absolute at sea. But I don't want
to do that if I can help it. Instead, I have been trying to discipline
him with hard work. He knows that he can come to me at any time and
speak three words which will release him from his troubles. But he
won't say them--yet!"
"Really?" she breathed.
She began to feel deeply honored that such a man as McTee would make so
long an explanation to her.
"Shall I call him up here and ask him to say them now?"
"Would you do that? Captain McTee, I'm afraid that I've been very
foolish to bother you in this matter, but--"
He silenced her with a wave of the hand, and pulled the cord.
"Bring up Harrigan," he said, when the bos'n appeared again.
"I've considered myself a judge of human nature," she apologized, "but
I shall think a long time before I venture another decision."
"You're wrong to feel that way. It would take a shrewd judge to see
through Harrigan unless his record were known."
The door opened and the bos'n entered with Harrigan. He fixed his eyes
upon the captain without a glance for Kate Malone.
"Harrigan," said McTee, "I've been telling Miss Malone that you can be
released from your trouble by saying half a dozen words to me. And you
know that you can. You will be treated better than anyone in the crew
if you will put your hand in mine and say: 'Captain McTee, I give you
my word of honor as a man to do my best to obey orders during the rest
of this trip and to hold no malice against you for anything that has
happened to me so far.'
"For you see," he explained to the girl, "he probably thinks himself
aggrieved by my discipline. Will you say it, Harrigan?"
Instead of answering, the cold eye of Harrigan turned on Kate.
"I told you not to speak to the captain," he said.
"Ah," said McTee, "you were clever enough for that?"
"Do you say nothing, Harrigan?" she said incredulously. "Do you really
refuse to speak those words to the captain after he has been generous
enough to give you a last chance to make a man of yourself?"
Harrigan turned pale as he glanced at the captain. Her scorn and
contempt gave a little metallic ring to her voice.
"You need not be afraid. Captain McTee hasn't told me anything about
your record."
Harrigan smiled, but in such a manner that she stepped back. "Easy,"
said McTee, "you don't need to fear him in here. He knows that I'm his
master."
"I'm glad you didn't tell me his record," she answered.
"I can read it in his eyes."
"Lady," said Harrigan, and his head tilted back till the cords stood
strongly out at the base of his throat, "I'm afther askin' your pardon
for thinkin' ye had ever a dr-rop av hot Irish blood in ye."
"Take him below, bos'n," broke in McTee, "and put him in on the night
shift in the fireroom."
No hours of Harrigan's life were bitterer than that night shift. The
bandages saved his hands from much of the torture of the shovel handle,
but there was deep night in his heart. Early in the morning one of the
firemen ran to the chief engineer's room and forced open the door.
"The red-headed man, sir," he stammered breathlessly.
The chief engineer awoke with a snarl. He had drunk much good Scotch
whisky that evening, and the smoke of it was still dry in his throat
and cloudy in his brain.
"And what the hell is wrong with the red-headed man now?" he roared.
"Ain't he doin' two men's work still?"
"Two? He's doin' ten men's work with his hands rolled in cloth and the
blood soakin' through, an' he sings like a devil while he works. He's
gone crazy, sir."
"Naw, he ain't," growled the chief; "that'll come later. Black McTee is
breakin' him an' he'll be broke before he goes off his nut. Now get to
hell out of here. I ain't slept a wink for ten days."
The fireman went back to his work muttering, and Harrigan sang the rest
of the night.
CHAPTER 6
In the morning there was the usual task of scrubbing down the bridge.
The suds soaked through the bandages at once and burned his hands like
fire. He tore away the cloths and kept at his task, for he knew that if
he refused to continue, he became by that act of disobedience a
mutineer.
The fourth day was a long nightmare, but at the end of it Harrigan was
still at his post. That night the pain kept him awake. For forty-eight
hours he had not closed his eyes. The next morning, as he prepared his
bucket of suds and looked down at his blood-caked hands, the thought of
surrender rose strongly for the first time. Two things fought against
it: his fierce pride and a certain awe which he had noted as it grew
from day to day in the eyes of the rest of the crew. They were
following the silent battle between the great Irishman and the captain
with a profound, an almost uncanny interest.
As he scrubbed the bridge that morning, McTee, as always, stood staring
out across the bows, impassive, self-contained as a general overlooking
a field of battle. And the temptation to surrender swelled up in the
throat of Harrigan like the desire for speech in a child. He kept his
teeth hard together and prayed for endurance. Only five days, and it
might be weeks before they made a port. Even then the captain might put
him in irons rather than risk his escape.
"Harrigan," said McTee suddenly. "Don't keep it up. You're bound to
break. Speak those words now that I told you to say and you're a free
man."
Harrigan looked up and the words formed at the base of his tongue.
Harrigan looked down and saw his crimson hands. The words fell back
like dust on his heart.
"Take you for my master an' swear to forget what you've done?" he said,
and his voice was hardly more than a whisper. "McTee, if I promised you
that I'd perjure blacker 'n hell an' kill you someday when your back
was turned. As it is, I'll kill you while we're standin' face to face."
McTee laughed, low, deep, and his eyes were half closed as if he heard
pleasant music. Harrigan grinned up at him.
"I'll kill you with my bare hands. There's no gun or knife could do
justice to what's inside of me."
His head tilted back and his whisper went thick like that of a
drunkard: "Ah-h, McTee, look at the hands, look at the hands! They're
red now for a sign av the blood av ye that'll someday be on 'em!"
