CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XVIIITHE LOOMING SHADOWOld Captain Briggs, meanwhile, absorbed in the most cheerful speculations, was putting his best foot forward on the road to Hadlock’s Wharf. A vigorous foot it was, indeed, and right speedily it carried him. With pipe in full eruption, leaving a trail of blue smoke on the late afternoon air, and with boots creaking on the hard, white road, the captain strode along; while the Airedale trotted ahead as if he, too, understood that Master Hal was coming home.He made his way out of the village and so struck into the road to Endicutt itself. “The mingled scents of field and ocean” perfumed the air, borne on a breeze that blent the odors of sea and weedy foreshore and salt marsh with those of garden and orchard, into a kind of airy nectar that seemed to infuse fresh life into the captain’s blood. His blue eyes sparkled almost as brightly as the harbor itself, where gaily painted lobster-pot buoys heaved on the swells, where dories labored and where gulls spiraled.Briggs seemed to love the sea, that afternoon, almost as he had never loved it—the wonderful mystery of tireless, revivifying, all-engendering sea. Joy filled him that Hal, in whose life lived all the hopes of his race, should have inherited this love of the all-mother, Ocean.Deeply the captain breathed, as he strode onward, and felt that life was being very good to him. For the most part, rough hillocks and tangled clumps ofpine, hemlock and gleaming birch hid the bay from him; but now and again these gave way to sandy stretches, leaving the harbor broad-spread and sparkling to his gaze. And as the old man passed each such place, his eyes sought the incoming canvas of theSylvia Fletcher, that seemed to him shining more white, uprearing itself with more stately power, than that of any other craft.Now and then he hailed the boy as if Hal could hear him across all that watery distance. His hearty old voice lost itself in the ebbing, flowing murmur of the surf that creamed up along the pebbles, and dragged them down with a long, rattling slither. Everything seemed glad, to Captain Briggs—dories hauled up on the sand; blocks, ropes and drying sails; lobster-pots and fish-cars; buoys, rusty anchors half-buried—everything seemed to wear a festive air. For was not Hal, now homeward bound, now almost here?So overflowing were the old man’s spirits that with good cheer even beyond his usual hearty greeting he gave the glad news to all along the road, to those he met, to those who stopped their labors or looked up from their rest in yards and houses, to give him a good-evening.“Itisa good evening for me, neighbor,” he would say, with a fine smile, his beard snowy in the sun now low across the western hills. “A fine, wonderful evening! Hal’s coming home to-night; he’s on theSylvia Fletcher, just making in past the Rips, there—see, you can sight her, yourself.”And then he would pass on, glad, triumphant. And as he went, hammers would cease their caulking, brushes their painting; and the fishers mending their russet nets spread over hedge or fence would wish him joy.Here, there, a child would take his hand and walkwith him a little way, till the captain’s stout pace tired the short legs, or till some good mother from a cottage door would call the little one back for supper. Just so, fifty years ago, yellow-skinned Malay mothers had called their children within doors, at Batu Kawan, lest Mambang Kuning, the demon who dwelt in the sunset, should do them harm. And just so the sunset itself, that wicked night at the Malaykampong, had glowered redly.A mist was now rising from the harbor and the marshland, like an exhalation of pale ghosts, floating vaguely, quite as the smoke had floated above Batu Kawan. The slowly fading opalescence of the sky, reddening over the hills, bore great resemblance to those hues that in the long ago had painted the sky above the jagged mountain-chain in that far land. But of all this the captain was taking no thought.No, nothing could enter his mind save the glad present and the impending moment when he should see his Hal again, should feel the boy’s hand in his, put an arm about his shoulder and, quite unashamed, give him a kiss patriarchal in its fine simplicity and love.“Itisa good evening!” he repeated. “A wonderful evening, friends. Why, Hal’s been gone nearly six months. Gone since last Christmas. And now he’s coming back to me, again!”So he passed on. One thing he did not note: this—that though all the folk gave him Godspeed, no one inquired about Hal. That after he had passed, more than one shook a dubious head or murmured words of commiseration. Some few of the fisherfolk, leaning over their fences to watch after him, talked a little together in low tones as if they feared the breeze might bear their words to the old man.Of all this the captain remained entirely unaware. On he kept, into the straggling outskirts of Endicutt.Now he could see the harbor only at rare intervals; but in the occasional glimpses he caught of it, he saw theSylvia Fletcher’stops’ls crumpling down and perceived that she was headed in directly for the wharf. He hurried on, at a better pace. Above all things Hal must not come, and find no grandfather waiting for him. That, to the captain’s mind, would have been unthinkable treason.The captain strode along the cobblestoned main street, past the ship-chandlers’ stores, the sail-lofts and quaint old shops, and so presently turned to the right, into Hadlock’s Wharf. Here the going was bad, because of crates and barrels of iced fish and lobsters, and trucks, and a miscellany of obstructions. For a moment the captain was entirely blocked by a dray across the wharf, backing into a fish-shed. The driver greeted him with a smile.“Hello, cap!” cried he. “Gee, but you’re lookin’ fine. What’s up?”“It’s a great day for me,” Briggs answered. “A rare fine day. Hal, my boy, is coming home. He’s on theSylvia Fletcher, just coming in from Boston. Can’t you let me past, some way?”“Why, sure! Backup!” the driver commanded, savagely jerking at the bit. “You can make it, now, I reckon.”Then, as Briggs squeezed by, he stood looking after the old, blue-clad figure. He turned a lump in his cheek, and spat.“Gosh, ain’t it a shame?” he murmured. “Ain’t it a rotten, gorrammed shame?”By the time Captain Briggs, followed by the faithful Ruddy, reached the stringpiece of the wharf, the schooner was already close. The captain, breathing a little fast, leaned against a tin-topped mooring-pile, and with eager eyes scrutinized the on-coming vessel.All along the wharf, the usual contingent of sailors, longshoremen, fishers and boys had already gathered. To none the captain addressed a word. All his heart and soul were now fast riveted to the schooner, from whose deck plainly drifted words of command, and down from whose sticks the canvas was fast collapsing.With skilful handling and hardly a rag aloft, she eased alongside. Ropes came sprangling to the wharf. These, dragged in by volunteer hands, brought hawsers. And with a straining of hemp, theSylviahauled to a dead stop, groaning and chafing against the splintered timbers.Jests, greetings, laughter volleyed between craft and wharf. The captain, alone, kept silent. His eager eyes were searching the deck; searching, and finding not.“Hello, cap’n! Hey, there, Cap’n Briggs!” voices shouted. The mate waved a hand at him, and so did two or three others; but there seemed restraint in their greetings. Usually the presence of the captain loosened tongues and set the sailormen glad. But now—With a certain tightening round the heart, the captain remained there, not knowing what to do. He had expected to see Hal on deck, waving a cap at him, shouting to him. But Hal remained invisible. What could have happened? The captain’s eyes scrutinized the deck, in vain. Neither fore nor aft was Hal.Briggs stepped on the low rail of the schooner and went aboard. He walked aft, to the man at the wheel. Ruddy followed close at heel.“Hello, cap’n,” greeted the steersman. “Nice day, ain’t it?” His voice betrayed embarrassment.“Is my boy, Hal, aboard o’ you?” demanded Briggs.“Yup.”“Well, where is he?”“Below.”“Getting his dunnage?”“Guess so.” The steersman sucked at his cob pipe, very ill at ease. Briggs stared at him a moment, then turned toward the companion.A man’s head and shoulders appeared up the companionway. Out on deck clambered the man—a young man, black-haired and blue-eyed, with mighty shoulders and a splendidly corded neck visible in the low roll of his opened shirt. His sleeves, rolled up, showed arms and fists of Hercules.“Hal!” cried the captain, a world of gladness in his voice. Silence fell, all about; every one stopped talking, ceased from all activities; all eyes centered on Hal and the captain.“Hal! My boy!” exclaimed Briggs once more, but in an altered tone. He took a step or two forward. His hand, that had gone out to Hal, dropped at his side again.He peered at his grandson with troubled, wondering eyes. Under the weathered tan of his face, quick pallor became visible.“Why, Hal,” he stammered. “What—what’s happened? What’s the meaning of—of all this?”Hal stared at him with an expression the old man had never seen upon his face. The boy’s eyes were reddened, bloodshot, savage with unreasoning passion. The right eye showed a bruise that had already begun to discolor. The jaw had gone forward, become prognathous like an ape’s, menacing, with a glint of strong, white teeth. The crisp black hair, rumpled and awry, the black growth of beard—two days old, strong on that square-jawed face—and something in the full-throated poise of the head, brought back to the old captain, in a flash, vivid and horrible memories.Up from that hatchway he saw himself arising, once again, tangibly and in the living flesh. In the swing of Hal’s huge fists, the squaring of his shoulders, his brute expression of blood-lust and battle-lust, old Captain Briggs beheld, line for line, his other and barbaric self of fifty years ago.“Good God, Hal! What’sthismean?” he gulped, while along the wharf and on deck a staring silence held. But his question was lost in a hoarse shout from the cabin:“Here, you young devil! Come below, an’ apologize fer that!”Hal swung about, gripped both sides of the companion, and leaned down. The veins in his powerful neck, taut-swollen, seemed to start through the bronzed skin.“Apologize?” he roared down the companion. “To a lantern-jawed P. I. like you? Like hell I will!”Then he stood back, lifted his head and laughed with deep-lunged scorn.From below sounded a wordless roar. Up the ladder scrambled, simian in agility, a tall and wiry man of middle age. Briggs saw in a daze that this man was white with passion; he had that peculiar, pinched look about the nostrils which denotes the killing rage. Captain Fergus McLaughlin, of Prince Edward’s Island, had come on deck.“You——!” McLaughlin hurled at him, while the old man stood quivering, paralyzed. “If you was a member o’ my crew, damn y’r lip—”“Yes, but I’m not, you see,” sneered Hal, fists on hips. “I’m a passenger aboard your rotten old tub, which is almost as bad as your grammar and your reputation.” Contemptuously he eyed the Prince Edward’s Islander, from rough woolen cap to sea-boots, and back again, every look a blistering insult. Hishuge chest, rising, falling, betrayed the cumulating fires within. The hush among the onlookers grew ominous. “There’s not money enough in circulation to hire me to sign articles with a low-browed, sockless, bean-eating—”McLaughlin’s leap cut short the sentence. With a raw howl, the P. I. flung himself at Hal. Deft and strong with his stony-hard fists was McLaughlin, and the fighting heart in him was a lion’s. A hundred men had he felled to his decks, ere now, and not one had ever risen quite whole, or unassisted. In the extremity of his rage he laughed as he sprang.Lithely, easily, with the joy and love of battle in his reddened eyes, Hal ducked. Up flashed his right fist, a sledge of muscle, bone, sinew. The left swung free.The impact of Hal’s smash thudded sickeningly, with a suggestion of crushed flesh and shattered bone.Sprawling headlong, hands clutching air, McLaughlin fell. And, as he plunged with a crash to the planking, Hal’s laugh snarled through the tense air. From him he flung old Briggs, now in vain striving to clutch and hold his arm.“Got enough apology, you slab-sided herring-choker?” he roared, exultant. “Enough, or want some more? Apologize? You bet—with these! Come on, you or any of your crew, or all together, you greasy fishbacks!I’llapologize you!”Snarling into a laugh he stood there, teeth set, neck swollen and eyes engorged with blood, his terrible fists eager with the lust of war.CHAPTER XIXHAL SHOWS HIS TEETHFergus McLaughlin, though down, had not yet taken the count. True, Hal had felled him to his own deck, half-stunned; but the wiry Scot, toughened by many seas, had never yet learned to spell “defeat.” For him, the battle was just beginning. He managed to rise on hands and knees. Mouthing curses, he swayed there. Hal lurched forward to finish him with never a chance of getting up; but now old Captain Briggs had Hal by the arm again.“Hal, Hal!” he entreated. “For God’s sake—”Once more Hal threw the old man off. The second’s delay rescued McLaughlin from annihilation. Dazed, bleeding at mouth and nose, he staggered to his feet and with good science plunged into a clinch.This unexpected move upset Hal’s tactics of smashing violence. The Scot’s long, wiry arms wrapped round him, hampering his fist-work. Hal could do no more than drive in harmless blows at the other’s back. They swayed, tripped over a hawser, almost went down. From the crew and from the wharf ragged shouts arose, of fear, anger, purely malicious delight, for here was battle-royal of the finest. The sound of feet, running down the wharf, told of other contingents hastily arriving.“By gum!” approved the helmsman, forgetting to chew. He had more than once felt the full weight of McLaughlin’s fist. “By gum, now, but Mac’s in f’ra good takin’-down. If that lad don’t fist him proper, I miss my ’tarnal guess. Sick ’im, boy!”Blaspheming, Hal tore McLaughlin loose, flung him back, lowered his head and charged. But now the Scot had recovered a little of his wit. On deck he spat blood and a broken snag of tooth. His eye gleamed murderously. The excess of Hal’s rage betrayed the boy. His guard opened. In drove a stinging lefthander. McLaughlin handed him the other fist, packed full of dynamite. The boy reeled, gulping.“Come on, ye college bratlin’!” challenged the fighting Scot, and smeared the blood from his mouth. “This here ain’t your ship—not yet!”“My ship’s any ship I happen to be on!” snarled Hal, circling for advantage. Mac had already taught him to be cautious. Old Captain Brigg’s imploring cries fell from him, unheeded. “If thiswasmy ship, I’d wring your neck, so help me God! But as it is, I’ll only mash you to a jelly!”“Pretty bairn!” gibed McLaughlin, hunched into battle-pose, bony fists up. “Grandad’s pretty pet! Arrrh! Yewould, eh?” as Hal bored in at him.He met the rush with cool skill. True, Hal’s right went to one eye, closing it; but Hal felt the bite of knuckles catapulted from his neck.Hal delayed no more. Bull-like, he charged. By sheer weight and fury of blows he drove Mac forward of the schooner, beside the deck-house. Amid turmoil, the battle raged. The jostling crowd, shoved and pushed, on deck and on the wharf, to see this epic war. Bets were placed, even money.McLaughlin, panting, half-blind, his teeth set in a grin of rage, put every ounce he had left into each blow. But Hal outclassed him.A minute, two minutes they fought, straining, sweating, lashing. Then something swift and terrible connectedwith Mac’s jaw-point in a jolt that loosened his universe. Mac’s head snapped back. His arms flung up. He dropped, pole-axed, into the scuppers.For the first time in five-and-twenty years of fighting, clean and dirty, Fergus McLaughlin had taken a knockout.A mighty shout of exultation, fear and rage loosened echoes from the old fish-sheds. Three or four of the crew came jostling into the circle, minded to avenge their captain. Sneering, his chest heaving, but ready with both fists, Hal faced them.“Come on, all o’ you!” he flung, drunk with rage, his face bestial. A slaver of bloody froth trickled from the corner of his mouth. “Come on!”They hesitated. Gorilla-like, he advanced. Back through the crowd the overbold ones drew. No heart remained in them to tackle this infuriated fighting-machine.Hal set both fists on his hips, flung up his head and panted:“Apologize, will I? I, a passenger on this lousy tub, I’ll apologize to a bunch of down-east rough-necks, eh? If there’s anybody else wants any apology, I’m here!”None caught up the gage of battle. Bursting with fury that had to vent itself, Hal swung toward McLaughlin. The Scot had landed on a coil of hawser in the scuppers, that had somewhat broken his fall. Hal reached down, hauled him up and flung him backward over the rail. Thrice he struck with a fist reddened by McLaughlin’s blood. He wrenched at the unconscious man’s arm, snarling like an animal, his face distorted, eyes glazed and staring. A crunching told of at least one broken bone.Shouts of horror fell unheeded from his ears. He glared around.“My Gawd, he’s a-killin’ on him!” quavered a voice. “We can’t stan’ by an’ see him do murder!”Old Briggs, nerved to sudden action, ran forward.“Hal! For God’s sake, Hal!”“You stand back, grandad! He’s my meat!”Hal raised McLaughlin high above his head, with a sweep of wonderful power. He dashed the Scot to the bare planks with a horrible, dull crash, hauled back one foot and kicked the senseless man full in the mangled, blood-smeared face.A communal gasp of terror rose up then. Men shrank and quivered, stricken with almost superstitious fear. All had seen fights aplenty; most of them had taken a hand in brawls—but here was a new kind of malice. And silence fell, tense, heart-searching.Hal faced the outraged throng, and laughed with deep lungs.“There’s your champion, what’s left of him!” cried he. “Hewon’t bullyrag anybody for one while, believe me. Take him—I’m through with him!”Of a sudden the rage seemed to die in Hal, spent in that last, orgiastic convulsion of passion. He turned away, flung men right and left, and leaped down the companion. Swiftly he emerged with a suit-case. To his trembling, half-fainting grandfather he strode, unmindful of the murmur of curses and threats against him.“Come on, grandpop!” he said in a more normal tone. His voice did not tremble, as will the voice of almost every man after a storm of rage. His color was fresh and high, his eyes clear; his whole ego seemed to have been vivified and freshened, like a sky after tempest. “Come along, now. I’ve had enough of this rotten old hulk. I’ve given it what it needed, a good clean-up. Come on!”He seized Captain Briggs by the elbow—for theold man could hardly stand, and now was leaning against the hatchway housing—and half guided, half dragged him over the rail to the wharf.“Shame on you, Hal Briggs!” exclaimed an old lobsterman. “This here’s a bad day’s work you’ve done. When he was down, you booted him. We wun’t fergit it, none of us wun’t.”“No, andhewon’t forget it, either, the bragging bucko!” sneered Hal. “Uncle Silas, you keep out of this!”“Ef that’s what they l’arn ye down to college,” sounded another voice, “you’d a durn sight better stay to hum. We fight some, on the North Shore, but we fight fair.”Hal faced around, with blazing eyes.“Who said that?” he gritted. “Where’s the son of a pup that said it?”No answer. Cowed, everybody held silence. No sound was heard save the shuffling feet of the men aboard, as some of the crew lifted McLaughlin’s limp form and carried it toward the companion, just as Crevay had been carried on theSilver Fleece, half a century before.“Come on, gramp!” exclaimed Hal. “For two cents I’d clean up the whole white-livered bunch. Let’s go home, now, before there’s trouble.”“I—I’m afraid I can’t walk, Hal,” quavered the old man. “This has knocked me galley-west. My rudder’s unshipped and my canvas in rags. I can’t navigate at all.” He was trembling as with a chill. Against his grandson he leaned, ashen-faced, helpless. “I can’t make Snug Haven, now.”“That’s all right, grampy,” Hal assured him. “We’ll dig up a jitney if you can get as far as the street. Come on, let’s move!”With unsteady steps, clinging to Hal’s arm and followedby the dog, old Captain Briggs made his way up Hadlock’s Wharf. Only a few minutes had elapsed since he had strode so proudly down that wharf, but what a vast difference had been wrought in the captain’s soul! All the glad elation of his heart had now faded more swiftly than a tropic sunset turns to dark. The old man seemed to have shrunken, collapsed. Fifteen little minutes seemed to have bowed down his shoulders with at least fifteen years.“Oh, Hal, Hal!” he groaned, as they slowly made their way towards the street. “Oh, my boy, how could you ha’ done that?”“How could I? After what he said, howcouldn’tI?”“What a disgrace! What a burning, terrible disgrace! You—just back from college—”“There, there, grandpop, it’ll be all right. Everybody’ll be glad, when they cool off, that I handed it to that bully.”“This will make a terrible scandal. TheObserverwill print it, and—”“Nonsense! You don’t think they’d waste paper on a little mix-up aboard a coasting-schooner, do you?”“This is more than a little mix-up, Hal. You’ve stove that man’s hull up, serious. There’s more storm brewing.”“What d’you mean, more storm?”“Oh, he’ll take this to court. He’ll sue for damages.”“He’d better not!” snapped Hal, grimly. “I’ve got more for him, where what I handed him came from, if he tries it!”“Hal, you’re—breaking my old heart.”“D’you think, grandpa, I was going to stand there and swallow his insults? Do you think I, a Briggs,was going to let that slab-sided P.I. hand me that rough stuff? Wouldyouhave stood for it?”“I? What do you mean? How could I fight, at my age?”“I mean, when you were young. Didn’tyouever mix it, then? Didn’t you have guts enough to put up your fists when you had to? If you didn’t, you’re no grandfather of mine!”“Hal,” answered the old man, still holding to his grandson as they neared the street, “what course I sailed in my youth is nothing for you to steer by now. Those were rough days, and these are supposed to be civilized. That was terrible, terrible, what you did to McLaughlin. The way you flung him across the rail, there, and then to the deck, and—kicked him, when he was down—kicked him in the face—”“It’s all right, I tell you!” Hal asserted, vigorously. He laughed, with glad remembrance. “When I fight a gentleman, I fight like a gentleman. When I fight a ruffian, I use the same tactics. That’s all such cattle understand. My motto is to hit first, every time. That’s the one best bet. The second is, hit hard. If you’re in a scrap, you’re in it to win, aren’t you? Hand out everything you’ve got—give ’em the whole bag of tricks, all at one wallop. That’s whatIgo by, and it’s a damn good rule. You, there! Hey, there, jitney!”The discussion broke off, short, as Hal sighted a little car, cruising slowly and with rattling joints over the rough-paved cobbles.CHAPTER XXTHE CAPTAIN COMMANDSThe jitney stopped.