The Max Brand Megapack (20 page)

Henshaw was not there. He had evidently gone into the inner room, and McTee sat down to wait. The time had come for him to ask questions, and he was nerving himself for the ordeal. His plans were disturbed by a muffled sound from the inner cabin, a sound so unusual that McTee stiffened in his chair with horror and then rose slowly.

Tiptoe he stole across the floor and laid a hand lightly on the knob of the door of the captain’s private room. It turned easily without any creak, and the door opened a few inches. There sat Henshaw with his back to McTee, leaning over a table. Gold pieces were spilled loosely across the surface of the wood—possibly the contents of three or four of those small canvas bags—and Henshaw leaned forward with his forehead resting upon the glittering yellow coins and one hand clutching a quantity of them. His other hand held a photograph of the dead Beatrice. The sound continued. It was the low sobbing of the captain, a hoarse and horrible murmur.

McTee closed the door and went back onto the deck, for he suddenly understood the futility of questions. Harrigan, in the meantime, had waited for the return of McTee, and when the latter did not come, the Irishman lingered on the bridge for an hour or more, pottering about with his brush in a pretense of finishing up a perfect job. His attention was drawn then by a gathering crowd and bustle in the waist of the ship between the wheelhouse and the forecastle. The entire crew of the
Heron
seemed to be mustering, with the exception of those needed to keep the engines running. They stood in a circle, leaving the cover of the hatch clear.

He hurried down to witness the ceremony, and as he reached the waist, he saw Henshaw take up his position with folded arms in the very center of the hatch. A moment later Kamasura was led up by Eric Borgson and Jan Van Roos.

The two mates, under the direction of Henshaw, lashed the Japanese face down upon the hatch, pulling his arms and legs taut with ropes that fastened to the bolts on all sides of the hatch cover.

When he was securely tied, Kamasura was stripped to the waist, and then Harrigan saw Borgson, grinning evilly, step up with a long whip in his hand. It was a blacksnake, heavily loaded and stiff at the butt and tapering gradually to a slender, supple, snakelike body, with a thin, sinister lash. Borgson whirled the whip around his head to get its balance. Henshaw stepped back, still with folded arms.

“This fellow Kamasura,” he announced to the crew, “has blown up the boats of the
Heron
. There’s no doubt of it. Borgson caught him almost in the act. I could do worse things than this to Kamasura, but I’ve decided to flog him until he confesses.”

There was not a word of answer from the crew; they waited, hushed, ominous. A whisper sounded in the ear of Harrigan, who stood with gritting teeth and clenched hands.

It was McTee who murmured: “Hold onto yourself, Harrigan. Our time hasn’t come.”

“I’ll hold onto myself all right,” said Harrigan, “but look at the crew.”

In fact, there was something more deadly than any snarling of a crowd in this unnatural silence of many men. Also they were not looking at Kamasura; they were staring, every man, at the bos’n, who stood with his whistle hanging from a cord around his neck.

“Begin!” said Henshaw.

The blacksnake whistled around the head of the third mate and there was a long scream from Kamasura—but the blacksnake only cracked loudly in the air. Borgson laughed with a hideous delight. Harrigan, sickly white, bowed his head. Again the blacksnake whirled and again it cracked, but this time on naked flesh, and the scream of Kamasura was like the cut of a knife.

Again, again, and again the blacksnake fell, and now Kamasura twisted his head toward the captain and cried in a voice made thin by pain and rage at once: “I confess! Captain, let me speak!”

At a gesture from Henshaw, the third mate reluctantly stepped back, drawing the lash of the blacksnake slowly through his hands with a caressing touch. Van Roos, the color completely gone from his usually blooming cheeks, cut the ropes, and Kamasura rose, facing the captain. He extended a naked, trembling arm toward Hovey.

“Mutiny!” he yelled. “The whole crew—the whole forecastle—mutiny, Cap’n Henshaw! I know—”

The piercing whistle of the bos’n cut into his speech, and the crew rolled forward over the hatch with a single shout that might have come from one throat except for its shrill volume.

CHAPTER 32

“It’s come!” cried Harrigan to McTee. “Kate!”

