CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIIDR. FILHIOL STANDS BYThrough the window both men could see him. The cabin-lamp over the captain’s table shed soft rays upon the boy as he stood there unconscious of being observed.He remained motionless a moment, gazing about him, taking account of any little changes that had been wrought in the past months. At sight of him the old captain, despite all his bodings of evil, could not but thrill with pride of this clean-limbed, powerful-shouldered grandson, scion of the old stock, last survivor of his race, and hope of all its future.Hal took a step to the table. The lithe ease and power of his stride impressed the doctor’s critical eye.“He’s all right enough, captain,” growled Filhiol. “He’s as normal as can be. He’s just overflowing with animal spirits, strength, and energy. Lord! What wouldn’t you or I give to be like that—again?”“I wouldn’t stand in those boots of his for all the money in Lloyd’s!” returned the captain in a hoarse whisper. “For look you, doctor, I have lived my life and got wisdom. My fires have burned low, leaving the ashes of peace—or so I hope. But that lad there, ah! there’s fires and volcanoes enough ahead for him! Maybe those same fires will kindle up my ashes, too, and sear my heart and soul! I thought I was entitled to heave anchor and lay in harbor a spell till I get my papers for the unknown port we don’t any of us comeback from, but maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe that’s not to be, doctor, after all.”“What rubbish!” retorted Filhiol. “Look at him now, will you? Isn’t he peaceful, and normal enough for anybody? See there, now, he’s going to take a book and read it like any well-behaved young man.”Hal had, indeed, taken a book from the captain’s table and had sat down with it before the fireplace. He did not, however, open the book. Instead, he leaned back and gazed intently up at the arsenal. He frowned, nodded, and then broke into a peculiar smile. His right fist clenched and rose, as if in imagination he were gripping one of those weapons, with Fergus McLaughlin as his immediate target.Silence fell once more, through which faintly penetrated the far-off, nasal minor of old Ezra, now engaged upon an endless chantey recounting the adventures of one “Boney”—aliasBonaparte. Peace seemed to have descended upon Snug Haven, but only for a minute.For all at once, with an oath of impatience, Hal flung the book to the floor. He stood up, thrust both hands deep into his pockets, and fell to pacing the floor in a poisonous temper.Of a sudden he stopped, wheeled toward the captain’s little private locker and strode to it. The locker door was secured with a brass padlock of unusual strength. Hal twisted it off between thumb and finger as easily as if it had been made of putty. He flung open the door, and took down a bottle.He seized a tumbler and slopped it levelful of whisky, which he gulped without a wink. Then he smeared his mouth with the back of his hand and stood there evil-eyed and growling.“Puh!That’s rotten stuff!” he ejaculated. “Grandpop certainly does keep a punk line here!” Back upon the shelf he slammed the bottle and the glass. “Wonder where that smooth Jamaica’s gone he used to have?”“God above! Did you see that, doctor?” breathed the old captain, gripping at the doctor’s hand. “He downed that like so much water. Isn’t that the exact way I used to swill liquor? By the Judas priest, I’ll soon stopthat!”Filhiol restrained him.“Wait!” he cautioned as the two old men peered in, unseen, through the window. “Even that doesn’t prove the original sin you seem determined to lay at the boy’s door. He’s unnerved after his fight. Let’s see what he’ll do next. If we’re going to judge him, we’ve got to watch a while.”Old Briggs sank back into his chair, and with eyes of misery followed the boy, hope of all his dreams. Hal’s next move was not long delayed.“Ezra!” they heard him harshly call. “You, Ezra! Comehere!”The chantey came to a sudden end. A moment, and Ezra appeared in the doorway leading from the cabin to the “dining-saloon.”“Well, Master Hal, what is it?” smiled the cook, beaming with affection. In one hand he held a “copper,” just such as aboard theSilver Fleecehad heated water for the scalding of the Malays. “What d’you want, Master Hal?”