And he picked up his bucket and brush and went down the deck. The laugh
of McTee followed him.
Having framed the wish in words, it was never absent from Harrigan's
mind now. It made that day easier for him. He stopped singing. He
needed all his brain energy to think of how he should kill McTee.
It was this hungry desire which sustained him during the days which
followed. The rest of the crew began to sense the mighty emotion which
consumed Harrigan. When they saw both him and McTee on the deck, their
eyes traveled from one to the other making comparisons, for they felt
that these men would one day meet hand to hand. They could not stay
apart any more than the iron can keep from the magnet.
Finally Harrigan knew that they were nearing the end of their long
journey. The port was only a few days distant, for they were far in the
south seas and they began to pass islands, and sometimes caught sight
of green patches of water. Those were the coral reefs, the terror of
all navigators, for they grow and change from year to year. To a
light-draught ship like the _Mary Rogers_ these seas were comparatively
safe, but not altogether. Even small sailing craft had come to grief in
those regions.
Yet the islands, the reefs, the keen sun, the soft winds, the singing
of the sailors, all these things came dimly to Harrigan, for he knew
that his powers of resistance were almost worn away. His face was a
mask of tragedy, and his body was as lean as a starved wolf in winter.
His will to live, his will to hate, alone remained.
Each morning it was harder for him to leave the bridge without speaking
those words to the captain. He rehearsed them every day and vowed they
would never pass his lips. And every day he knew that his vow was
weaker. When he was about to give in, he chanced to see McTee and Kate
Malone laughing together on the promenade.
It was McTee who saw Harrigan first and pointed him out to Kate. She
leaned against the rail and peered down at him, shuddering at the sight
of his drawn face and shadowed eyes. Then she turned with a little
shrug of repulsion.
McTee must have made some humorous comment, for she turned to glance
down at Harrigan again and this time she laughed. Blind rage made the
blood of the Irishman hot. That gave him his last strength, but even
this ran out. Finally he knew that the next day was his last, and when
that day came, he counted the hours. They passed heavy-footed, as time
goes for one condemned to die. And then he sat cross-legged on his bunk
and waited.
The giant Negro came, bringing word that the bos'n wanted him to scrub
down the bridge. He remained with his head bowed, unhearing. The bos'n
himself came, cursing. He called to Harrigan, and getting no answer
shook him by the shoulder. He put his hand under Harrigan's chin and
raised the listless head. It rolled heavily back and the dull eyes
stared up at him.
"God!" said the bos'n, and started back.
The head remained where he had placed it, the eyes staring straight up
at the ceiling.
"God!" whispered the bos'n again, and ran from the forecastle.
In time--it seemed hours--Harrigan heard many voices approaching.
McTee's bass was not among them, but he knew that McTee was coming, and
Harrigan wondered whether he would have the strength to refuse to obey
and accept the fate of the mutineer; or whether terror would overwhelm
him and he would drop to his knees and beg for mercy. He had once seen
a sight as horrible. The voices swept closer. McTee was bringing all
the available crew to watch the surrender, and Harrigan prayed with all
his soul to a nameless deity for strength.
Something stopped in the Irishman. It was not his heart, but something
as vital. The very movement of the earth seemed to be suspended when
the great form blocked the door to the forecastle and the ringing voice
called: "Harrigan!"
At the summons Harrigan's jaw fell loosely like that of an exhausted
distance-runner, and long-suppressed words grew achingly large in his
throat.
"I've had enough!" he groaned.
"Harrigan!" thundered the captain, and Harrigan knew that his attempted
speech had been merely a silent wish.
"God help me!" he whispered hoarsely, and in response to that brief
prayer a warm pulse of strength flooded through him. He sprang to his
feet.
"I refuse to work!" he cried, and this time the sound echoed back
against his ears.
There was a long pause.
"Mutiny!" said McTee at last, and his voice was harsh with the
knowledge of his failure. "Bring him outside in the open. I'll deal
with him!"
He retreated from the door, but before any of the sailors could go in
to fulfill the order, Harrigan walked of his own accord out onto the
deck. The wind on his face was sweet and keen; the vapors blew from
eyes and brain. He was himself again, weaker, but himself. He saw the
circle of wondering, awe-stricken faces; he saw McTee standing with
folded arms.
CHAPTER 7
"Mutiny on the high seas," the captain was saying, "is as bad as murder
on dry land. I could swing you by the neck from the mast for this,
Harrigan, and every court would uphold me. Or I can throw you into the
irons and leave your trial until we touch port. But--stand back!"
At the wave of his hand the circle spread. McTee stepped close to
Harrigan.
"I could do all that I've said, but why should I waste you on a prison
when there's a chance that I can use for myself? Harrigan, will you
stand up to me, man to man, and fist to fist, fighting fair and square
without advantage, and then if I thrash you, will you be my man? If I
beat you, will you swear to follow me, to do my bidding? Harrigan, if I
have you to work for me--I'll be king of the south seas!"
"Man to man--fair and square?" repeated Harrigan vaguely. "I'm weak.
You've had me in hell an' sweated me thin, McTee. If I was my old self,
I'd jump at the chance."
"Then it's irons for you and ten years for mutiny when we reach port."
"Ah-h, damn your heart!"
"But if I beat you, you'll be a lord of men, Harrigan, with only one
king over you--McTee! You'll live on the fat of the land and the
plunder of the high seas if you serve McTee."
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