“Oh, hello, Sam! That you?” asked Hal, recognizing the driver.“Horn spoon! Ef it ain’t Hal!” exclaimed the jitney-man. “Back ag’in, eh? What the devilyoubeen up to? Shirt tore, an’ one eye looks like you’d been—”“Oh, nothing,” Hal answered, while certain taggers-on stopped at a respectful distance. “I’ve just been arguing with McLaughlin, aboard theSylvia Fletcher. It’s nothing at all.” He helped his grandfather into the car and then, gripping the Airedale so that it yelped with pain, he pitched it in. “How much do you want to take us down to Snug Haven?”“Well—that’ll be a dollar ’n’ a half, seein’ it’s you.”“You’ll get one nice, round little buck, Sam.”“Git out! You, an’ the cap’n, an’ the dog, an’ a tussik! Why—”Hal climbed into the car. He leaned forward, his face close to Sam’s. The seethe of rage seemed to have departed. Now Hal was all joviality. Swiftly the change had come upon him.“Sam!” he admonished. “You know perfectly well seventy-five cents would be robbery, but I’ll give you a dollar. Put her into high.”The driver sniffed Hal’s breath, and nodded acceptance.“All right, seein’ as it’s you,” he answered. He added, in a whisper: “Ain’t got nothin’ on y’r hip, have ye?”“Nothing but a bruise,” said Hal. “Clk-clk!”The jitney struck its bone-shaking gait along the curving street of Endicutt. No one spoke. The old captain, spent in forces and possessed by bitter, strange hauntings, had sunk far down in the seat. His beard made a white cascade over the smart blue of his coat. His eyes, half-closed, seemed to be visioning the far-off days he had labored so long to forget. His face was gray with suffering, beneath its tan. His lips had set themselves in a grim, tight line.As for Hal, he filled and lighted his pipe, then with a kind of bored tolerance eyed the quaint old houses, the gardens and trim hedges.“Some burg!” he murmured. “Some live little burg to put in a whole summer! Well, anyhow, I started something. They ought to hand me a medal, for putting a little pep into this prehistoric graveyard.”Then he relapsed into contemplative smoking.Presently the town gave place to the open road along the shore, now bathed in a thousand lovely hues as sunset died. The slowly fading beauty of the seascape soothed what little fever still remained in Hal’s blood. With an appreciative eye he observed the harbor. The town itself might seem dreary, but in his soul the instinctive love of the sea awoke to the charms of that master-panorama which in all its infinite existence has never twice shown just the same blending of hues, of motion, of refluent ebb and fall.Along the dimming islands, swells were breaking into great bouquets of foam. The murmurous, watery cry of the surf lulled Hal; its booming cadences against the rocky girdles of the coast seemed whispering alluring, mysterious things to him. In the offing a few faintspecks of sail, melting in the purple haze, beckoned: “Come away, come away!”To Captain Briggs quite other thoughts were coming. Not now could the lure of his well-loved ocean appeal to him, for all the wonders of the umber and dull orange west. Where but an hour ago beauty had spread its miracles across the world, for him, now all had turned to drab. A few faint twinkles of light were beginning to show in fishers’ cottages; and these, too, saddened the old captain, for they minded him of Snug Haven’s waiting lights—Snug Haven, where he had hoped so wonderfully much, but where now only mournful disillusion and bodings of evil remained.The ceaseless threnody of the sea seemed to the old man a requiem over dead hopes. The salt tides seemed to mock and gibe at him, and out of the pale haze drifting seaward from the slow-heaving waters, ghosts seemed beckoning.All at once Hal spoke, his college slang rudely jarring the old captain’s melancholy.“That was some jolt I handed Mac, wasn’t it?” he laughed. “He’ll be more careful who he picks on next time. That’s about what he needed, a good walloping.”“Eh? What?” murmured the old man, roused from sad musings.“Such people have to get it handed to them once in a while,” the grandson continued. “There’s only one kind of argument they understand—and that’s this!”He raised his right fist, inspected it, turning it this way and that, admiring its massive power, its adamantine bone and sinew.“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Hal, don’t do that!” exclaimed the captain. With strange eyes he peered at the young man.Hal laughed uproariously.“Some fist, what?” he boasted. “Some pacifier!”As he turned toward the old man, his breath smote the captain’s senses.“Lord, Hal! You haven’t been drinking, have you?” quavered Briggs.“Drinking? Well—no. Maybe I’ve had one or two, but that’s all.”“One or two what, Hal?”“Slugs of rum.”“Rum! Good God!”“What’s the matter, now? What’s the harm in a drop of good stimulant? I asked him for a drink, and he couldn’t see it, the tightwad! I took it, anyhow. That’s what started all the rough-house.”“Great heavens, Hal! D’you mean to tell me you’re drinking, now?”“There, there, gramp, don’t get all stewed up. All the fellows take a drop now and then. You don’t want me to be a molly-coddle, do you? To feel I can’t take a nip, once in a while, and hold it like a gentleman? That’s all foolishness, grampy. Be sensible!”The old man began to shiver, though the off-shore breeze blew warm. Hal made a grimace of vexation. His grandfather answered nothing, and once more silence fell. It lasted till the first scattering houses of South Endicutt came into view in the fading light.The driver, throwing a switch, sent his headlights piercing the soft June dusk. The cones of radiance painted the roadside grass a vivid green, and made the whitewashed fences leap to view. Hedges, gardens, gable-ends, all spoke of home and rest, peace and the beatitude of snug security. Somewhere the sound of children’s shouts and laughter echoed appealingly. The tinkle of a cow-bell added its music; and faint in the western sky, the evening star looked down.And still Captain Briggs held silent.A little red gleam winked in view—the port light of Snug Haven.“There’s the old place, isn’t it?” commented Hal, in a softer tone. He seemed moved to gentler thoughts; but only for a moment. His eye, catching a far, white figure away down by the smithy, brightened with other anticipations than of getting home again.“Hello!” he exclaimed. “That’s Laura, isn’t it? Look, gramp—isn’t that Laura Maynard?”Peering, Captain Briggs recognized the girl. He understood her innocent little subterfuge of being out for a casual stroll just at this time. His heart, already lacerated, contracted with fresh pain.“No, no, Hal,” he exclaimed. “That can’t be Laura. Come now, don’t be thinking about Laura, to-night. You’re tired, and ought to rest.”“Tired? Say, that’s a good one! When was I ever tired?”“Well,I’mtired, anyhow,” the captain insisted, “and I want to cast anchor at the Haven. We’ve got company, too. It wouldn’t look polite, if you went gallivanting—”“Company? What company?” demanded Hal, as the car drew up toward the gate.“A very special friend of mine. A man I haven’t seen in fifty years. An old doctor that once sailed with me. He’s waiting to see you, now.”“Another old pill, eh?” growled the boy, sullenly, his eyes still fixed on the girl at the bend of the road. “There’ll be time enough for Methuselah, later. Just now, it’s me for the skirt!”The car halted. The captain stiffly descended. He felt singularly spent and old. Hal threw out the suit-case, and lithely leaped to earth.“Dig up a bone for Sam, here,” directed Hal.“Now, I’ll be on my way to overhaul the little dame.”“Hal! That’snotLaura, I tell you!”“You can’t kid me, grampy! That’s the schoolma’m, all right. I’d know her a mile off. She’s some chicken, take it from me!”“Hal, I protest against such language!”“Oh, too rough, eh?” sneered the boy. “Now in your day, I suppose you used more refined English, didn’t you? Maybe you called them—”“Hal! That will do!”“So will Laura, for me. She’s mine, that girl is. She’s plump as a young porpoise, and I’m going after her!”The captain stood aghast, at sound of words that echoed from the very antipodes of the world and of his own life. Then, with a sudden rush of anger, his face reddening formidably, he exclaimed:“Not another word! You’ve been drinking, and you’re dirty and torn—no fit man, to-night, to haul up ’longside that craft!”“I tell you, I’m going down there to say good evening to Laura, anyhow,” Hal insisted, sullenly. “I’m going!”“You arenot, sir!” retorted Briggs, while Sam, in the car, grinned with enjoyment. “You’renotgoing to hail Laura Maynard to-night! Do you want to lose her friendship and respect?”“Bull! Women like a little rough stuff, now and then. This ‘Little Rollo’ business is played out. Go along in, if you want to, but I’m going to see Laura.”“Hal,” said the old man, a new tone in his voice. “This is carrying too much canvas. You’ll lose some of it in a minute, if you don’t reef. I’m captain here, and you’re going to take my orders, if it comes to that. The very strength you boast of and misuse so brutally is derived from money I worked a lifetime for, at sea,and suffered and sinned and bled and almost died for!” The old captain’s tone rang out again as in the old, tempestuous days when he was master of many hard and violent men. “Now, sir, you’re going to obey me, or overside you go, this minute—and once you go, you’ll never set foot on my planks again! Pick up your dunnage, sir, and into the Haven with you!”“Goodnight!” ejaculated Hal, staring. Never had the old man thus spoken to him. Stung to anger, though Hal was, he dared not disobey. Muttering, he picked up the suit-case. The dog, glad to be at home once more, leaped against him. With an oath, Hal swung the suit-case; the Airedale, yelping with pain, fawned and slunk away.“Into the Haven with you!” commanded Briggs, outraged to his very heart. “Go!”Hal obeyed, with huge shoulders hulking and drooping in their plenitude of evil power, just like the captain’s, so very long ago. Alpheus Briggs peered down the street at the dim white figure of the disappointed girl; then, eyes agleam and back very straight, he followed Hal toward Snug Haven—the Haven which in such beatitude of spirit he had left but an hour ago—the Haven to which, filled with so many evil bodings, he now was coming back again.“Oh, God,” he murmured, “if this thing must come upon me, Thy will be done! But if it can be turned aside, spare me! Spare me, for this is all my life and all my hope! Spare me!”CHAPTER XXISPECTERS OF THE PASTHal’s boots, clumping heavily on the porch, aroused the captain from his brief revery of prayer. Almost at once the new stab of pain at realization that Dr. Filhiol must see Hal in this disheveled, half-drunken condition brought the old man sharply back to earth again. Bitter humiliation, brutal disillusionment, sickening anti-climax! The captain stifled a groan. Fate seemed dealing him a blow unreasonably hard.A chair scraped on the porch. Briggs saw the bent and shriveled form of Dr. Filhiol arising. The doctor, rendered nervous by the arsenal and by the cabinet of curios, which all too clearly recalled the past, had once more gone out upon the piazza, to await the captain’s return. Warmed by the egg-nog within, and outwardly by a shawl that Ezra had given him, now he stood there, leaning on his cane. A smile of anticipation curved his shaven, bloodless lips. His eyes blinked eagerly behind his thick-lensed glasses.“Home again, eh?” he piped. “Good! So then this is the little grandson back from college? Little! Ha-ha! Why, captain, he’d make two like us!”“This is Hal,” answered the captain briefly. “Yes, this is my grandson.”The doctor, surprised at Briggs’s curt reply, put out his hand. Hal took it as his grandfather spoke the doctor’s name.“Glad to know you, doctor!” said he in a sullen voice, and let the hand drop. “Excuse me, please! I’ll go in and wash up.”He turned toward the door. With perturbation Filhiol peered after him. Then he glanced at the captain. Awkwardly silence fell, broken by a cry of joy from the front door.“Oh, Master Hal!” ejaculated Ezra. “Ef it ain’t Master Hal!”The servitor’s long face beamed with jubilation as he seized the suit-case with one hand and with the other clapped Hal on the shoulder. “Jumpin’ jellyfish, but you’re lookin’ fine an’ stout! Back from y’r books, ain’t ye? Ah, books is grand things, Master Hal, ’specially check-books, pocketbooks, an’ bank-books. Did the cap’n tell ye? He did, didn’t he?”“Hello, Ez!” answered Hal, still very glum. “Tell me what?”“‘Bout the plum-cake an’ lamb?” asked Ezra anxiously as Hal slid past him into the house. “I remembered what you like, Master Hal. I been workin’ doggone hard to git everythin’ jest A1 fer you!”His voice grew inaudible as he followed Hal into Snug Haven. The captain and the doctor gazed at each other a long, eloquent moment in the vague light. Neither spoke. Filhiol turned and sat down, puzzled, oppressed.Briggs wearily sank into another chair. Hal’s feet stumbling up the front stairs echoed with torment through his soul. Was that the stumbling of haste, or had the boy drunk more than he had seemed to? The captain dropped his cap to the porch-floor. Not now did he take pains to hang it on top of the rocking-chair. He wiped his forehead with his silk handkerchief, and groaned.The doctor kept silence. He understood that any word of his would prove inopportune. But with pity he studied the face of Captain Briggs, its lines accentuated by the light from the window of the cabin.Presently the captain sighed deep and began:“I’m glad you’re here on my quarterdeck with me to-night, doctor. Things are all going wrong, sir. Barometer’s way down, compass is bedeviled, seams opening fore and aft. It’s bad, doctor—very, very bad!”“I see there’s something wrong, of course,” said Filhiol with sympathy.“Everything’s wrong, sir. That grandson of mine—you—noticed just what was the matter with him?”“H-m! It’s rather dark here, you know,” hedged Filhiol.“Not so dark but what you understood,” said Briggs grimly. “When there’s a storm brewing no good navigator thinks he can dodge it by locking himself in his cabin. And thereisa storm brewing this time, a hurricane, sir, or I’ve missed all signals.”“Just what do you mean, captain?”“Violence, drink, women—wickedness and sin! You smelled his breath, didn’t you? You took an observation of his face?”“Well, yes. He’s been drinking a little, of course; but these boys in college—”“He very nigh killed the skipper of theSylvia Fletcher, and there’ll be the devil to pay about it. It was just luck there wasn’t murder done before my very eyes. He’s been drinking enough so as to wake a black devil in his heart! Enough so he’s like a roaring bull after the first pretty girl in the offing.”“There, there, captain!” The doctor tried to soothe him, his thin voice making strange contrast with the captain’s booming bass. “You’re probably exaggerating. A little exuberance may be pardoned in youth,” his expression belied his words. “Remember, captain, whenyouwere—”“That’s just what’s driving me on the rocks withgrief and despair!” the old man burst out, gripping the arms of the rocker. “God above! It’s just the realization of my own youth, flung back at me now, that’s like to kill me! That boy, so help me—why, he’s thrown clean back fifty years all at one crack!”“No, no, not that!”“He has, I tell you! He’s jumped back half a century.Hedon’t belong in this age of airplanes and wireless.Hebelongs back with the clipper-ships and—”“Nonsense, captain, and you know it!”“It’s far from nonsense! There’s a bad strain somewhere in my blood. I’ve been afraid a long time it was going to crop out in Hal. There’s always been a tradition in my family of evil doings now and then. I don’t know anything certain about it, though, except that my grandfather, Amalfi Briggs, died of bursting a blood-vessel in his brain in a fit of rage. That was all that saved him from being a murderer—he died before he could kill the other man!”Silence came, save for the piping whistle of an urchin far up the road. The ever-rising, falling suspiration of the sea breathed its long caress across the land, on which a vague, pale sheen of starlight was descending.Suddenly, from abovestairs, sounded a dull, slamming sound as of a bureau-drawer violently shut. Another slam followed; and now came a grumbling of muffled profanity.“All that saved my grandfather from being a murderer,” said Briggs dourly, “was the fact that he dropped dead himself before he could cut down the other man with the ship-carpenter’s adze he had in his hand.”“Indeed? Your grandfather must have been rather a hard specimen.”“Only when he was in anger. At other times younever saw a more jovial soul! But rage made a beast of him!”“How was your father?”“Not that way in the least. He was as consistently Christian a man as ever breathed. My son—Hal’s father—was a good man, too. Not a sign of that sort of brutality ever showed in him.”“I think you’re worrying unnecessarily,” judged the doctor. “Your grandson may be wild and rough at times, but he’s tainted with no hereditary stain.”“I don’t know about that, doctor,” said the captain earnestly. “For a year or two past he’s been showing more temper than a young man should. He’s not been answering the helm very well. Two or three of the village people here have already complained to me. I’ve never been really afraid till to-night. But now, doctor, Iamafraid—terribly, deadly afraid!”The old man’s voice shook. Filhiol tried to smile.“Let the dead past bury its dead!” said he. “Don’t open the old graves to let the ghosts of other days walk out again into the clear sunset of your life.”“God knows I don’t want to!” the old man exclaimed in a low, trembling voice. “But suppose those graves open themselves? Suppose they won’t stay shut, no, not though all the good deeds from here to heaven were piled atop of them, to keep them down? Suppose those ghosts rise up and stare me in the eyes and won’t be banished—what then?”“Stuff and nonsense!” gibed Filhiol, though his voice was far from steady. “You’re not yourself, captain. You’re unnerved. There’s nothing the matter with that boy except high spirits and overflowing animal passions.”“No, no! I understand only too well. God is being very hard to me! I sinned grievous, in the long ago! But I’ve done my very best to pay the reckoning.Seems like I haven’t succeeded. Seems like God don’t forget! He’s paying me now, with interest!”“Captain, you exaggerate!” the doctor tried to assure him, but Briggs shook his head.“Heredity skips that way sometimes, don’t it?” asked he.“Well—sometimes. But that doesn’t prove anything.”“No, it don’t prove anything, but what Hal did to-nightdoes! Would a thing like that come on sudden that way? Would it? A kind of hydrophobia of rage that won’t listen to any reason but wants to break and tear and kill? I mean, if that kind of thing was in the blood, could it lay hid a long time and then all of a sudden burst out like that?”“Well—yes. It might.”“I seem to remember it was the same with me the first time I ever had one of those mad fits,” said the captain. “It come on quick. It wasn’t like ordinary getting mad. It was a red torrent, delirious and awful—something that caught me up and carried me along on its wave—something I couldn’t fight against. When I saw Hal with his teeth grinning, eyes glassy, fists red with McLaughlin’s blood, oh, it struck clean through my heart!“It wasn’t any fear of either of them getting killed that harpooned me, no, nor complications and damages to pay. No, no, though such will be bad enough. What struck me all of a heap was to see myself, my very own self that used to be. If I, Captain Alpheus Briggs, had been swept back to 1868 and set down on the deck of theSilver Fleece, Hal would have been my exact double. I’ve seen myself just as I was then, doctor, and it’s shaken me in every timber. There I stood, I, myself, in Hal’s person, after five decades of weary time. I could see the outlines of the same blackbeard on the same kind of jaw—same thick neck and bloody fists; and, oh, doctor, the eyes of Hal. His eyes!”“His eyes?”“Yes. In them I saw my old, wicked, hell-elected self—saw it glaring out, to break and ravish and murder!”“Captain Briggs!”“It’s true, I’m telling you. I’ve seen a ghost this evening. A ghost—”He peered around fearfully in the dusk. His voice lowered to a whisper:“A ghost!”Filhiol could not speak. Something cold, prehensile, terrible seemed fingering at his heart! Ruddy, the Airedale, raised his head, seemed to be listening, to be seeing something they could not detect. In the dog’s throat a low growl muttered.“What’sthat?” said the captain, every muscle taut.“Nothing, nothing,” the doctor answered. “The dog probably hears some one down there by the hedge. This is all nonsense, captain. You’re working yourself into a highly nervous state and imagining all kinds of things. Now—”“I tell you, I saw the ghost of my other self,” insisted Briggs. “There’s worse kinds of ghosts than those that hang around graveyards. I’ve always wanted to see that kind and never have. Night after night I’ve been up there to the little cemetery on Croft Hill, and sat on the bench in our lot, just as friendly and receptive as could be, ready to see whatever ghost might come to me, but none ever came. I’m not afraid of the ghosts of the dead! It’s ghosts of the living that strike a dread to me—ghosts of the past that ought to die and can’t—ghosts of my own sins that God won’t let lie in the grave of forgiveness—”“S-h-h-h!” exclaimed the doctor. He laid a hand on the captain’s, which was clutching the arm of the rocker with a grip of steel. “Don’t give way to such folly! Perhaps Hal did drink a little, and perhaps he did thrash a man who had insulted him. But that’s as far as it goes. All this talk about ghosts and some hereditary, devilish force cropping out again, is pure rubbish!”“I wish to God above itwas!” the old man groaned. “But I know it’s not. It’s there, doctor, I tell you! It’s still alive and in the world, more terrible and more malignant than ever, a living, breathing thing, evil and venomous, backed up with twice the intelligence and learning I ever had, with a fine, keen brain to direct it and with muscles of steel to do its bidding! Oh, God, I know, Iknow!”“Captain Briggs, sir,” the doctor began. “This is most extraordinary language from a man of your common sense. I really do not understand—”“Hush!” interrupted the captain, raising his right hand. On the stairway feet echoed. “Hush! He’s coming down!”Silent, tense, they waited. The heavy footfalls reached the bottom of the stair and paused there a moment. Briggs and the doctor heard Hal grumbling something inarticulate to himself. Then he walked into the cabin.