“Look here, Ezra,” said the boy arrogantly, “I’ve been trying to find the rum grandpop always keeps in there. Couldn’t locate it, so I’ve been giving this whisky a trial, and—”“When whisky an’ young men lay ’longside one another, the whisky don’t want a trial. It wants lynchin’!”“I’m not askingyouropinion!” sneered Hal.“Yes, but I’m givin’ it, Master Hal,” persisted Ezra. “When the devil goes fishin’ fer boys, he sticks a petticoat an’ a bottle o’ rum on the hook.”“Get me the Jamaica, you!” demanded Hal with growing anger. “I’ve got no time for your line of bull!”“Lots that ain’t got no time for nothin’ in this world will have time to burn in the next! You’ll get no rum from me, Master Hal. An’ what’s more, if I’d ha’ thought you was goin’ to slip your cable an’ run ashore in any such dognation fool way on a wave o’ booze, I’d of hid the whisky whereyouwouldn’t of run it down!”“You’d have hidden it!” echoed Hal, his face darkening, the veins on neck and forehead beginning to swell. “You’ve got the infernal nerve to stand there—you, a servant—and tell me you’d hide anything away from me in my own house?”“This here craft is registered under your grandpa’s name an’ is sailin’ under his house-flag,” the old cook reminded him. His face was still bland as ever, but in his eyes lurked a queer little gleam. “It ain’t the same thing at all—not yet.”“Damn your infernal lip!” shouted Hal, advancing. Captain Briggs, quivering, half-rose from his chair. “You’ve got the damned impudence to stand there and dictate tome?”“Master Hal,” retorted Ezra with admirable self-restraint, “you’re sailin’ a bit too wide wide o’ your course now. There’s breakers ahead, sir. Look out!”“I believe you’ve been at the Jamaica yourself, you thieving son of Satan!” snarled Hal. “I’ll not stand here parleying with a servant. Get me that Jamaica, or I’ll break your damned, obstinate neck!”“Now, Master Hal, I warn you—”“To hell with you!”“With me, Master Hal? With old Ezra?”“With everything that stands in my way!”Despite Hal’s furious rage the steadfast old sailor-man still resolutely faced him. Captain Briggs, now again hearing almost the identical words he himself had poured out in the cabin of theSilver Fleece, sank back into his chair with a strange, throaty gasp.“Doctor!” he gulped. “Do you hear that?”“Wait!” the doctor cautioned, leaning forward. “This is very strange. It is, by Jove, sir! Some amazing coincidence, or—”“Next thing you know he’ll knock Ezra down!” whispered the captain, staring. He seemed paralyzed, as though tranced by the scene. “That’s what I did to the cabin-boy, when my rum was wrong. Remember? It’s all coming round again, doctor. It’s a nightmare in a circle—a fifty-year circle! Remember Kuala Pahang? She—she died! I wonder what woman’s got to die this time?”“That’s all pure poppycock!” the doctor ejaculated. He was trembling violently. With a great effort, leaning heavily on his stick, he arose. Captain Briggs, too, shook off the spell that seemed to grip him and stood up.“Hal!” he tried to articulate; but his voice failed him. Turning, he lurched toward the front door.From within sounded a cry, a trampling noise. Something clattered to the floor.“Hal! My God, Hal!” the captain shouted hoarsely.As he reached the door Ezra came staggering out into the hall, a hand pressed to his face.“Ezra! What is it? For Heaven’s sake, Ezra, what’s Hal done to you?”The old man could make no answer. Limply hesagged against the newel-post, a sorry picture of grief and pain. The captain put an arm about his shoulders, and with burning indignation cried:“What did he do? Hit you?”Ezra shook his head in stout negation. Even through all the shock and suffering of the blow, his loyalty remained sublimely constant.“Hit me? Why, no, sir,” he tried to smile, though his lips were white. “Hewouldn’t strike old Ezra. There’s no mutiny aboard this little craft of ours. Two gentlemen may disagree, an’ all that, but as fer Master Hal strikin’ me, no,sir!”“But I heard him say—”“Oh, that’s nothin’, cap’n,” the old cook insisted, still, however, keeping his cheek-bone covered with his hand. “Boys will be boys. They’re a bit loose with their jaw-tackle, maybe. But there, there, don’t you git all har’red up, captain. Men an’ pins is jest alike, that way—no good ef they lose their heads. Ca’m down, cap’n!”