But even as he whirled, two sailors leaped on him from behind and bore him to the deck. At the same time a gun flashed in the hand of Henshaw, and he fired twice into the onrushing host. Two men crumpled up on deck and the others gave back a little—they were glad to turn to the easier prey of Van Roos and Borgson, who were instantly overpowered, while Henshaw, with brandished revolver, made his way toward the main cabin.

The second and smaller rush of the mutineers had been toward Harrigan and McTee, where the two men stood together. Harrigan, taken from behind, went down at once and then grappled with his assailants before they could use their knives. McTee stood over the struggling three and smote right and left among the mutineers. A knife caught his shirt at the shoulder and ripped it to the waist; a club whizzed past his head, but his great fists smashed home on face and head and sent men staggering and sprawling back. The confusion gave him an instant of freedom in a small circle, and he leaned and caught one of Harrigan’s assailants by the heels. It was a little man, a withered fellow scarcely five feet tall and literally dried up by the tropic heat. He was wrenched from his hold, heaved into the air, and then whirled about the head of McTee like a mighty bludgeon. As the sailors rushed again, that living club smashed against them and flung them back. Even to the herculean strength of McTee it was a prodigious feat, but the danger gave him for the moment the power of a madman. Twice he swung the shrieking little sailor, and twice that body smashed back the attack, while Harrigan leaped to his feet in time to knock down a man who sprang at McTee from behind with a brandished knife.

All this had occurred in the space of half a dozen seconds; the first rush of the mutineers was spent; before they could lunge forward again, McTee flung the half-lifeless body of his human weapon into the midst of the crowd and, turning with Harrigan at his shoulder, they sprang up the ladder to the main cabin door.

Hovey was screaming commands over the din; the crowd rushed after the fugitives.

Harrigan shouted at McTee: “Get Kate! Take her aft to the wireless house! I’ll hold ’em here a minute and then join you!”

McTee nodded and tore down the deck toward Kate’s cabin, while Harrigan pulled the knife of Kamasura from his trousers and thrust it in the face of the first man up the ladder. The blade slashed him from nose to cheekbone, and he toppled back with a yell, bearing with him in the fall the two men immediately below. Harrigan glanced across to the other ladder on the farther side of the deck, and saw Kate and McTee running aft. He turned and raced after them.

The wireless house was their one hope. There the sea would be at their backs, and the only approach for the mutineers in their rush would be up the ladders reaching from the deck below; the main cabin, on the other hand, had half a dozen places from which it could be assailed. This had been instantly seen by the other officers, and when Harrigan reached the ladder to the deck at the other end of the cabin, he saw Salvain standing in front of the wireless house, Kate and McTee in the act of climbing the steps from the waist, and White Henshaw, with his hair blowing, following hard in their tracks.

Harrigan reached the waist at a leap, and in another moment joined the survivors in the shelter of the wireless house—Kate, McTee, Henshaw, Salvain, and Sloan, a party of six. They were safe for the moment, for the mutineers would certainly never venture an attack against the wheelhouse, where they could be beaten from the ladders by the defendants, but they were safe without food, without water.

Then, as they stared hopelessly across the waist, they saw three men led across the rear promenade of the main cabin. Their hands were tied behind them, and they were kicked forward by the mutineers, first Jacob Van Roos—they could note his pallor even at that distance—then Eric Borgson, scowling and defiant, and dragged along by the men of the forecastle; and last came Douglas Campbell, surrounded by the firemen. Finally, Jerry Hovey shouted across the waist:

“Black McTee! Oh, Black McTee!”

The Scotchman raised his hand as a token that he heard.

“You’re done for, McTee, you and all the rest. You’re bound to starve, and when you’re weak, we’ll come and carry you forward, and you’ll die by inches as the other three are going to die; but if you want to live—you and the girl and all of you, give us White Henshaw to treat as he ought to be treated. Give us him, an’ the rest of you’ll be saved. If you won’t trust us, we’ll bring you food and water enough to keep you alive till we reach shore. Give us Henshaw and—”

He broke off, for he heard the harsh, ringing laughter of White Henshaw. The captain held up his revolver.

“No use, Hovey,” he called. “I fired five shots, but I saved one for myself. Ha, ha, ha!” And his mirthless cackle broke out once more.

“Look!” cried Kate, and pointed at the captain.