CHAPTER XVIIITHE LOOMING SHADOWOld Captain Briggs, meanwhile, absorbed in the most cheerful speculations, was putting his best foot forward on the road to Hadlock’s Wharf. A vigorous foot it was, indeed, and right speedily it carried him. With pipe in full eruption, leaving a trail of blue smoke on the late afternoon air, and with boots creaking on the hard, white road, the captain strode along; while the Airedale trotted ahead as if he, too, understood that Master Hal was coming home.He made his way out of the village and so struck into the road to Endicutt itself. “The mingled scents of field and ocean” perfumed the air, borne on a breeze that blent the odors of sea and weedy foreshore and salt marsh with those of garden and orchard, into a kind of airy nectar that seemed to infuse fresh life into the captain’s blood. His blue eyes sparkled almost as brightly as the harbor itself, where gaily painted lobster-pot buoys heaved on the swells, where dories labored and where gulls spiraled.Briggs seemed to love the sea, that afternoon, almost as he had never loved it—the wonderful mystery of tireless, revivifying, all-engendering sea. Joy filled him that Hal, in whose life lived all the hopes of his race, should have inherited this love of the all-mother, Ocean.Deeply the captain breathed, as he strode onward, and felt that life was being very good to him. For the most part, rough hillocks and tangled clumps ofpine, hemlock and gleaming birch hid the bay from him; but now and again these gave way to sandy stretches, leaving the harbor broad-spread and sparkling to his gaze. And as the old man passed each such place, his eyes sought the incoming canvas of theSylvia Fletcher, that seemed to him shining more white, uprearing itself with more stately power, than that of any other craft.Now and then he hailed the boy as if Hal could hear him across all that watery distance. His hearty old voice lost itself in the ebbing, flowing murmur of the surf that creamed up along the pebbles, and dragged them down with a long, rattling slither. Everything seemed glad, to Captain Briggs—dories hauled up on the sand; blocks, ropes and drying sails; lobster-pots and fish-cars; buoys, rusty anchors half-buried—everything seemed to wear a festive air. For was not Hal, now homeward bound, now almost here?So overflowing were the old man’s spirits that with good cheer even beyond his usual hearty greeting he gave the glad news to all along the road, to those he met, to those who stopped their labors or looked up from their rest in yards and houses, to give him a good-evening.“Itisa good evening for me, neighbor,” he would say, with a fine smile, his beard snowy in the sun now low across the western hills. “A fine, wonderful evening! Hal’s coming home to-night; he’s on theSylvia Fletcher, just making in past the Rips, there—see, you can sight her, yourself.”And then he would pass on, glad, triumphant. And as he went, hammers would cease their caulking, brushes their painting; and the fishers mending their russet nets spread over hedge or fence would wish him joy.Here, there, a child would take his hand and walkwith him a little way, till the captain’s stout pace tired the short legs, or till some good mother from a cottage door would call the little one back for supper. Just so, fifty years ago, yellow-skinned Malay mothers had called their children within doors, at Batu Kawan, lest Mambang Kuning, the demon who dwelt in the sunset, should do them harm. And just so the sunset itself, that wicked night at the Malaykampong, had glowered redly.A mist was now rising from the harbor and the marshland, like an exhalation of pale ghosts, floating vaguely, quite as the smoke had floated above Batu Kawan. The slowly fading opalescence of the sky, reddening over the hills, bore great resemblance to those hues that in the long ago had painted the sky above the jagged mountain-chain in that far land. But of all this the captain was taking no thought.No, nothing could enter his mind save the glad present and the impending moment when he should see his Hal again, should feel the boy’s hand in his, put an arm about his shoulder and, quite unashamed, give him a kiss patriarchal in its fine simplicity and love.“Itisa good evening!” he repeated. “A wonderful evening, friends. Why, Hal’s been gone nearly six months. Gone since last Christmas. And now he’s coming back to me, again!”So he passed on. One thing he did not note: this—that though all the folk gave him Godspeed, no one inquired about Hal. That after he had passed, more than one shook a dubious head or murmured words of commiseration. Some few of the fisherfolk, leaning over their fences to watch after him, talked a little together in low tones as if they feared the breeze might bear their words to the old man.Of all this the captain remained entirely unaware. On he kept, into the straggling outskirts of Endicutt.Now he could see the harbor only at rare intervals; but in the occasional glimpses he caught of it, he saw theSylvia Fletcher’stops’ls crumpling down and perceived that she was headed in directly for the wharf. He hurried on, at a better pace. Above all things Hal must not come, and find no grandfather waiting for him. That, to the captain’s mind, would have been unthinkable treason.The captain strode along the cobblestoned main street, past the ship-chandlers’ stores, the sail-lofts and quaint old shops, and so presently turned to the right, into Hadlock’s Wharf. Here the going was bad, because of crates and barrels of iced fish and lobsters, and trucks, and a miscellany of obstructions. For a moment the captain was entirely blocked by a dray across the wharf, backing into a fish-shed. The driver greeted him with a smile.“Hello, cap!” cried he. “Gee, but you’re lookin’ fine. What’s up?”“It’s a great day for me,” Briggs answered. “A rare fine day. Hal, my boy, is coming home. He’s on theSylvia Fletcher, just coming in from Boston. Can’t you let me past, some way?”“Why, sure! Backup!” the driver commanded, savagely jerking at the bit. “You can make it, now, I reckon.”Then, as Briggs squeezed by, he stood looking after the old, blue-clad figure. He turned a lump in his cheek, and spat.“Gosh, ain’t it a shame?” he murmured. “Ain’t it a rotten, gorrammed shame?”By the time Captain Briggs, followed by the faithful Ruddy, reached the stringpiece of the wharf, the schooner was already close. The captain, breathing a little fast, leaned against a tin-topped mooring-pile, and with eager eyes scrutinized the on-coming vessel.All along the wharf, the usual contingent of sailors, longshoremen, fishers and boys had already gathered. To none the captain addressed a word. All his heart and soul were now fast riveted to the schooner, from whose deck plainly drifted words of command, and down from whose sticks the canvas was fast collapsing.With skilful handling and hardly a rag aloft, she eased alongside. Ropes came sprangling to the wharf. These, dragged in by volunteer hands, brought hawsers. And with a straining of hemp, theSylviahauled to a dead stop, groaning and chafing against the splintered timbers.Jests, greetings, laughter volleyed between craft and wharf. The captain, alone, kept silent. His eager eyes were searching the deck; searching, and finding not.“Hello, cap’n! Hey, there, Cap’n Briggs!” voices shouted. The mate waved a hand at him, and so did two or three others; but there seemed restraint in their greetings. Usually the presence of the captain loosened tongues and set the sailormen glad. But now—With a certain tightening round the heart, the captain remained there, not knowing what to do. He had expected to see Hal on deck, waving a cap at him, shouting to him. But Hal remained invisible. What could have happened? The captain’s eyes scrutinized the deck, in vain. Neither fore nor aft was Hal.Briggs stepped on the low rail of the schooner and went aboard. He walked aft, to the man at the wheel. Ruddy followed close at heel.“Hello, cap’n,” greeted the steersman. “Nice day, ain’t it?” His voice betrayed embarrassment.“Is my boy, Hal, aboard o’ you?” demanded Briggs.“Yup.”“Well, where is he?”“Below.”“Getting his dunnage?”“Guess so.” The steersman sucked at his cob pipe, very ill at ease. Briggs stared at him a moment, then turned toward the companion.A man’s head and shoulders appeared up the companionway. Out on deck clambered the man—a young man, black-haired and blue-eyed, with mighty shoulders and a splendidly corded neck visible in the low roll of his opened shirt. His sleeves, rolled up, showed arms and fists of Hercules.“Hal!” cried the captain, a world of gladness in his voice. Silence fell, all about; every one stopped talking, ceased from all activities; all eyes centered on Hal and the captain.“Hal! My boy!” exclaimed Briggs once more, but in an altered tone. He took a step or two forward. His hand, that had gone out to Hal, dropped at his side again.He peered at his grandson with troubled, wondering eyes. Under the weathered tan of his face, quick pallor became visible.“Why, Hal,” he stammered. “What—what’s happened? What’s the meaning of—of all this?”Hal stared at him with an expression the old man had never seen upon his face. The boy’s eyes were reddened, bloodshot, savage with unreasoning passion. The right eye showed a bruise that had already begun to discolor. The jaw had gone forward, become prognathous like an ape’s, menacing, with a glint of strong, white teeth. The crisp black hair, rumpled and awry, the black growth of beard—two days old, strong on that square-jawed face—and something in the full-throated poise of the head, brought back to the old captain, in a flash, vivid and horrible memories.Up from that hatchway he saw himself arising, once again, tangibly and in the living flesh. In the swing of Hal’s huge fists, the squaring of his shoulders, his brute expression of blood-lust and battle-lust, old Captain Briggs beheld, line for line, his other and barbaric self of fifty years ago.“Good God, Hal! What’sthismean?” he gulped, while along the wharf and on deck a staring silence held. But his question was lost in a hoarse shout from the cabin:“Here, you young devil! Come below, an’ apologize fer that!”Hal swung about, gripped both sides of the companion, and leaned down. The veins in his powerful neck, taut-swollen, seemed to start through the bronzed skin.“Apologize?” he roared down the companion. “To a lantern-jawed P. I. like you? Like hell I will!”Then he stood back, lifted his head and laughed with deep-lunged scorn.From below sounded a wordless roar. Up the ladder scrambled, simian in agility, a tall and wiry man of middle age. Briggs saw in a daze that this man was white with passion; he had that peculiar, pinched look about the nostrils which denotes the killing rage. Captain Fergus McLaughlin, of Prince Edward’s Island, had come on deck.“You——!” McLaughlin hurled at him, while the old man stood quivering, paralyzed. “If you was a member o’ my crew, damn y’r lip—”“Yes, but I’m not, you see,” sneered Hal, fists on hips. “I’m a passenger aboard your rotten old tub, which is almost as bad as your grammar and your reputation.” Contemptuously he eyed the Prince Edward’s Islander, from rough woolen cap to sea-boots, and back again, every look a blistering insult. Hishuge chest, rising, falling, betrayed the cumulating fires within. The hush among the onlookers grew ominous. “There’s not money enough in circulation to hire me to sign articles with a low-browed, sockless, bean-eating—”McLaughlin’s leap cut short the sentence. With a raw howl, the P. I. flung himself at Hal. Deft and strong with his stony-hard fists was McLaughlin, and the fighting heart in him was a lion’s. A hundred men had he felled to his decks, ere now, and not one had ever risen quite whole, or unassisted. In the extremity of his rage he laughed as he sprang.Lithely, easily, with the joy and love of battle in his reddened eyes, Hal ducked. Up flashed his right fist, a sledge of muscle, bone, sinew. The left swung free.The impact of Hal’s smash thudded sickeningly, with a suggestion of crushed flesh and shattered bone.Sprawling headlong, hands clutching air, McLaughlin fell. And, as he plunged with a crash to the planking, Hal’s laugh snarled through the tense air. From him he flung old Briggs, now in vain striving to clutch and hold his arm.“Got enough apology, you slab-sided herring-choker?” he roared, exultant. “Enough, or want some more? Apologize? You bet—with these! Come on, you or any of your crew, or all together, you greasy fishbacks!I’llapologize you!”Snarling into a laugh he stood there, teeth set, neck swollen and eyes engorged with blood, his terrible fists eager with the lust of war.