“What’s that on your face. Blood?”“Blood, sir? How would blood git on my doggone face, anyhow? That’s—h-m—”“Don’t you lie to me, Ezra! I’m not blind. He cut you with something! What was it?”“Honest to God, cap’n, he never! I admit we had a bit of an argyment, an’ I slipped an’ kind of fell ag’in’ the—the binnacle, cap’n. I’ll swear that on the ship’s Bible!”“Don’t you stand there and perjure your immortal soul just to shield that boy!” Briggs sternly reproved, loving the old man all the more for the brave lie. “But I know you will, anyhow. What authority have I got aboard my own ship, when I can’t even get the truth? Ezra, you wouldn’t admit it, if Hal took that kris in there and cut your head off!”“How could I then, sir?”“That’ll do, Ezra! Where is he now?”“I don’t know, sir.”“I’ll damn soon find out!” the captain cried, stung to the first profanity of years. He tramped into the cabin, terrible.“Come here, sir!” he cried in a tone never before heard in Snug Haven.No answer. Hal was not there. Neither was the bottle of whisky. A chair had been tipped over, and on the floor lay the captain’s wonderful chronometer, with shattered glass.This destruction, joined to Ezra’s innocent blood, seemed to freeze the captain’s marrow. He stood there a moment, staring. Then, wide-eyed, he peered around.“Mutiny and bloodshed,” he whispered. “God deliver us from what’s to be! Hal Briggs, sir!” he called crisply. “Come here!” The captain, terrible in wrath, strode through the open door.A creaking of the back stairs constituted the only answer. The captain hurried up those stairs. As he reached the top he heard the door of Hal’s room shut, and the key turn.“You, sir!” he cried, knocking violently at the panels. A voice issued:“It’s no use, gramp. I’m not coming out, and you’re not coming in. It’s been nothing but hell ever since I struck this damn place. If it doesn’t stop I’m going to get mad and do some damage round here. All I want now is to be let alone. Go ’way, and don’t bother me!”“Hal! Open that door, sir!”Never a word came back. The captain knocked and threatened, but got no reply.At last, realizing that he was only lowering hisdignity by such vain efforts, he departed. His eyes glowered strangely as he made his way down-stairs.Ezra had disappeared. But the old doctor was standing in the hallway, under the gleam of a ship’s lantern there. He looked very wan and anxious.“Captain,” said he, with timid hesitation. “I feel that my presence may add to your embarrassment. Therefore, I think I had best return to Salem this evening. If you will ask Ezra to harness up my horse, I’ll be much obliged.”“I’ll do nothing of the kind, doctor! You’re my friend and my guest, and you’re not going to be driven out by any such exhibition of brutal bad manners! I ask you, sir, to stay. I haven’t seen you for fifty years, sir; and you do no more than lay ’longside, and then want to hoist canvas again and beat away? Never, sir! Here you stay, to-night, aboard me. There’s a cabin and as nice a berth as any seafaring man could ask. Go and leave me now, would you? Not much, sir!”“If you really want me to stay, captain—”Briggs took Filhiol by the hand and looked steadily into his anxious, withered face.“Listen,” said he, in a deep, quiet tone. “I’m in trouble, doctor. Deep, black, bitter trouble. Nobody in this world but you can help me steer a straight course now, if there’s any waytosteer one, which God grant! Stand by me now, doctor. You did once before on the oldSilver Fleece. I’ve got your stitches in me yet. Now, after fifty years, I need you again, though it’s worse this time than any knife-cut ever was. Stand by me, doctor, for a little while. That’s all I ask.Stand by!”CHAPTER XXIIISUNSHINEThe miracle of a new day’s sunshine—golden over green earth, foam-collared shore and shining sea—brought another miracle almost as great as that which had transformed somber night to radiant morning. This miracle was the complete reversal of the situation at Snug Harbor, and the return of peace and happiness. But all this cannot be told in two breaths. We must not run too far ahead of our story.So, to go on in orderly fashion we must know that Ezra’s carefully prepared