Down the left side of Henshaw, bright against the white of his coat, was a rapidly growing stain of red. They could see the small slit in the cloth where a knife thrust had entered his side, but the old buccaneer would give no sign of his injury. He waved his gun toward Kate as she advanced an impulsive step toward him.

“Keep back!” he commanded. “Woman and man, I trust none of you. Give me distance or I’ll use this bullet on the first of you and give what’s left of me to the sea.”

“By the Lord, he’s wounded!” cried Harrigan. “Steady, old heart of oak, you’ve nothing to fear from us. Hovey! Oh-h, Hovey, we’ll see you damned before we give up the captain!”

The bos’n, choking with his fury, shook his clenched fist at them and disappeared into the cabin.

“Now lie down,” said McTee to the captain, “and we’ll fix you up. Are you badly hurt?”

“Enough to finish me,” said Henshaw calmly, “but keep off! I’ll have none of you! None of your tricks!”

His old body was trembling with the pain of his wound, but the hand which held the gun leveled on McTee was as steady as a rock. Kate pushed McTee aside and turned a glance of scorn on the others.

“You’d let him die among you—for fear of an old man and his wretched revolver?”

She faced Henshaw.

“Go into the wireless house, Captain Henshaw, and I will go in alone with you. If you don’t trust me, you can keep your revolver at my breast while I dress your wound—but see!—you will bleed to death in a short time!”

He laughed again, saying: “Girl, there’s nothing between heaven and hell that can make me die by anything but fire—fire at sea—blue fire.”

She whitened at sight of his frenzied, yellow face, and then she saw Harrigan slipping around to take the captain from the rear. He saw the shadow of the Irishman just too late, and whirled with a curse at the same time that Harrigan’s iron hand seized the gun. For an instant he struggled, but those mighty arms gathered him as easily as a woman lifts a stubborn child, and he was carried into the wireless house and placed on Sloan’s bunk. As soon as he discovered that he was helpless in their hands, he ceased struggling and lay without a motion while they tore away his coat and shirt and Kate started to dress the deep, ugly wound.

She had scarcely finished when a shout, or rather a scream, from fifty throats brought them running out of the wireless house. Again and again that cry was repeated from the main cabin, and they could not tell whether it was despair or agony that inspired it.

Neither of these emotions caused it. All that time Hovey had been kneeling in front of the captain’s safe working at the combination, for he had seen Henshaw open it several times and thought that he could imitate the captain’s motions. But he failed. Around him packed the sailors in both cabins, a serried mass of intent faces and burning eyes. But at last Hovey stood up and announced his failure—he could not work the combination. Then came that yell which those in the wireless house heard, a cry of mingled rage and disappointment. Gold in untold quantities was here just within their reach—and yet just beyond it. A few inches of steel kept the gold safe.

Men beat it with their bare hands in a senseless fury, till Garry Cochrane slipped through the dense mass of sailors.

“I know something about locks. What do I get, lads, if I open this one?”

“Five shares!”

“Ten shares!”

“Ten shares!” nodded Cochrane. “Good! Now keep still. I need quiet.”

They were mute; not a breath was drawn; they scarcely dared move their eyes lest he should be disturbed. Cochrane touched the lock lightly and then rubbed his fingertips vigorously back and forth on the carpet— anything to stimulate those fine nerves which are as valuable to some criminals as eyes are to normal people.

With ear pressed close to the combination, he turned it slowly, by delicate degrees, waiting for the telltale click. They saw him set his teeth and grow eager as a hound on a scent of blood; they saw the fingers move rapidly and nervously, and then came a click which was audible through the entire room, and the door of the safe swung open. Still no one stirred, no one breathed. He took out a small canvas bag, he untied the top, he spilled the contents out, and then they saw bright gold, gold which inspires, and gold which destroys, gold the tempter and the murderer.

A wild scramble followed. They swept the gold up in handfuls and tossed it into the air, laughing like madmen as the light gleamed on the yellow surfaces. And at length when they were wearied of touching it and caressing it, Hovey apportioned the spoils: to Cochrane, by common assent, the ten shares, a fortune; to Sam Hall, Kyle, and Flint, two shares each, for they had been leaders in the fight; to himself ten shares, also by universal voice, and to each of the others, forty in all, his portion.