THE LOOMING SHADOW

Old Captain Briggs, meanwhile, absorbed in the most cheerful speculations, was putting his best foot forward on the road to Hadlock’s Wharf. A vigorous foot it was, indeed, and right speedily it carried him. With pipe in full eruption, leaving a trail of blue smoke on the late afternoon air, and with boots creaking on the hard, white road, the captain strode along; while the Airedale trotted ahead as if he, too, understood that Master Hal was coming home.

He made his way out of the village and so struck into the road to Endicutt itself. “The mingled scents of field and ocean” perfumed the air, borne on a breeze that blent the odors of sea and weedy foreshore and salt marsh with those of garden and orchard, into a kind of airy nectar that seemed to infuse fresh life into the captain’s blood. His blue eyes sparkled almost as brightly as the harbor itself, where gaily painted lobster-pot buoys heaved on the swells, where dories labored and where gulls spiraled.

Briggs seemed to love the sea, that afternoon, almost as he had never loved it—the wonderful mystery of tireless, revivifying, all-engendering sea. Joy filled him that Hal, in whose life lived all the hopes of his race, should have inherited this love of the all-mother, Ocean.

Deeply the captain breathed, as he strode onward, and felt that life was being very good to him. For the most part, rough hillocks and tangled clumps ofpine, hemlock and gleaming birch hid the bay from him; but now and again these gave way to sandy stretches, leaving the harbor broad-spread and sparkling to his gaze. And as the old man passed each such place, his eyes sought the incoming canvas of theSylvia Fletcher, that seemed to him shining more white, uprearing itself with more stately power, than that of any other craft.

Now and then he hailed the boy as if Hal could hear him across all that watery distance. His hearty old voice lost itself in the ebbing, flowing murmur of the surf that creamed up along the pebbles, and dragged them down with a long, rattling slither. Everything seemed glad, to Captain Briggs—dories hauled up on the sand; blocks, ropes and drying sails; lobster-pots and fish-cars; buoys, rusty anchors half-buried—everything seemed to wear a festive air. For was not Hal, now homeward bound, now almost here?

So overflowing were the old man’s spirits that with good cheer even beyond his usual hearty greeting he gave the glad news to all along the road, to those he met, to those who stopped their labors or looked up from their rest in yards and houses, to give him a good-evening.

“Itisa good evening for me, neighbor,” he would say, with a fine smile, his beard snowy in the sun now low across the western hills. “A fine, wonderful evening! Hal’s coming home to-night; he’s on theSylvia Fletcher, just making in past the Rips, there—see, you can sight her, yourself.”

And then he would pass on, glad, triumphant. And as he went, hammers would cease their caulking, brushes their painting; and the fishers mending their russet nets spread over hedge or fence would wish him joy.

Here, there, a child would take his hand and walkwith him a little way, till the captain’s stout pace tired the short legs, or till some good mother from a cottage door would call the little one back for supper. Just so, fifty years ago, yellow-skinned Malay mothers had called their children within doors, at Batu Kawan, lest Mambang Kuning, the demon who dwelt in the sunset, should do them harm. And just so the sunset itself, that wicked night at the Malaykampong, had glowered redly.

A mist was now rising from the harbor and the marshland, like an exhalation of pale ghosts, floating vaguely, quite as the smoke had floated above Batu Kawan. The slowly fading opalescence of the sky, reddening over the hills, bore great resemblance to those hues that in the long ago had painted the sky above the jagged mountain-chain in that far land. But of all this the captain was taking no thought.

No, nothing could enter his mind save the glad present and the impending moment when he should see his Hal again, should feel the boy’s hand in his, put an arm about his shoulder and, quite unashamed, give him a kiss patriarchal in its fine simplicity and love.

“Itisa good evening!” he repeated. “A wonderful evening, friends. Why, Hal’s been gone nearly six months. Gone since last Christmas. And now he’s coming back to me, again!”

So he passed on. One thing he did not note: this—that though all the folk gave him Godspeed, no one inquired about Hal. That after he had passed, more than one shook a dubious head or murmured words of commiseration. Some few of the fisherfolk, leaning over their fences to watch after him, talked a little together in low tones as if they feared the breeze might bear their words to the old man.

Of all this the captain remained entirely unaware. On he kept, into the straggling outskirts of Endicutt.Now he could see the harbor only at rare intervals; but in the occasional glimpses he caught of it, he saw theSylvia Fletcher’stops’ls crumpling down and perceived that she was headed in directly for the wharf. He hurried on, at a better pace. Above all things Hal must not come, and find no grandfather waiting for him. That, to the captain’s mind, would have been unthinkable treason.

The captain strode along the cobblestoned main street, past the ship-chandlers’ stores, the sail-lofts and quaint old shops, and so presently turned to the right, into Hadlock’s Wharf. Here the going was bad, because of crates and barrels of iced fish and lobsters, and trucks, and a miscellany of obstructions. For a moment the captain was entirely blocked by a dray across the wharf, backing into a fish-shed. The driver greeted him with a smile.

“Hello, cap!” cried he. “Gee, but you’re lookin’ fine. What’s up?”

“It’s a great day for me,” Briggs answered. “A rare fine day. Hal, my boy, is coming home. He’s on theSylvia Fletcher, just coming in from Boston. Can’t you let me past, some way?”

“Why, sure! Backup!” the driver commanded, savagely jerking at the bit. “You can make it, now, I reckon.”

Then, as Briggs squeezed by, he stood looking after the old, blue-clad figure. He turned a lump in his cheek, and spat.

“Gosh, ain’t it a shame?” he murmured. “Ain’t it a rotten, gorrammed shame?”

By the time Captain Briggs, followed by the faithful Ruddy, reached the stringpiece of the wharf, the schooner was already close. The captain, breathing a little fast, leaned against a tin-topped mooring-pile, and with eager eyes scrutinized the on-coming vessel.All along the wharf, the usual contingent of sailors, longshoremen, fishers and boys had already gathered. To none the captain addressed a word. All his heart and soul were now fast riveted to the schooner, from whose deck plainly drifted words of command, and down from whose sticks the canvas was fast collapsing.

With skilful handling and hardly a rag aloft, she eased alongside. Ropes came sprangling to the wharf. These, dragged in by volunteer hands, brought hawsers. And with a straining of hemp, theSylviahauled to a dead stop, groaning and chafing against the splintered timbers.

Jests, greetings, laughter volleyed between craft and wharf. The captain, alone, kept silent. His eager eyes were searching the deck; searching, and finding not.

“Hello, cap’n! Hey, there, Cap’n Briggs!” voices shouted. The mate waved a hand at him, and so did two or three others; but there seemed restraint in their greetings. Usually the presence of the captain loosened tongues and set the sailormen glad. But now—

With a certain tightening round the heart, the captain remained there, not knowing what to do. He had expected to see Hal on deck, waving a cap at him, shouting to him. But Hal remained invisible. What could have happened? The captain’s eyes scrutinized the deck, in vain. Neither fore nor aft was Hal.

Briggs stepped on the low rail of the schooner and went aboard. He walked aft, to the man at the wheel. Ruddy followed close at heel.

“Hello, cap’n,” greeted the steersman. “Nice day, ain’t it?” His voice betrayed embarrassment.

“Is my boy, Hal, aboard o’ you?” demanded Briggs.

“Yup.”

“Well, where is he?”

“Below.”

“Getting his dunnage?”

“Guess so.” The steersman sucked at his cob pipe, very ill at ease. Briggs stared at him a moment, then turned toward the companion.

A man’s head and shoulders appeared up the companionway. Out on deck clambered the man—a young man, black-haired and blue-eyed, with mighty shoulders and a splendidly corded neck visible in the low roll of his opened shirt. His sleeves, rolled up, showed arms and fists of Hercules.

“Hal!” cried the captain, a world of gladness in his voice. Silence fell, all about; every one stopped talking, ceased from all activities; all eyes centered on Hal and the captain.

“Hal! My boy!” exclaimed Briggs once more, but in an altered tone. He took a step or two forward. His hand, that had gone out to Hal, dropped at his side again.

He peered at his grandson with troubled, wondering eyes. Under the weathered tan of his face, quick pallor became visible.

“Why, Hal,” he stammered. “What—what’s happened? What’s the meaning of—of all this?”

Hal stared at him with an expression the old man had never seen upon his face. The boy’s eyes were reddened, bloodshot, savage with unreasoning passion. The right eye showed a bruise that had already begun to discolor. The jaw had gone forward, become prognathous like an ape’s, menacing, with a glint of strong, white teeth. The crisp black hair, rumpled and awry, the black growth of beard—two days old, strong on that square-jawed face—and something in the full-throated poise of the head, brought back to the old captain, in a flash, vivid and horrible memories.

Up from that hatchway he saw himself arising, once again, tangibly and in the living flesh. In the swing of Hal’s huge fists, the squaring of his shoulders, his brute expression of blood-lust and battle-lust, old Captain Briggs beheld, line for line, his other and barbaric self of fifty years ago.

“Good God, Hal! What’sthismean?” he gulped, while along the wharf and on deck a staring silence held. But his question was lost in a hoarse shout from the cabin:

“Here, you young devil! Come below, an’ apologize fer that!”

Hal swung about, gripped both sides of the companion, and leaned down. The veins in his powerful neck, taut-swollen, seemed to start through the bronzed skin.

“Apologize?” he roared down the companion. “To a lantern-jawed P. I. like you? Like hell I will!”

Then he stood back, lifted his head and laughed with deep-lunged scorn.

From below sounded a wordless roar. Up the ladder scrambled, simian in agility, a tall and wiry man of middle age. Briggs saw in a daze that this man was white with passion; he had that peculiar, pinched look about the nostrils which denotes the killing rage. Captain Fergus McLaughlin, of Prince Edward’s Island, had come on deck.