supper turned out to be a melancholy failure. The somber dejection of the three old men at table, and then the miserable evening of the captain and the doctor on the piazza, talking of old days with infinite regret, of the present with grief and humiliation, of the future with black bodings, made a sorry time of it all.Night brought but little sleep to Captain Briggs. The doctor slept well enough, and Ezra seconded him. But the good fortune of oblivion was not for the old captain. Through what seemed a black eternity he lay in the bunk in his cabin, brooding, agonizing, listening to the murmur of the sea, the slow tolling of hours from the tall clock in the hallway. The cessation of the ticking of his chronometer left a strange vacancy in his soul. Deeply he mourned it.After an infinite time, half-sleep won upon him, troubled by ugly dreams. Alpheus Briggs seemed tobehold again the stifling alleyways of the Malay town, the carabaos and chattering gharrimen, the peddlers and whining musicians, the smoky torch-flares and dark, slow-moving river. He seemed to smell, once more, the odors of spice and curry, the smoke of torches and wood fires, the dank and reeking mud of the marshy, fever-bitten shore.And then the vision changed. He was at sea again; witnessing the death of Scurlock, the boy and Kuala Pahang, in the blood-tinged waters. Came the battle with the Malays, in the grotesque exaggerations of a dream; and then the torments of the hell-ship, cargoing slaves. The old captain seemed stifled by the reek and welter of that freight; he seemed to hear their groans and cries—and all at once he heard again, as in a voice from infinite distances, the curse of Shiva, flung at him by Dengan Jouga, witch-woman of the Malay tribesmen:“The evil spirit will pursue you, even beyond the wind, even beyond the Silken Sea! Vishnu will repay you! Dead men shall come from their graves, like wolves, to follow you. Birds of the ocean foam will poison you. Life will become to you a thing more terrible than the venom of the katchubong flower, and evil seed will grow within your heart.“Evil seed will grow and flourish there, dragging you down to death, down to the longing for death, and yet you cannot die! And the blind face in the sky will watch you,sahib—watch you, and laugh, because you cannot die! That is the curse of Vishnu on your soul!”In the captain’s dream, the groaning and crying of the wounded and perishing men aboard theSilver Fleeceseemed to blend with that of the dying slaves. And gradually all this echoing agony transmuted itself into a sinister and terrible mirth, a horrifying, ghastly laughter, far and strange, ceaseless, monotonous, maddening.Somewhere in a boundless sky of black, the captain seemed to behold a vast spiral, whirling, ever-whirling in and in; and at its center, vague, formless yet filled with menace, he dimly saw an eyeless face, indeed, that still for all its blindness seemed to be watching him. And as it watched, it laughed, blood-freezingly.Captain Briggs roused to his senses. He found himself sitting up in bed, by the open window, through which drifted the solemn roar and hissing backwash of a rising surf. A pallid moon-crescent, tangled in spun gossamer-fabric of drifting cloud, cast tenuous, fairy shadows across the garden. Staring, the captain rubbed his eye.“Judas priest!” he muttered. “What—where—Ah! Dreaming, eh? Only dreaming? Thank God for that!”Then, with a pang of transfixing pain, back surged memories of what had happened last night. He slid out of bed, struck a match and looked at his watch. The hour was just a bit after two.Noiselessly Briggs crept from his room, climbed the stairs and came to Hal’s door. The menace of Kuala Pahang still weighed terribly upon him. Something of the vague superstitions of the sea seemed to have infused themselves into the captain’s blood. Shuddering, he remembered the curse that now for years had lain forgotten in the dusty archives of his youth; remembered even more than he had dreamed; remembered the words of thenenek kabayan, the witch-woman—that strange, yellow, ghostlike creature which had come upon him silently over his rum and gabbling in the cabin of the hell-ship:“Something you love—love more than your own life—will surely die. You will die then, but still you will not die. You will pray for death, but death will mock and will not come!”The old captain shivered as he stood before the door of Hal’s room. Suppose the ancient curse really had power? Suppose it should strike Hal, and Hal should die! What then?For a moment he heard nothing within the room, and his old heart nearly stopped, altogether. But almost at once he perceived Hal’s breathing, quiet and natural.“Oh, thank God!” the captain murmured, his soul suddenly expanding with blest relief. He remained there a while, keeping silent vigil at the door of his well-loved boy. Then, satisfied that all was well, he retraced his steps, got back into bed, and so presently fell into peaceful slumber.A knocking at his door, together with the voice of Ezra, awoke him.“Cap’n Briggs, sir! It’s six bells o’ the mornin’ watch. Time to turn out!”The captain blinked and rubbed his eyes.“Come in, Ezra,” bade he, mustering his wits. “H-m!” he grunted at sight of Ezra’s cheek-bone with an ugly cut across it. “The doctor up yet?”“Yes, sir. He’s been cruisin’ out ’round the lawn an’ garden an hour. He’s real interestin’, ain’t he? But he’s too kind o’ mournful-like to set right onmystomach. Only happy when he’s miserable. Men’s different, that way, sir. Some heaves a sigh, where others would heave a brick.”“That’ll do, Ezra. What’s there to record on the log, so far?” asked Briggs, anxiously.“First thing thisA. M.I’m boarded by old Joe Pringle, the peddler from Kittery. Joe, he wanted to sell us anythin’ he could—a jew’s-harp, history o’ the world, Salvation Salve, a phonograft, an Eyetalian queen-bee, a—”“Hold hard! I don’t care anything about Joe.What’s the news this morning about—about—”“News, sir? Well, the white Leghorn’s bringin’ off a nestful. Five’s hatched already. Nature’s funny, ain’t it? We git chickens from eggs, an’ eggs from chickens, an’—”“Willyou stop your fool talk?” demanded the captain. He peered at Ezra with disapproval. To his lips he could not bring a direct question about the boy; and Ezra was equally unwilling to introduce the subject, fearing lest some word of blame might be spoken against his idol. “Tell me some news, I say!” the captain ordered.“News, cap’n? Well, Dr. Filhiol, there, fed his nag enough of our chicken-feed to last us a week. The doc, he calls the critter, Ned. But I think Sea Lawyer would be ’bout right.”“Sea Lawyer? How’s that?”“Well, sir, itcandraw a conveyance, but it’s doggone poor at it.”“Stop your foolishness, Ezra, and tell me what I want to know. How’s Hal this morning? Where is he, and what’s he doing?”“Master Hal? Why, he’s all right, sir.”“He is, eh?” The captain’s hands were clenched with nervousness.Ezra nodded assent.“Don’t ye worry none about Master Hal,” said he gravely. “Worry’s wuss’n a dozen leaks an’ no pump. Ef yemustworry, worry somebody else.”“What’s the boy doing? Drinking again?”“Not a drink, cap’n. Now my idea about liquor is—”“Judas priest!” interrupted Briggs. “You’ll drive me crazy! If the world was coming to an end you’d argue with Gabriel. You say Hal’s not touched it this morning?”“Nary drop, sir.”“Oh, that’s good news!”“Good news is like a hard-b’iled egg, cap’n. You don’t have to break it easy. Hal’s fine an’ fit this mornin’, sir. I thought maybe he might hunt a little tot o’ rum, this mornin’, but no; no, sir, he’s sober as a deacon. The way he apologized was as han’some.”“Apologized? Who to?”“Me an’ the doctor. He come out to the barn, an’ begged our pardons in some o’ the doggondest purtiest language I ever clapped an ear to. He’s slick. Everythin’s all right between Master Hal an’ I an’ the doctor. After he apologized he went fer a swim, down to Geyser Rock.”“Did, eh? He’s wonderful in the water! Not another man inthistown dares take that dive. I—I’m mighty glad he had the decency to apologize. Hal’s steering the right course now. He’s proved himself a man anyhow. Last night I’d almost lost faith in him and in all humanity.”“It ain’t so important fer a man to have faith in humanity as fer humanity to have faith in him,” affirmed the old cook. “Now, cap’n, you git up, please. You’ll want to see Master Hal afore breakfast. Listen to me, cap’n, don’t never drive that boy out, same’s I was drove. Master Hal’s sound an’ good at heart. But he’s had his own head too long now fer you to try rough tactics.”