“You——!” McLaughlin hurled at him, while the old man stood quivering, paralyzed. “If you was a member o’ my crew, damn y’r lip—”

“Yes, but I’m not, you see,” sneered Hal, fists on hips. “I’m a passenger aboard your rotten old tub, which is almost as bad as your grammar and your reputation.” Contemptuously he eyed the Prince Edward’s Islander, from rough woolen cap to sea-boots, and back again, every look a blistering insult. Hishuge chest, rising, falling, betrayed the cumulating fires within. The hush among the onlookers grew ominous. “There’s not money enough in circulation to hire me to sign articles with a low-browed, sockless, bean-eating—”

McLaughlin’s leap cut short the sentence. With a raw howl, the P. I. flung himself at Hal. Deft and strong with his stony-hard fists was McLaughlin, and the fighting heart in him was a lion’s. A hundred men had he felled to his decks, ere now, and not one had ever risen quite whole, or unassisted. In the extremity of his rage he laughed as he sprang.

Lithely, easily, with the joy and love of battle in his reddened eyes, Hal ducked. Up flashed his right fist, a sledge of muscle, bone, sinew. The left swung free.

The impact of Hal’s smash thudded sickeningly, with a suggestion of crushed flesh and shattered bone.

Sprawling headlong, hands clutching air, McLaughlin fell. And, as he plunged with a crash to the planking, Hal’s laugh snarled through the tense air. From him he flung old Briggs, now in vain striving to clutch and hold his arm.

“Got enough apology, you slab-sided herring-choker?” he roared, exultant. “Enough, or want some more? Apologize? You bet—with these! Come on, you or any of your crew, or all together, you greasy fishbacks!I’llapologize you!”

Snarling into a laugh he stood there, teeth set, neck swollen and eyes engorged with blood, his terrible fists eager with the lust of war.

CHAPTER XIXHAL SHOWS HIS TEETHFergus McLaughlin, though down, had not yet taken the count. True, Hal had felled him to his own deck, half-stunned; but the wiry Scot, toughened by many seas, had never yet learned to spell “defeat.” For him, the battle was just beginning. He managed to rise on hands and knees. Mouthing curses, he swayed there. Hal lurched forward to finish him with never a chance of getting up; but now old Captain Briggs had Hal by the arm again.“Hal, Hal!” he entreated. “For God’s sake—”Once more Hal threw the old man off. The second’s delay rescued McLaughlin from annihilation. Dazed, bleeding at mouth and nose, he staggered to his feet and with good science plunged into a clinch.This unexpected move upset Hal’s tactics of smashing violence. The Scot’s long, wiry arms wrapped round him, hampering his fist-work. Hal could do no more than drive in harmless blows at the other’s back. They swayed, tripped over a hawser, almost went down. From the crew and from the wharf ragged shouts arose, of fear, anger, purely malicious delight, for here was battle-royal of the finest. The sound of feet, running down the wharf, told of other contingents hastily arriving.“By gum!” approved the helmsman, forgetting to chew. He had more than once felt the full weight of McLaughlin’s fist. “By gum, now, but Mac’s in f’ra good takin’-down. If that lad don’t fist him proper, I miss my ’tarnal guess. Sick ’im, boy!”Blaspheming, Hal tore McLaughlin loose, flung him back, lowered his head and charged. But now the Scot had recovered a little of his wit. On deck he spat blood and a broken snag of tooth. His eye gleamed murderously. The excess of Hal’s rage betrayed the boy. His guard opened. In drove a stinging lefthander. McLaughlin handed him the other fist, packed full of dynamite. The boy reeled, gulping.“Come on, ye college bratlin’!” challenged the fighting Scot, and smeared the blood from his mouth. “This here ain’t your ship—not yet!”“My ship’s any ship I happen to be on!” snarled Hal, circling for advantage. Mac had already taught him to be cautious. Old Captain Brigg’s imploring cries fell from him, unheeded. “If thiswasmy ship, I’d wring your neck, so help me God! But as it is, I’ll only mash you to a jelly!”“Pretty bairn!” gibed McLaughlin, hunched into battle-pose, bony fists up. “Grandad’s pretty pet! Arrrh! Yewould, eh?” as Hal bored in at him.He met the rush with cool skill. True, Hal’s right went to one eye, closing it; but Hal felt the bite of knuckles catapulted from his neck.Hal delayed no more. Bull-like, he charged. By sheer weight and fury of blows he drove Mac forward of the schooner, beside the deck-house. Amid turmoil, the battle raged. The jostling crowd, shoved and pushed, on deck and on the wharf, to see this epic war. Bets were placed, even money.McLaughlin, panting, half-blind, his teeth set in a grin of rage, put every ounce he had left into each blow. But Hal outclassed him.A minute, two minutes they fought, straining, sweating, lashing. Then something swift and terrible connectedwith Mac’s jaw-point in a jolt that loosened his universe. Mac’s head snapped back. His arms flung up. He dropped, pole-axed, into the scuppers.For the first time in five-and-twenty years of fighting, clean and dirty, Fergus McLaughlin had taken a knockout.A mighty shout of exultation, fear and rage loosened echoes from the old fish-sheds. Three or four of the crew came jostling into the circle, minded to avenge their captain. Sneering, his chest heaving, but ready with both fists, Hal faced them.“Come on, all o’ you!” he flung, drunk with rage, his face bestial. A slaver of bloody froth trickled from the corner of his mouth. “Come on!”They hesitated. Gorilla-like, he advanced. Back through the crowd the overbold ones drew. No heart remained in them to tackle this infuriated fighting-machine.Hal set both fists on his hips, flung up his head and panted:“Apologize, will I? I, a passenger on this lousy tub, I’ll apologize to a bunch of down-east rough-necks, eh? If there’s anybody else wants any apology, I’m here!”None caught up the gage of battle. Bursting with fury that had to vent itself, Hal swung toward McLaughlin. The Scot had landed on a coil of hawser in the scuppers, that had somewhat broken his fall. Hal reached down, hauled him up and flung him backward over the rail. Thrice he struck with a fist reddened by McLaughlin’s blood. He wrenched at the unconscious man’s arm, snarling like an animal, his face distorted, eyes glazed and staring. A crunching told of at least one broken bone.Shouts of horror fell unheeded from his ears. He glared around.“My Gawd, he’s a-killin’ on him!” quavered a voice. “We can’t stan’ by an’ see him do murder!”Old Briggs, nerved to sudden action, ran forward.“Hal! For God’s sake, Hal!”“You stand back, grandad! He’s my meat!”Hal raised McLaughlin high above his head, with a sweep of wonderful power. He dashed the Scot to the bare planks with a horrible, dull crash, hauled back one foot and kicked the senseless man full in the mangled, blood-smeared face.A communal gasp of terror rose up then. Men shrank and quivered, stricken with almost superstitious fear. All had seen fights aplenty; most of them had taken a hand in brawls—but here was a new kind of malice. And silence fell, tense, heart-searching.Hal faced the outraged throng, and laughed with deep lungs.“There’s your champion, what’s left of him!” cried he. “Hewon’t bullyrag anybody for one while, believe me. Take him—I’m through with him!”Of a sudden the rage seemed to die in Hal, spent in that last, orgiastic convulsion of passion. He turned away, flung men right and left, and leaped down the companion. Swiftly he emerged with a suit-case. To his trembling, half-fainting grandfather he strode, unmindful of the murmur of curses and threats against him.“Come on, grandpop!” he said in a more normal tone. His voice did not tremble, as will the voice of almost every man after a storm of rage. His color was fresh and high, his eyes clear; his whole ego seemed to have been vivified and freshened, like a sky after tempest. “Come along, now. I’ve had enough of this rotten old hulk. I’ve given it what it needed, a good clean-up. Come on!”He seized Captain Briggs by the elbow—for theold man could hardly stand, and now was leaning against the hatchway housing—and half guided, half dragged him over the rail to the wharf.“Shame on you, Hal Briggs!” exclaimed an old lobsterman. “This here’s a bad day’s work you’ve done. When he was down, you booted him. We wun’t fergit it, none of us wun’t.”“No, andhewon’t forget it, either, the bragging bucko!” sneered Hal. “Uncle Silas, you keep out of this!”“Ef that’s what they l’arn ye down to college,” sounded another voice, “you’d a durn sight better stay to hum. We fight some, on the North Shore, but we fight fair.”Hal faced around, with blazing eyes.“Who said that?” he gritted. “Where’s the son of a pup that said it?”No answer. Cowed, everybody held silence. No sound was heard save the shuffling feet of the men aboard, as some of the crew lifted McLaughlin’s limp form and carried it toward the companion, just as Crevay had been carried on theSilver Fleece, half a century before.“Come on, gramp!” exclaimed Hal. “For two cents I’d clean up the whole white-livered bunch. Let’s go home, now, before there’s trouble.”“I—I’m afraid I can’t walk, Hal,” quavered the old man. “This has knocked me galley-west. My rudder’s unshipped and my canvas in rags. I can’t navigate at all.” He was trembling as with a chill. Against his grandson he leaned, ashen-faced, helpless. “I can’t make Snug Haven, now.”“That’s all right, grampy,” Hal assured him. “We’ll dig up a jitney if you can get as far as the street. Come on, let’s move!”With unsteady steps, clinging to Hal’s arm and followedby the dog, old Captain Briggs made his way up Hadlock’s Wharf. Only a few minutes had elapsed since he had strode so proudly down that wharf, but what a vast difference had been wrought in the captain’s soul! All the glad elation of his heart had now faded more swiftly than a tropic sunset turns to dark. The old man seemed to have shrunken, collapsed. Fifteen little minutes seemed to have bowed down his shoulders with at least fifteen years.“Oh, Hal, Hal!” he groaned, as they slowly made their way towards the street. “Oh, my boy, how could you ha’ done that?”“How could I? After what he said, howcouldn’tI?”“What a disgrace! What a burning, terrible disgrace! You—just back from college—”“There, there, grandpop, it’ll be all right. Everybody’ll be glad, when they cool off, that I handed it to that bully.”“This will make a terrible scandal. TheObserverwill print it, and—”“Nonsense! You don’t think they’d waste paper on a little mix-up aboard a coasting-schooner, do you?”“This is more than a little mix-up, Hal. You’ve stove that man’s hull up, serious. There’s more storm brewing.”“What d’you mean, more storm?”“Oh, he’ll take this to court. He’ll sue for damages.”“He’d better not!” snapped Hal, grimly. “I’ve got more for him, where what I handed him came from, if he tries it!”“Hal, you’re—breaking my old heart.”“D’you think, grandpa, I was going to stand there and swallow his insults? Do you think I, a Briggs,was going to let that slab-sided P.I. hand me that rough stuff? Wouldyouhave stood for it?”“I? What do you mean? How could I fight, at my age?”“I mean, when you were young. Didn’tyouever mix it, then? Didn’t you have guts enough to put up your fists when you had to? If you didn’t, you’re no grandfather of mine!”“Hal,” answered the old man, still holding to his grandson as they neared the street, “what course I sailed in my youth is nothing for you to steer by now. Those were rough days, and these are supposed to be civilized. That was terrible, terrible, what you did to McLaughlin. The way you flung him across the rail, there, and then to the deck, and—kicked him, when he was down—kicked him in the face—”“It’s all right, I tell you!” Hal asserted, vigorously. He laughed, with glad remembrance. “When I fight a gentleman, I fight like a gentleman. When I fight a ruffian, I use the same tactics. That’s all such cattle understand. My motto is to hit first, every time. That’s the one best bet. The second is, hit hard. If you’re in a scrap, you’re in it to win, aren’t you? Hand out everything you’ve got—give ’em the whole bag of tricks, all at one wallop. That’s whatIgo by, and it’s a damn good rule. You, there! Hey, there, jitney!”The discussion broke off, short, as Hal sighted a little car, cruising slowly and with rattling joints over the rough-paved cobbles.

HAL SHOWS HIS TEETH

Fergus McLaughlin, though down, had not yet taken the count. True, Hal had felled him to his own deck, half-stunned; but the wiry Scot, toughened by many seas, had never yet learned to spell “defeat.” For him, the battle was just beginning. He managed to rise on hands and knees. Mouthing curses, he swayed there. Hal lurched forward to finish him with never a chance of getting up; but now old Captain Briggs had Hal by the arm again.

“Hal, Hal!” he entreated. “For God’s sake—”

Once more Hal threw the old man off. The second’s delay rescued McLaughlin from annihilation. Dazed, bleeding at mouth and nose, he staggered to his feet and with good science plunged into a clinch.

This unexpected move upset Hal’s tactics of smashing violence. The Scot’s long, wiry arms wrapped round him, hampering his fist-work. Hal could do no more than drive in harmless blows at the other’s back. They swayed, tripped over a hawser, almost went down. From the crew and from the wharf ragged shouts arose, of fear, anger, purely malicious delight, for here was battle-royal of the finest. The sound of feet, running down the wharf, told of other contingents hastily arriving.

“By gum!” approved the helmsman, forgetting to chew. He had more than once felt the full weight of McLaughlin’s fist. “By gum, now, but Mac’s in f’ra good takin’-down. If that lad don’t fist him proper, I miss my ’tarnal guess. Sick ’im, boy!”

Blaspheming, Hal tore McLaughlin loose, flung him back, lowered his head and charged. But now the Scot had recovered a little of his wit. On deck he spat blood and a broken snag of tooth. His eye gleamed murderously. The excess of Hal’s rage betrayed the boy. His guard opened. In drove a stinging lefthander. McLaughlin handed him the other fist, packed full of dynamite. The boy reeled, gulping.

“Come on, ye college bratlin’!” challenged the fighting Scot, and smeared the blood from his mouth. “This here ain’t your ship—not yet!”

“My ship’s any ship I happen to be on!” snarled Hal, circling for advantage. Mac had already taught him to be cautious. Old Captain Brigg’s imploring cries fell from him, unheeded. “If thiswasmy ship, I’d wring your neck, so help me God! But as it is, I’ll only mash you to a jelly!”

“Pretty bairn!” gibed McLaughlin, hunched into battle-pose, bony fists up. “Grandad’s pretty pet! Arrrh! Yewould, eh?” as Hal bored in at him.

He met the rush with cool skill. True, Hal’s right went to one eye, closing it; but Hal felt the bite of knuckles catapulted from his neck.

Hal delayed no more. Bull-like, he charged. By sheer weight and fury of blows he drove Mac forward of the schooner, beside the deck-house. Amid turmoil, the battle raged. The jostling crowd, shoved and pushed, on deck and on the wharf, to see this epic war. Bets were placed, even money.

McLaughlin, panting, half-blind, his teeth set in a grin of rage, put every ounce he had left into each blow. But Hal outclassed him.

A minute, two minutes they fought, straining, sweating, lashing. Then something swift and terrible connectedwith Mac’s jaw-point in a jolt that loosened his universe. Mac’s head snapped back. His arms flung up. He dropped, pole-axed, into the scuppers.

For the first time in five-and-twenty years of fighting, clean and dirty, Fergus McLaughlin had taken a knockout.

A mighty shout of exultation, fear and rage loosened echoes from the old fish-sheds. Three or four of the crew came jostling into the circle, minded to avenge their captain. Sneering, his chest heaving, but ready with both fists, Hal faced them.

“Come on, all o’ you!” he flung, drunk with rage, his face bestial. A slaver of bloody froth trickled from the corner of his mouth. “Come on!”

They hesitated. Gorilla-like, he advanced. Back through the crowd the overbold ones drew. No heart remained in them to tackle this infuriated fighting-machine.

Hal set both fists on his hips, flung up his head and panted:

“Apologize, will I? I, a passenger on this lousy tub, I’ll apologize to a bunch of down-east rough-necks, eh? If there’s anybody else wants any apology, I’m here!”

None caught up the gage of battle. Bursting with fury that had to vent itself, Hal swung toward McLaughlin. The Scot had landed on a coil of hawser in the scuppers, that had somewhat broken his fall. Hal reached down, hauled him up and flung him backward over the rail. Thrice he struck with a fist reddened by McLaughlin’s blood. He wrenched at the unconscious man’s arm, snarling like an animal, his face distorted, eyes glazed and staring. A crunching told of at least one broken bone.

Shouts of horror fell unheeded from his ears. He glared around.

“My Gawd, he’s a-killin’ on him!” quavered a voice. “We can’t stan’ by an’ see him do murder!”

Old Briggs, nerved to sudden action, ran forward.