“Rough! When was I ever rough with Hal?”“Mebbe if you had of been a few times when he was small it’d of been better. But it’s too late now. Let him keep all canvas aloft; but hold a hard helm on him. Hold it hard!”The sound of singing somewhere across the road toward the shore drew the captain’s attention out thewindow. Striding home from his morning plunge, Hal was returning to Snug Harbor, “coming up with a song from the sea.”The captain put on his bathrobe, then went to the window and sat down there. He leaned his arms on the sill, and peered out at Hal. Ezra discreetly withdrew.No sign seemed visible on Hal of last night’s rage and war. Sleep, and the exhilaration of battling with the savage surf along the face of Geyser Rock, had swept away all traces of his brutality. Molded into his wet bathing-suit that revealed every line of that splendidly virile body, he drew near.All at once he caught sight of Captain Briggs. He stopped his song, by the lantern-flanked gateway, and waved a hand of greeting.“Top o’ the morning to you, grandfather!” cried he. There he stood overflooded with life, strength, spirits. His body gleamed with glistening brine; his face, lighted by a smile of boyish frankness, shone in the morning sun. His thick, black hair that he had combed straight back with his fingers, dripped seawater on his bronzed, muscular shoulders.“God, what a man!” the captain thought. “Hard as nails, and ridged with muscle. He’s only twenty-one, but he’s better than ever I was, at my best!”And once again, he felt his old heart expand with pride and hope—hope that reached out to lay eager hold upon the future and its dreams.“I want to see you, sir, before breakfast,” said the captain.Hal nodded comprehension. From the hedge he broke a little twig, and held it up.“Here’s the switch, gramp,” said he whimsically. “You’d better use it now, while I’ve got bare legs.”The old man had to smile. With eyes of profoundaffection he gazed at Hal. Sunlight on his head and on Hal’s struck out wonderful contrasts of snow and jet. The luminous, celestial glow of a June morning on the New England coast—a morning gemmed with billions of dewdrops flashing on leaf and lawn, a morning overbrooded by azure deeps of sky unclouded—folded the world in beauty.A sense of completion, of loveliness fulfilled compassed everything. Autumn looks back, regretfully. Winter shivers between memories and hopes. Spring hopes more strongly still—but June, complete and resting, says: “Behold!”Such was that morning; and the captain, looking at his boy, felt its magic soothing the troubled heart within him. On the lawn, two or three robins were busy. Another, teetering high on the plumy crest of a shadowing elm, was emptying its heart of melody.A minute, old man and young looked steadily at each other. Then Hal came up the white-sanded walk, between the two rows of polished conches. He stopped at the old man’s window.“Grandfather,” said he in a low tone. “Will you listen to me, please?”“What have you got to say, sir?” demanded Briggs, and stiffened his resolution. “Well, sir?”“Listen, grandfather,” answered Hal, in a very manly way, that harmonized with his blue-eyed look, and with his whole air of ingenuous and boyish contrition. He crossed his bare arms, looked down a moment at the sand, dug at it a little with a toe, and then once more raised his head. “Listen, please. I’ve got just one thing to ask. Please don’t lecture me, and don’t be harsh. I stand here absolutely penitent, grandfather, begging to be forgiven. I’ve already apologized to Dr. Filhiol and Ezra—”“So I understand,” put in Briggs, still strivinghard to make his voice sound uncompromising. “Well?”“Well, grandfather—as for apologizing to you, that’s kind of a hard proposition. It isn’t that I don’t want to, but the relations between us have been so close that it’s pretty hard to make up a regular apology. You and I aren’t on a basis where I reallycouldapologize, as I could to anybody else. But I certainly did act the part of a ruffian on theSylvia Fletcher, and I was certainly a rotter here last night. There’s only one other thing—”“And what’s that, sir?” demanded Briggs. The captain still maintained judicial aloofness, despite all cravings of the heart. “What’s that?”