“Hal! For God’s sake, Hal!”

“You stand back, grandad! He’s my meat!”

Hal raised McLaughlin high above his head, with a sweep of wonderful power. He dashed the Scot to the bare planks with a horrible, dull crash, hauled back one foot and kicked the senseless man full in the mangled, blood-smeared face.

A communal gasp of terror rose up then. Men shrank and quivered, stricken with almost superstitious fear. All had seen fights aplenty; most of them had taken a hand in brawls—but here was a new kind of malice. And silence fell, tense, heart-searching.

Hal faced the outraged throng, and laughed with deep lungs.

“There’s your champion, what’s left of him!” cried he. “Hewon’t bullyrag anybody for one while, believe me. Take him—I’m through with him!”

Of a sudden the rage seemed to die in Hal, spent in that last, orgiastic convulsion of passion. He turned away, flung men right and left, and leaped down the companion. Swiftly he emerged with a suit-case. To his trembling, half-fainting grandfather he strode, unmindful of the murmur of curses and threats against him.

“Come on, grandpop!” he said in a more normal tone. His voice did not tremble, as will the voice of almost every man after a storm of rage. His color was fresh and high, his eyes clear; his whole ego seemed to have been vivified and freshened, like a sky after tempest. “Come along, now. I’ve had enough of this rotten old hulk. I’ve given it what it needed, a good clean-up. Come on!”

He seized Captain Briggs by the elbow—for theold man could hardly stand, and now was leaning against the hatchway housing—and half guided, half dragged him over the rail to the wharf.

“Shame on you, Hal Briggs!” exclaimed an old lobsterman. “This here’s a bad day’s work you’ve done. When he was down, you booted him. We wun’t fergit it, none of us wun’t.”

“No, andhewon’t forget it, either, the bragging bucko!” sneered Hal. “Uncle Silas, you keep out of this!”

“Ef that’s what they l’arn ye down to college,” sounded another voice, “you’d a durn sight better stay to hum. We fight some, on the North Shore, but we fight fair.”

Hal faced around, with blazing eyes.

“Who said that?” he gritted. “Where’s the son of a pup that said it?”

No answer. Cowed, everybody held silence. No sound was heard save the shuffling feet of the men aboard, as some of the crew lifted McLaughlin’s limp form and carried it toward the companion, just as Crevay had been carried on theSilver Fleece, half a century before.

“Come on, gramp!” exclaimed Hal. “For two cents I’d clean up the whole white-livered bunch. Let’s go home, now, before there’s trouble.”

“I—I’m afraid I can’t walk, Hal,” quavered the old man. “This has knocked me galley-west. My rudder’s unshipped and my canvas in rags. I can’t navigate at all.” He was trembling as with a chill. Against his grandson he leaned, ashen-faced, helpless. “I can’t make Snug Haven, now.”

“That’s all right, grampy,” Hal assured him. “We’ll dig up a jitney if you can get as far as the street. Come on, let’s move!”

With unsteady steps, clinging to Hal’s arm and followedby the dog, old Captain Briggs made his way up Hadlock’s Wharf. Only a few minutes had elapsed since he had strode so proudly down that wharf, but what a vast difference had been wrought in the captain’s soul! All the glad elation of his heart had now faded more swiftly than a tropic sunset turns to dark. The old man seemed to have shrunken, collapsed. Fifteen little minutes seemed to have bowed down his shoulders with at least fifteen years.

“Oh, Hal, Hal!” he groaned, as they slowly made their way towards the street. “Oh, my boy, how could you ha’ done that?”

“How could I? After what he said, howcouldn’tI?”

“What a disgrace! What a burning, terrible disgrace! You—just back from college—”

“There, there, grandpop, it’ll be all right. Everybody’ll be glad, when they cool off, that I handed it to that bully.”

“This will make a terrible scandal. TheObserverwill print it, and—”

“Nonsense! You don’t think they’d waste paper on a little mix-up aboard a coasting-schooner, do you?”

“This is more than a little mix-up, Hal. You’ve stove that man’s hull up, serious. There’s more storm brewing.”

“What d’you mean, more storm?”

“Oh, he’ll take this to court. He’ll sue for damages.”

“He’d better not!” snapped Hal, grimly. “I’ve got more for him, where what I handed him came from, if he tries it!”

“Hal, you’re—breaking my old heart.”

“D’you think, grandpa, I was going to stand there and swallow his insults? Do you think I, a Briggs,was going to let that slab-sided P.I. hand me that rough stuff? Wouldyouhave stood for it?”

“I? What do you mean? How could I fight, at my age?”

“I mean, when you were young. Didn’tyouever mix it, then? Didn’t you have guts enough to put up your fists when you had to? If you didn’t, you’re no grandfather of mine!”

“Hal,” answered the old man, still holding to his grandson as they neared the street, “what course I sailed in my youth is nothing for you to steer by now. Those were rough days, and these are supposed to be civilized. That was terrible, terrible, what you did to McLaughlin. The way you flung him across the rail, there, and then to the deck, and—kicked him, when he was down—kicked him in the face—”

“It’s all right, I tell you!” Hal asserted, vigorously. He laughed, with glad remembrance. “When I fight a gentleman, I fight like a gentleman. When I fight a ruffian, I use the same tactics. That’s all such cattle understand. My motto is to hit first, every time. That’s the one best bet. The second is, hit hard. If you’re in a scrap, you’re in it to win, aren’t you? Hand out everything you’ve got—give ’em the whole bag of tricks, all at one wallop. That’s whatIgo by, and it’s a damn good rule. You, there! Hey, there, jitney!”

The discussion broke off, short, as Hal sighted a little car, cruising slowly and with rattling joints over the rough-paved cobbles.

CHAPTER XXTHE CAPTAIN COMMANDSThe jitney stopped.“Oh, hello, Sam! That you?” asked Hal, recognizing the driver.“Horn spoon! Ef it ain’t Hal!” exclaimed the jitney-man. “Back ag’in, eh? What the devilyoubeen up to? Shirt tore, an’ one eye looks like you’d been—”“Oh, nothing,” Hal answered, while certain taggers-on stopped at a respectful distance. “I’ve just been arguing with McLaughlin, aboard theSylvia Fletcher. It’s nothing at all.” He helped his grandfather into the car and then, gripping the Airedale so that it yelped with pain, he pitched it in. “How much do you want to take us down to Snug Haven?”“Well—that’ll be a dollar ’n’ a half, seein’ it’s you.”“You’ll get one nice, round little buck, Sam.”“Git out! You, an’ the cap’n, an’ the dog, an’ a tussik! Why—”Hal climbed into the car. He leaned forward, his face close to Sam’s. The seethe of rage seemed to have departed. Now Hal was all joviality. Swiftly the change had come upon him.“Sam!” he admonished. “You know perfectly well seventy-five cents would be robbery, but I’ll give you a dollar. Put her into high.”The driver sniffed Hal’s breath, and nodded acceptance.“All right, seein’ as it’s you,” he answered. He added, in a whisper: “Ain’t got nothin’ on y’r hip, have ye?”“Nothing but a bruise,” said Hal. “Clk-clk!”The jitney struck its bone-shaking gait along the curving street of Endicutt. No one spoke. The old captain, spent in forces and possessed by bitter, strange hauntings, had sunk far down in the seat. His beard made a white cascade over the smart blue of his coat. His eyes, half-closed, seemed to be visioning the far-off days he had labored so long to forget. His face was gray with suffering, beneath its tan. His lips had set themselves in a grim, tight line.As for Hal, he filled and lighted his pipe, then with a kind of bored tolerance eyed the quaint old houses, the gardens and trim hedges.“Some burg!” he murmured. “Some live little burg to put in a whole summer! Well, anyhow, I started something. They ought to hand me a medal, for putting a little pep into this prehistoric graveyard.”Then he relapsed into contemplative smoking.Presently the town gave place to the open road along the shore, now bathed in a thousand lovely hues as sunset died. The slowly fading beauty of the seascape soothed what little fever still remained in Hal’s blood. With an appreciative eye he observed the harbor. The town itself might seem dreary, but in his soul the instinctive love of the sea awoke to the charms of that master-panorama which in all its infinite existence has never twice shown just the same blending of hues, of motion, of refluent ebb and fall.Along the dimming islands, swells were breaking into great bouquets of foam. The murmurous, watery cry of the surf lulled Hal; its booming cadences against the rocky girdles of the coast seemed whispering alluring, mysterious things to him. In the offing a few faintspecks of sail, melting in the purple haze, beckoned: “Come away, come away!”To Captain Briggs quite other thoughts were coming. Not now could the lure of his well-loved ocean appeal to him, for all the wonders of the umber and dull orange west. Where but an hour ago beauty had spread its miracles across the world, for him, now all had turned to drab. A few faint twinkles of light were beginning to show in fishers’ cottages; and these, too, saddened the old captain, for they minded him of Snug Haven’s waiting lights—Snug Haven, where he had hoped so wonderfully much, but where now only mournful disillusion and bodings of evil remained.The ceaseless threnody of the sea seemed to the old man a requiem over dead hopes. The salt tides seemed to mock and gibe at him, and out of the pale haze drifting seaward from the slow-heaving waters, ghosts seemed beckoning.All at once Hal spoke, his college slang rudely jarring the old captain’s melancholy.“That was some jolt I handed Mac, wasn’t it?” he laughed. “He’ll be more careful who he picks on next time. That’s about what he needed, a good walloping.”“Eh? What?” murmured the old man, roused from sad musings.“Such people have to get it handed to them once in a while,” the grandson continued. “There’s only one kind of argument they understand—and that’s this!”He raised his right fist, inspected it, turning it this way and that, admiring its massive power, its adamantine bone and sinew.“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Hal, don’t do that!” exclaimed the captain. With strange eyes he peered at the young man.Hal laughed uproariously.“Some fist, what?” he boasted. “Some pacifier!”As he turned toward the old man, his breath smote the captain’s senses.“Lord, Hal! You haven’t been drinking, have you?” quavered Briggs.“Drinking? Well—no. Maybe I’ve had one or two, but that’s all.”“One or two what, Hal?”“Slugs of rum.”“Rum! Good God!”“What’s the matter, now? What’s the harm in a drop of good stimulant? I asked him for a drink, and he couldn’t see it, the tightwad! I took it, anyhow. That’s what started all the rough-house.”“Great heavens, Hal! D’you mean to tell me you’re drinking, now?”“There, there, gramp, don’t get all stewed up. All the fellows take a drop now and then. You don’t want me to be a molly-coddle, do you? To feel I can’t take a nip, once in a while, and hold it like a gentleman? That’s all foolishness, grampy. Be sensible!”The old man began to shiver, though the off-shore breeze blew warm. Hal made a grimace of vexation. His grandfather answered nothing, and once more silence fell. It lasted till the first scattering houses of South Endicutt came into view in the fading light.The driver, throwing a switch, sent his headlights piercing the soft June dusk. The cones of radiance painted the roadside grass a vivid green, and made the whitewashed fences leap to view. Hedges, gardens, gable-ends, all spoke of home and rest, peace and the beatitude of snug security. Somewhere the sound of children’s shouts and laughter echoed appealingly. The tinkle of a cow-bell added its music; and faint in the western sky, the evening star looked down.And still Captain Briggs held silent.A little red gleam winked in view—the port light of Snug Haven.“There’s the old place, isn’t it?” commented Hal, in a softer tone. He seemed moved to gentler thoughts; but only for a moment. His eye, catching a far, white figure away down by the smithy, brightened with other anticipations than of getting home again.“Hello!” he exclaimed. “That’s Laura, isn’t it? Look, gramp—isn’t that Laura Maynard?”Peering, Captain Briggs recognized the girl. He understood her innocent little subterfuge of being out for a casual stroll just at this time. His heart, already lacerated, contracted with fresh pain.“No, no, Hal,” he exclaimed. “That can’t be Laura. Come now, don’t be thinking about Laura, to-night. You’re tired, and ought to rest.”“Tired? Say, that’s a good one! When was I ever tired?”“Well,I’mtired, anyhow,” the captain insisted, “and I want to cast anchor at the Haven. We’ve got company, too. It wouldn’t look polite, if you went gallivanting—”“Company? What company?” demanded Hal, as the car drew up toward the gate.“A very special friend of mine. A man I haven’t seen in fifty years. An old doctor that once sailed with me. He’s waiting to see you, now.”“Another old pill, eh?” growled the boy, sullenly, his eyes still fixed on the girl at the bend of the road. “There’ll be time enough for Methuselah, later. Just now, it’s me for the skirt!”The car halted. The captain stiffly descended. He felt singularly spent and old. Hal threw out the suit-case, and lithely leaped to earth.“Dig up a bone for Sam, here,” directed Hal.“Now, I’ll be on my way to overhaul the little dame.”“Hal! That’snotLaura, I tell you!”“You can’t kid me, grampy! That’s the schoolma’m, all right. I’d know her a mile off. She’s some chicken, take it from me!”“Hal, I protest against such language!”“Oh, too rough, eh?” sneered the boy. “Now in your day, I suppose you used more refined English, didn’t you? Maybe you called them—”“Hal! That will do!”“So will Laura, for me. She’s mine, that girl is. She’s plump as a young porpoise, and I’m going after her!”The captain stood aghast, at sound of words that echoed from the very antipodes of the world and of his own life. Then, with a sudden rush of anger, his face reddening formidably, he exclaimed:“Not another word! You’ve been drinking, and you’re dirty and torn—no fit man, to-night, to haul up ’longside that craft!”“I tell you, I’m going down there to say good evening to Laura, anyhow,” Hal insisted, sullenly. “I’m going!”“You arenot, sir!” retorted Briggs, while Sam, in the car, grinned with enjoyment. “You’renotgoing to hail Laura Maynard to-night! Do you want to lose her friendship and respect?”“Bull! Women like a little rough stuff, now and then. This ‘Little Rollo’ business is played out. Go along in, if you want to, but I’m going to see Laura.”“Hal,” said the old man, a new tone in his voice. “This is carrying too much canvas. You’ll lose some of it in a minute, if you don’t reef. I’m captain here, and you’re going to take my orders, if it comes to that. The very strength you boast of and misuse so brutally is derived from money I worked a lifetime for, at sea,and suffered and sinned and bled and almost died for!” The old captain’s tone rang out again as in the old, tempestuous days when he was master of many hard and violent men. “Now, sir, you’re going to obey me, or overside you go, this minute—and once you go, you’ll never set foot on my planks again! Pick up your dunnage, sir, and into the Haven with you!”“Goodnight!” ejaculated Hal, staring. Never had the old man thus spoken to him. Stung to anger, though Hal was, he dared not disobey. Muttering, he picked up the suit-case. The dog, glad to be at home once more, leaped against him. With an oath, Hal swung the suit-case; the Airedale, yelping with pain, fawned and slunk away.“Into the Haven with you!” commanded Briggs, outraged to his very heart. “Go!”Hal obeyed, with huge shoulders hulking and drooping in their plenitude of evil power, just like the captain’s, so very long ago. Alpheus Briggs peered down the street at the dim white figure of the disappointed girl; then, eyes agleam and back very straight, he followed Hal toward Snug Haven—the Haven which in such beatitude of spirit he had left but an hour ago—the Haven to which, filled with so many evil bodings, he now was coming back again.“Oh, God,” he murmured, “if this thing must come upon me, Thy will be done! But if it can be turned aside, spare me! Spare me, for this is all my life and all my hope! Spare me!”

THE CAPTAIN COMMANDS

The jitney stopped.

“Oh, hello, Sam! That you?” asked Hal, recognizing the driver.

“Horn spoon! Ef it ain’t Hal!” exclaimed the jitney-man. “Back ag’in, eh? What the devilyoubeen up to? Shirt tore, an’ one eye looks like you’d been—”

“Oh, nothing,” Hal answered, while certain taggers-on stopped at a respectful distance. “I’ve just been arguing with McLaughlin, aboard theSylvia Fletcher. It’s nothing at all.” He helped his grandfather into the car and then, gripping the Airedale so that it yelped with pain, he pitched it in. “How much do you want to take us down to Snug Haven?”

“Well—that’ll be a dollar ’n’ a half, seein’ it’s you.”

“You’ll get one nice, round little buck, Sam.”

“Git out! You, an’ the cap’n, an’ the dog, an’ a tussik! Why—”

Hal climbed into the car. He leaned forward, his face close to Sam’s. The seethe of rage seemed to have departed. Now Hal was all joviality. Swiftly the change had come upon him.

“Sam!” he admonished. “You know perfectly well seventy-five cents would be robbery, but I’ll give you a dollar. Put her into high.”

The driver sniffed Hal’s breath, and nodded acceptance.

“All right, seein’ as it’s you,” he answered. He added, in a whisper: “Ain’t got nothin’ on y’r hip, have ye?”

“Nothing but a bruise,” said Hal. “Clk-clk!”

The jitney struck its bone-shaking gait along the curving street of Endicutt. No one spoke. The old captain, spent in forces and possessed by bitter, strange hauntings, had sunk far down in the seat. His beard made a white cascade over the smart blue of his coat. His eyes, half-closed, seemed to be visioning the far-off days he had labored so long to forget. His face was gray with suffering, beneath its tan. His lips had set themselves in a grim, tight line.

As for Hal, he filled and lighted his pipe, then with a kind of bored tolerance eyed the quaint old houses, the gardens and trim hedges.

“Some burg!” he murmured. “Some live little burg to put in a whole summer! Well, anyhow, I started something. They ought to hand me a medal, for putting a little pep into this prehistoric graveyard.”

Then he relapsed into contemplative smoking.

Presently the town gave place to the open road along the shore, now bathed in a thousand lovely hues as sunset died. The slowly fading beauty of the seascape soothed what little fever still remained in Hal’s blood. With an appreciative eye he observed the harbor. The town itself might seem dreary, but in his soul the instinctive love of the sea awoke to the charms of that master-panorama which in all its infinite existence has never twice shown just the same blending of hues, of motion, of refluent ebb and fall.

Along the dimming islands, swells were breaking into great bouquets of foam. The murmurous, watery cry of the surf lulled Hal; its booming cadences against the rocky girdles of the coast seemed whispering alluring, mysterious things to him. In the offing a few faintspecks of sail, melting in the purple haze, beckoned: “Come away, come away!”

To Captain Briggs quite other thoughts were coming. Not now could the lure of his well-loved ocean appeal to him, for all the wonders of the umber and dull orange west. Where but an hour ago beauty had spread its miracles across the world, for him, now all had turned to drab. A few faint twinkles of light were beginning to show in fishers’ cottages; and these, too, saddened the old captain, for they minded him of Snug Haven’s waiting lights—Snug Haven, where he had hoped so wonderfully much, but where now only mournful disillusion and bodings of evil remained.

The ceaseless threnody of the sea seemed to the old man a requiem over dead hopes. The salt tides seemed to mock and gibe at him, and out of the pale haze drifting seaward from the slow-heaving waters, ghosts seemed beckoning.

All at once Hal spoke, his college slang rudely jarring the old captain’s melancholy.

“That was some jolt I handed Mac, wasn’t it?” he laughed. “He’ll be more careful who he picks on next time. That’s about what he needed, a good walloping.”

“Eh? What?” murmured the old man, roused from sad musings.

“Such people have to get it handed to them once in a while,” the grandson continued. “There’s only one kind of argument they understand—and that’s this!”

He raised his right fist, inspected it, turning it this way and that, admiring its massive power, its adamantine bone and sinew.

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Hal, don’t do that!” exclaimed the captain. With strange eyes he peered at the young man.

Hal laughed uproariously.

“Some fist, what?” he boasted. “Some pacifier!”

As he turned toward the old man, his breath smote the captain’s senses.

“Lord, Hal! You haven’t been drinking, have you?” quavered Briggs.

“Drinking? Well—no. Maybe I’ve had one or two, but that’s all.”

“One or two what, Hal?”

“Slugs of rum.”

“Rum! Good God!”

“What’s the matter, now? What’s the harm in a drop of good stimulant? I asked him for a drink, and he couldn’t see it, the tightwad! I took it, anyhow. That’s what started all the rough-house.”

“Great heavens, Hal! D’you mean to tell me you’re drinking, now?”

“There, there, gramp, don’t get all stewed up. All the fellows take a drop now and then. You don’t want me to be a molly-coddle, do you? To feel I can’t take a nip, once in a while, and hold it like a gentleman? That’s all foolishness, grampy. Be sensible!”

The old man began to shiver, though the off-shore breeze blew warm. Hal made a grimace of vexation. His grandfather answered nothing, and once more silence fell. It lasted till the first scattering houses of South Endicutt came into view in the fading light.

The driver, throwing a switch, sent his headlights piercing the soft June dusk. The cones of radiance painted the roadside grass a vivid green, and made the whitewashed fences leap to view. Hedges, gardens, gable-ends, all spoke of home and rest, peace and the beatitude of snug security. Somewhere the sound of children’s shouts and laughter echoed appealingly. The tinkle of a cow-bell added its music; and faint in the western sky, the evening star looked down.

And still Captain Briggs held silent.

A little red gleam winked in view—the port light of Snug Haven.

“There’s the old place, isn’t it?” commented Hal, in a softer tone. He seemed moved to gentler thoughts; but only for a moment. His eye, catching a far, white figure away down by the smithy, brightened with other anticipations than of getting home again.

“Hello!” he exclaimed. “That’s Laura, isn’t it? Look, gramp—isn’t that Laura Maynard?”

Peering, Captain Briggs recognized the girl. He understood her innocent little subterfuge of being out for a casual stroll just at this time. His heart, already lacerated, contracted with fresh pain.

“No, no, Hal,” he exclaimed. “That can’t be Laura. Come now, don’t be thinking about Laura, to-night. You’re tired, and ought to rest.”

“Tired? Say, that’s a good one! When was I ever tired?”

“Well,I’mtired, anyhow,” the captain insisted, “and I want to cast anchor at the Haven. We’ve got company, too. It wouldn’t look polite, if you went gallivanting—”

“Company? What company?” demanded Hal, as the car drew up toward the gate.

“A very special friend of mine. A man I haven’t seen in fifty years. An old doctor that once sailed with me. He’s waiting to see you, now.”

“Another old pill, eh?” growled the boy, sullenly, his eyes still fixed on the girl at the bend of the road. “There’ll be time enough for Methuselah, later. Just now, it’s me for the skirt!”

The car halted. The captain stiffly descended. He felt singularly spent and old. Hal threw out the suit-case, and lithely leaped to earth.

“Dig up a bone for Sam, here,” directed Hal.“Now, I’ll be on my way to overhaul the little dame.”

“Hal! That’snotLaura, I tell you!”

“You can’t kid me, grampy! That’s the schoolma’m, all right. I’d know her a mile off. She’s some chicken, take it from me!”

“Hal, I protest against such language!”

“Oh, too rough, eh?” sneered the boy. “Now in your day, I suppose you used more refined English, didn’t you? Maybe you called them—”

“Hal! That will do!”

“So will Laura, for me. She’s mine, that girl is. She’s plump as a young porpoise, and I’m going after her!”

The captain stood aghast, at sound of words that echoed from the very antipodes of the world and of his own life. Then, with a sudden rush of anger, his face reddening formidably, he exclaimed:

“Not another word! You’ve been drinking, and you’re dirty and torn—no fit man, to-night, to haul up ’longside that craft!”

“I tell you, I’m going down there to say good evening to Laura, anyhow,” Hal insisted, sullenly. “I’m going!”

“You arenot, sir!” retorted Briggs, while Sam, in the car, grinned with enjoyment. “You’renotgoing to hail Laura Maynard to-night! Do you want to lose her friendship and respect?”

“Bull! Women like a little rough stuff, now and then. This ‘Little Rollo’ business is played out. Go along in, if you want to, but I’m going to see Laura.”

“Hal,” said the old man, a new tone in his voice. “This is carrying too much canvas. You’ll lose some of it in a minute, if you don’t reef. I’m captain here, and you’re going to take my orders, if it comes to that. The very strength you boast of and misuse so brutally is derived from money I worked a lifetime for, at sea,and suffered and sinned and bled and almost died for!” The old captain’s tone rang out again as in the old, tempestuous days when he was master of many hard and violent men. “Now, sir, you’re going to obey me, or overside you go, this minute—and once you go, you’ll never set foot on my planks again! Pick up your dunnage, sir, and into the Haven with you!”

“Goodnight!” ejaculated Hal, staring. Never had the old man thus spoken to him. Stung to anger, though Hal was, he dared not disobey. Muttering, he picked up the suit-case. The dog, glad to be at home once more, leaped against him. With an oath, Hal swung the suit-case; the Airedale, yelping with pain, fawned and slunk away.

“Into the Haven with you!” commanded Briggs, outraged to his very heart. “Go!”

Hal obeyed, with huge shoulders hulking and drooping in their plenitude of evil power, just like the captain’s, so very long ago. Alpheus Briggs peered down the street at the dim white figure of the disappointed girl; then, eyes agleam and back very straight, he followed Hal toward Snug Haven—the Haven which in such beatitude of spirit he had left but an hour ago—the Haven to which, filled with so many evil bodings, he now was coming back again.

“Oh, God,” he murmured, “if this thing must come upon me, Thy will be done! But if it can be turned aside, spare me! Spare me, for this is all my life and all my hope! Spare me!”

CHAPTER XXISPECTERS OF THE PASTHal’s boots, clumping heavily on the porch, aroused the captain from his brief revery of prayer. Almost at once the new stab of pain at realization that Dr. Filhiol must see Hal in this disheveled, half-drunken condition brought the old man sharply back to earth again. Bitter humiliation, brutal disillusionment, sickening anti-climax! The captain stifled a groan. Fate seemed dealing him a blow unreasonably hard.A chair scraped on the porch. Briggs saw the bent and shriveled form of Dr. Filhiol arising. The doctor, rendered nervous by the arsenal and by the cabinet of curios, which all too clearly recalled the past, had once more gone out upon the piazza, to await the captain’s return. Warmed by the egg-nog within, and outwardly by a shawl that Ezra had given him, now he stood there, leaning on his cane. A smile of anticipation curved his shaven, bloodless lips. His eyes blinked eagerly behind his thick-lensed glasses.“Home again, eh?” he piped. “Good! So then this is the little grandson back from college? Little! Ha-ha! Why, captain, he’d make two like us!”“This is Hal,” answered the captain briefly. “Yes, this is my grandson.”The doctor, surprised at Briggs’s curt reply, put out his hand. Hal took it as his grandfather spoke the doctor’s name.“Glad to know you, doctor!” said he in a sullen voice, and let the hand drop. “Excuse me, please! I’ll go in and wash up.”He turned toward the door. With perturbation Filhiol peered after him. Then he glanced at the captain. Awkwardly silence fell, broken by a cry of joy from the front door.“Oh, Master Hal!” ejaculated Ezra. “Ef it ain’t Master Hal!”The servitor’s long face beamed with jubilation as he seized the suit-case with one hand and with the other clapped Hal on the shoulder. “Jumpin’ jellyfish, but you’re lookin’ fine an’ stout! Back from y’r books, ain’t ye? Ah, books is grand things, Master Hal, ’specially check-books, pocketbooks, an’ bank-books. Did the cap’n tell ye? He did, didn’t he?”“Hello, Ez!” answered Hal, still very glum. “Tell me what?”“‘Bout the plum-cake an’ lamb?” asked Ezra anxiously as Hal slid past him into the house. “I remembered what you like, Master Hal. I been workin’ doggone hard to git everythin’ jest A1 fer you!”His voice grew inaudible as he followed Hal into Snug Haven. The captain and the doctor gazed at each other a long, eloquent moment in the vague light. Neither spoke. Filhiol turned and sat down, puzzled, oppressed.Briggs wearily sank into another chair. Hal’s feet stumbling up the front stairs echoed with torment through his soul. Was that the stumbling of haste, or had the boy drunk more than he had seemed to? The captain dropped his cap to the porch-floor. Not now did he take pains to hang it on top of the rocking-chair. He wiped his forehead with his silk handkerchief, and groaned.The doctor kept silence. He understood that any word of his would prove inopportune. But with pity he studied the face of Captain Briggs, its lines accentuated by the light from the window of the cabin.Presently the captain sighed deep and began:“I’m glad you’re here on my quarterdeck with me to-night, doctor. Things are all going wrong, sir. Barometer’s way down, compass is bedeviled, seams opening fore and aft. It’s bad, doctor—very, very bad!”“I see there’s something wrong, of course,” said Filhiol with sympathy.“Everything’s wrong, sir. That grandson of mine—you—noticed just what was the matter with him?”“H-m! It’s rather dark here, you know,” hedged Filhiol.“Not so dark but what you understood,” said Briggs grimly. “When there’s a storm brewing no good navigator thinks he can dodge it by locking himself in his cabin. And thereisa storm brewing this time, a hurricane, sir, or I’ve missed all signals.”“Just what do you mean, captain?”“Violence, drink, women—wickedness and sin! You smelled his breath, didn’t you? You took an observation of his face?”“Well, yes. He’s been drinking a little, of course; but these boys in college—”“He very nigh killed the skipper of theSylvia Fletcher, and there’ll be the devil to pay about it. It was just luck there wasn’t murder done before my very eyes. He’s been drinking enough so as to wake a black devil in his heart! Enough so he’s like a roaring bull after the first pretty girl in the offing.”“There, there, captain!” The doctor tried to soothe him, his thin voice making strange contrast with the captain’s booming bass. “You’re probably exaggerating. A little exuberance may be pardoned in youth,” his expression belied his words. “Remember, captain, whenyouwere—”“That’s just what’s driving me on the rocks withgrief and despair!” the old man burst out, gripping the arms of the rocker. “God above! It’s just the realization of my own youth, flung back at me now, that’s like to kill me! That boy, so help me—why, he’s thrown clean back fifty years all at one crack!”“No, no, not that!”“He has, I tell you! He’s jumped back half a century.Hedon’t belong in this age of airplanes and wireless.Hebelongs back with the clipper-ships and—”“Nonsense, captain, and you know it!”“It’s far from nonsense! There’s a bad strain somewhere in my blood. I’ve been afraid a long time it was going to crop out in Hal. There’s always been a tradition in my family of evil doings now and then. I don’t know anything certain about it, though, except that my grandfather, Amalfi Briggs, died of bursting a blood-vessel in his brain in a fit of rage. That was all that saved him from being a murderer—he died before he could kill the other man!”Silence came, save for the piping whistle of an urchin far up the road. The ever-rising, falling suspiration of the sea breathed its long caress across the land, on which a vague, pale sheen of starlight was descending.Suddenly, from abovestairs, sounded a dull, slamming sound as of a bureau-drawer violently shut. Another slam followed; and now came a grumbling of muffled profanity.“All that saved my grandfather from being a murderer,” said Briggs dourly, “was the fact that he dropped dead himself before he could cut down the other man with the ship-carpenter’s adze he had in his hand.”“Indeed? Your grandfather must have been rather a hard specimen.”“Only when he was in anger. At other times younever saw a more jovial soul! But rage made a beast of him!”“How was your father?”“Not that way in the least. He was as consistently Christian a man as ever breathed. My son—Hal’s father—was a good man, too. Not a sign of that sort of brutality ever showed in him.”“I think you’re worrying unnecessarily,” judged the doctor. “Your grandson may be wild and rough at times, but he’s tainted with no hereditary stain.”“I don’t know about that, doctor,” said the captain earnestly. “For a year or two past he’s been showing more temper than a young man should. He’s not been answering the helm very well. Two or three of the village people here have already complained to me. I’ve never been really afraid till to-night. But now, doctor, Iamafraid—terribly, deadly afraid!”The old man’s voice shook. Filhiol tried to smile.“Let the dead past bury its dead!” said he. “Don’t open the old graves to let the ghosts of other days walk out again into the clear sunset of your life.”“God knows I don’t want to!” the old man exclaimed in a low, trembling voice. “But suppose those graves open themselves? Suppose they won’t stay shut, no, not though all the good deeds from here to heaven were piled atop of them, to keep them down? Suppose those ghosts rise up and stare me in the eyes and won’t be banished—what then?”“Stuff and nonsense!” gibed Filhiol, though his voice was far from steady. “You’re not yourself, captain. You’re unnerved. There’s nothing the matter with that boy except high spirits and overflowing animal passions.”“No, no! I understand only too well. God is being very hard to me! I sinned grievous, in the long ago! But I’ve done my very best to pay the reckoning.Seems like I haven’t succeeded. Seems like God don’t forget! He’s paying me now, with interest!”“Captain, you exaggerate!” the doctor tried to assure him, but Briggs shook his head.“Heredity skips that way sometimes, don’t it?” asked he.“Well—sometimes. But that doesn’t prove anything.”“No, it don’t prove anything, but what Hal did to-nightdoes! Would a thing like that come on sudden that way? Would it? A kind of hydrophobia of rage that won’t listen to any reason but wants to break and tear and kill? I mean, if that kind of thing was in the blood, could it lay hid a long time and then all of a sudden burst out like that?”“Well—yes. It might.”“I seem to remember it was the same with me the first time I ever had one of those mad fits,” said the captain. “It come on quick. It wasn’t like ordinary getting mad. It was a red torrent, delirious and awful—something that caught me up and carried me along on its wave—something I couldn’t fight against. When I saw Hal with his teeth grinning, eyes glassy, fists red with McLaughlin’s blood, oh, it struck clean through my heart!“It wasn’t any fear of either of them getting killed that harpooned me, no, nor complications and damages to pay. No, no, though such will be bad enough. What struck me all of a heap was to see myself, my very own self that used to be. If I, Captain Alpheus Briggs, had been swept back to 1868 and set down on the deck of theSilver Fleece, Hal would have been my exact double. I’ve seen myself just as I was then, doctor, and it’s shaken me in every timber. There I stood, I, myself, in Hal’s person, after five decades of weary time. I could see the outlines of the same blackbeard on the same kind of jaw—same thick neck and bloody fists; and, oh, doctor, the eyes of Hal. His eyes!”“His eyes?”“Yes. In them I saw my old, wicked, hell-elected self—saw it glaring out, to break and ravish and murder!”“Captain Briggs!”“It’s true, I’m telling you. I’ve seen a ghost this evening. A ghost—”He peered around fearfully in the dusk. His voice lowered to a whisper:“A ghost!”Filhiol could not speak. Something cold, prehensile, terrible seemed fingering at his heart! Ruddy, the Airedale, raised his head, seemed to be listening, to be seeing something they could not detect. In the dog’s throat a low growl muttered.“What’sthat?” said the captain, every muscle taut.“Nothing, nothing,” the doctor answered. “The dog probably hears some one down there by the hedge. This is all nonsense, captain. You’re working yourself into a highly nervous state and imagining all kinds of things. Now—”“I tell you, I saw the ghost of my other self,” insisted Briggs. “There’s worse kinds of ghosts than those that hang around graveyards. I’ve always wanted to see that kind and never have. Night after night I’ve been up there to the little cemetery on Croft Hill, and sat on the bench in our lot, just as friendly and receptive as could be, ready to see whatever ghost might come to me, but none ever came. I’m not afraid of the ghosts of the dead! It’s ghosts of the living that strike a dread to me—ghosts of the past that ought to die and can’t—ghosts of my own sins that God won’t let lie in the grave of forgiveness—”“S-h-h-h!” exclaimed the doctor. He laid a hand on the captain’s, which was clutching the arm of the rocker with a grip of steel. “Don’t give way to such folly! Perhaps Hal did drink a little, and perhaps he did thrash a man who had insulted him. But that’s as far as it goes. All this talk about ghosts and some hereditary, devilish force cropping out again, is pure rubbish!”“I wish to God above itwas!” the old man groaned. “But I know it’s not. It’s there, doctor, I tell you! It’s still alive and in the world, more terrible and more malignant than ever, a living, breathing thing, evil and venomous, backed up with twice the intelligence and learning I ever had, with a fine, keen brain to direct it and with muscles of steel to do its bidding! Oh, God, I know, Iknow!”“Captain Briggs, sir,” the doctor began. “This is most extraordinary language from a man of your common sense. I really do not understand—”“Hush!” interrupted the captain, raising his right hand. On the stairway feet echoed. “Hush! He’s coming down!”Silent, tense, they waited. The heavy footfalls reached the bottom of the stair and paused there a moment. Briggs and the doctor heard Hal grumbling something inarticulate to himself. Then he walked into the cabin.

SPECTERS OF THE PAST

Hal’s boots, clumping heavily on the porch, aroused the captain from his brief revery of prayer. Almost at once the new stab of pain at realization that Dr. Filhiol must see Hal in this disheveled, half-drunken condition brought the old man sharply back to earth again. Bitter humiliation, brutal disillusionment, sickening anti-climax! The captain stifled a groan. Fate seemed dealing him a blow unreasonably hard.

A chair scraped on the porch. Briggs saw the bent and shriveled form of Dr. Filhiol arising. The doctor, rendered nervous by the arsenal and by the cabinet of curios, which all too clearly recalled the past, had once more gone out upon the piazza, to await the captain’s return. Warmed by the egg-nog within, and outwardly by a shawl that Ezra had given him, now he stood there, leaning on his cane. A smile of anticipation curved his shaven, bloodless lips. His eyes blinked eagerly behind his thick-lensed glasses.

“Home again, eh?” he piped. “Good! So then this is the little grandson back from college? Little! Ha-ha! Why, captain, he’d make two like us!”

“This is Hal,” answered the captain briefly. “Yes, this is my grandson.”

The doctor, surprised at Briggs’s curt reply, put out his hand. Hal took it as his grandfather spoke the doctor’s name.

“Glad to know you, doctor!” said he in a sullen voice, and let the hand drop. “Excuse me, please! I’ll go in and wash up.”

He turned toward the door. With perturbation Filhiol peered after him. Then he glanced at the captain. Awkwardly silence fell, broken by a cry of joy from the front door.

“Oh, Master Hal!” ejaculated Ezra. “Ef it ain’t Master Hal!”

The servitor’s long face beamed with jubilation as he seized the suit-case with one hand and with the other clapped Hal on the shoulder. “Jumpin’ jellyfish, but you’re lookin’ fine an’ stout! Back from y’r books, ain’t ye? Ah, books is grand things, Master Hal, ’specially check-books, pocketbooks, an’ bank-books. Did the cap’n tell ye? He did, didn’t he?”

“Hello, Ez!” answered Hal, still very glum. “Tell me what?”

“‘Bout the plum-cake an’ lamb?” asked Ezra anxiously as Hal slid past him into the house. “I remembered what you like, Master Hal. I been workin’ doggone hard to git everythin’ jest A1 fer you!”

His voice grew inaudible as he followed Hal into Snug Haven. The captain and the doctor gazed at each other a long, eloquent moment in the vague light. Neither spoke. Filhiol turned and sat down, puzzled, oppressed.

Briggs wearily sank into another chair. Hal’s feet stumbling up the front stairs echoed with torment through his soul. Was that the stumbling of haste, or had the boy drunk more than he had seemed to? The captain dropped his cap to the porch-floor. Not now did he take pains to hang it on top of the rocking-chair. He wiped his forehead with his silk handkerchief, and groaned.

The doctor kept silence. He understood that any word of his would prove inopportune. But with pity he studied the face of Captain Briggs, its lines accentuated by the light from the window of the cabin.

Presently the captain sighed deep and began:

“I’m glad you’re here on my quarterdeck with me to-night, doctor. Things are all going wrong, sir. Barometer’s way down, compass is bedeviled, seams opening fore and aft. It’s bad, doctor—very, very bad!”

“I see there’s something wrong, of course,” said Filhiol with sympathy.

“Everything’s wrong, sir. That grandson of mine—you—noticed just what was the matter with him?”

“H-m! It’s rather dark here, you know,” hedged Filhiol.

“Not so dark but what you understood,” said Briggs grimly. “When there’s a storm brewing no good navigator thinks he can dodge it by locking himself in his cabin. And thereisa storm brewing this time, a hurricane, sir, or I’ve missed all signals.”

“Just what do you mean, captain?”

“Violence, drink, women—wickedness and sin! You smelled his breath, didn’t you? You took an observation of his face?”

“Well, yes. He’s been drinking a little, of course; but these boys in college—”

“He very nigh killed the skipper of theSylvia Fletcher, and there’ll be the devil to pay about it. It was just luck there wasn’t murder done before my very eyes. He’s been drinking enough so as to wake a black devil in his heart! Enough so he’s like a roaring bull after the first pretty girl in the offing.”

“There, there, captain!” The doctor tried to soothe him, his thin voice making strange contrast with the captain’s booming bass. “You’re probably exaggerating. A little exuberance may be pardoned in youth,” his expression belied his words. “Remember, captain, whenyouwere—”

“That’s just what’s driving me on the rocks withgrief and despair!” the old man burst out, gripping the arms of the rocker. “God above! It’s just the realization of my own youth, flung back at me now, that’s like to kill me! That boy, so help me—why, he’s thrown clean back fifty years all at one crack!”

“No, no, not that!”

“He has, I tell you! He’s jumped back half a century.Hedon’t belong in this age of airplanes and wireless.Hebelongs back with the clipper-ships and—”

“Nonsense, captain, and you know it!”

“It’s far from nonsense! There’s a bad strain somewhere in my blood. I’ve been afraid a long time it was going to crop out in Hal. There’s always been a tradition in my family of evil doings now and then. I don’t know anything certain about it, though, except that my grandfather, Amalfi Briggs, died of bursting a blood-vessel in his brain in a fit of rage. That was all that saved him from being a murderer—he died before he could kill the other man!”

Silence came, save for the piping whistle of an urchin far up the road. The ever-rising, falling suspiration of the sea breathed its long caress across the land, on which a vague, pale sheen of starlight was descending.

Suddenly, from abovestairs, sounded a dull, slamming sound as of a bureau-drawer violently shut. Another slam followed; and now came a grumbling of muffled profanity.

“All that saved my grandfather from being a murderer,” said Briggs dourly, “was the fact that he dropped dead himself before he could cut down the other man with the ship-carpenter’s adze he had in his hand.”

“Indeed? Your grandfather must have been rather a hard specimen.”

“Only when he was in anger. At other times younever saw a more jovial soul! But rage made a beast of him!”

“How was your father?”

“Not that way in the least. He was as consistently Christian a man as ever breathed. My son—Hal’s father—was a good man, too. Not a sign of that sort of brutality ever showed in him.”

“I think you’re worrying unnecessarily,” judged the doctor. “Your grandson may be wild and rough at times, but he’s tainted with no hereditary stain.”

“I don’t know about that, doctor,” said the captain earnestly. “For a year or two past he’s been showing more temper than a young man should. He’s not been answering the helm very well. Two or three of the village people here have already complained to me. I’ve never been really afraid till to-night. But now, doctor, Iamafraid—terribly, deadly afraid!”

The old man’s voice shook. Filhiol tried to smile.

“Let the dead past bury its dead!” said he. “Don’t open the old graves to let the ghosts of other days walk out again into the clear sunset of your life.”

“God knows I don’t want to!” the old man exclaimed in a low, trembling voice. “But suppose those graves open themselves? Suppose they won’t stay shut, no, not though all the good deeds from here to heaven were piled atop of them, to keep them down? Suppose those ghosts rise up and stare me in the eyes and won’t be banished—what then?”

“Stuff and nonsense!” gibed Filhiol, though his voice was far from steady. “You’re not yourself, captain. You’re unnerved. There’s nothing the matter with that boy except high spirits and overflowing animal passions.”

“No, no! I understand only too well. God is being very hard to me! I sinned grievous, in the long ago! But I’ve done my very best to pay the reckoning.Seems like I haven’t succeeded. Seems like God don’t forget! He’s paying me now, with interest!”

“Captain, you exaggerate!” the doctor tried to assure him, but Briggs shook his head.

“Heredity skips that way sometimes, don’t it?” asked he.

“Well—sometimes. But that doesn’t prove anything.”

“No, it don’t prove anything, but what Hal did to-nightdoes! Would a thing like that come on sudden that way? Would it? A kind of hydrophobia of rage that won’t listen to any reason but wants to break and tear and kill? I mean, if that kind of thing was in the blood, could it lay hid a long time and then all of a sudden burst out like that?”

“Well—yes. It might.”

“I seem to remember it was the same with me the first time I ever had one of those mad fits,” said the captain. “It come on quick. It wasn’t like ordinary getting mad. It was a red torrent, delirious and awful—something that caught me up and carried me along on its wave—something I couldn’t fight against. When I saw Hal with his teeth grinning, eyes glassy, fists red with McLaughlin’s blood, oh, it struck clean through my heart!

“It wasn’t any fear of either of them getting killed that harpooned me, no, nor complications and damages to pay. No, no, though such will be bad enough. What struck me all of a heap was to see myself, my very own self that used to be. If I, Captain Alpheus Briggs, had been swept back to 1868 and set down on the deck of theSilver Fleece, Hal would have been my exact double. I’ve seen myself just as I was then, doctor, and it’s shaken me in every timber. There I stood, I, myself, in Hal’s person, after five decades of weary time. I could see the outlines of the same blackbeard on the same kind of jaw—same thick neck and bloody fists; and, oh, doctor, the eyes of Hal. His eyes!”

“His eyes?”

“Yes. In them I saw my old, wicked, hell-elected self—saw it glaring out, to break and ravish and murder!”

“Captain Briggs!”

“It’s true, I’m telling you. I’ve seen a ghost this evening. A ghost—”

He peered around fearfully in the dusk. His voice lowered to a whisper:

“A ghost!”

Filhiol could not speak. Something cold, prehensile, terrible seemed fingering at his heart! Ruddy, the Airedale, raised his head, seemed to be listening, to be seeing something they could not detect. In the dog’s throat a low growl muttered.

“What’sthat?” said the captain, every muscle taut.

“Nothing, nothing,” the doctor answered. “The dog probably hears some one down there by the hedge. This is all nonsense, captain. You’re working yourself into a highly nervous state and imagining all kinds of things. Now—”

“I tell you, I saw the ghost of my other self,” insisted Briggs. “There’s worse kinds of ghosts than those that hang around graveyards. I’ve always wanted to see that kind and never have. Night after night I’ve been up there to the little cemetery on Croft Hill, and sat on the bench in our lot, just as friendly and receptive as could be, ready to see whatever ghost might come to me, but none ever came. I’m not afraid of the ghosts of the dead! It’s ghosts of the living that strike a dread to me—ghosts of the past that ought to die and can’t—ghosts of my own sins that God won’t let lie in the grave of forgiveness—”

“S-h-h-h!” exclaimed the doctor. He laid a hand on the captain’s, which was clutching the arm of the rocker with a grip of steel. “Don’t give way to such folly! Perhaps Hal did drink a little, and perhaps he did thrash a man who had insulted him. But that’s as far as it goes. All this talk about ghosts and some hereditary, devilish force cropping out again, is pure rubbish!”

“I wish to God above itwas!” the old man groaned. “But I know it’s not. It’s there, doctor, I tell you! It’s still alive and in the world, more terrible and more malignant than ever, a living, breathing thing, evil and venomous, backed up with twice the intelligence and learning I ever had, with a fine, keen brain to direct it and with muscles of steel to do its bidding! Oh, God, I know, Iknow!”

“Captain Briggs, sir,” the doctor began. “This is most extraordinary language from a man of your common sense. I really do not understand—”

“Hush!” interrupted the captain, raising his right hand. On the stairway feet echoed. “Hush! He’s coming down!”

Silent, tense, they waited. The heavy footfalls reached the bottom of the stair and paused there a moment. Briggs and the doctor heard Hal grumbling something inarticulate to himself. Then he walked into the cabin.

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