“I—you may not believe it, gramp, but it’s true. I really don’t remember hardly anything about what happened aboard the schooner or here. I suppose I can’t stand even a couple of drinks. It all seems hazy to me now, like a kind of nightmare. It’s all indistinct, as if it weren’t me at all, but somebody else. I feel just as if I’d been watching another man do the things that I really know I myselfdiddo. The feeling is that somebody else took my body and used it, and made it do things that I myself didn’t want it to do. But I was powerless to stop it. Grampy, it’s true, true,true!”He paused, looking at his grandfather with eyes of tragic seriousness. Old Briggs shivered slightly, and drew the bathrobe more tightly around his shoulders.“Go on, Hal.”“Well, there isn’t much more to say. I know there’ll be consequences, and I’m willing to face them. I’ll cut out the booze altogether. It was foolish of me to get into it at all, but you know how it is at college. They all kidded me, for not drinking a little,and so—well. It’s my own fault, right enough. Anyhow, I’m done. You’ll forget it and forgive it, won’t you, grandpa?”“WillI, my boy?” the old man answered. He blinked to keep back the tears. “You know the answer, already!”“You really mean that, gramp?” exclaimed Hal, with boyish enthusiasm. “If I face the music, whatever it is, and keep away from any encores, will you let me by, this time?”The captain could answer only by stretching out his hand and gripping Hal’s. The boy took his old, wrinkled hand in a grip heartfelt and powerful. Thus for a moment the two men, old and young, felt the strong pressure of palms that cemented contrition and forgiveness. The captain was first to speak.“Everything’s all right now, Hal,” said he, “so far’s I’m concerned. Whatever’s wrong, outside Snug Haven, can be made right. I know you’ve had your lesson, boy.”“I should say so! I don’t need a second.”“No, no. You’ll remember this one, right enough. Well, now, least said soonest mended. It was pretty shoal water there, one while. But we’re floating again, and we’re not going to run on to any more sandbars, are we? Ah, there’s Ezra blowing his bo’sun’s whistle for breakfast. Let’s see which of us gets to mess-table first!”CHAPTER XXIVDARKENING SHADOWSBreakfast—served on a regulation ship’s table, with swivel-chairs screwed to the floor and with a rack above for tumblers and plates—made up by its overflowing happiness for all the heartache of the night before. Hal radiated life and high spirits. The captain’s forebodings of evil had vanished in his newly-revivified hopes. Dr. Filhiol became downright cheerful, and so far forgot his nerves as to drink a cup of weak coffee. As for Ezra, he seemed in his best form.“Judgin’ by your togs, Master Hal,” said he, as Hal—breakfast done—lighted his pipe and blew smoke up into the sunlit air, “I cal’late Laura Maynard’s got jest the same chances of not takin’ a walk with you, this mornin’, that Ruddy, here, has got of learnin’ them heathen Chinee books o’ yourn. It says in the Bible to love y’r neighbor as y’rself, so you got Scripture backin’ fer Laura.”“Plus the evidence of my own senses, Ezra,” laughed the boy, as he drew at his pipe. His fresh-shaven, tanned face with those now placid blue eyes seemed to have no possible relation with the mask of vicious hate and rage of the night before.As he sat there, observing Ezra with a smile, he appeared no other than an extraordinary well-grown, powerfully developed young man.“Must have been the rum that did it,” the captaintried to convince himself. “Works that way with some people. They lose all anchors, canvas, sticks and everything—go on the rocks when they’ve only shipped a drink or two. There’ll be no more rum for Hal. He’s passed his word he’s through. That means heisthrough, because whatever else he may or may not be, he’s a Briggs. So then, that’s settled!”“Now that you’ve put me in mind of Laura, I think Iwilltake a walk down-street,” said Hal. “I might just possibly happen to meet her. Glad you reminded me, Ezra.”“I guess you don’t need much remindin’,” replied the old cook solemnly. “But sail a steady course an’ don’t carry too much canvas. You’re too young a cap’n to be lookin’ for a mate, on the sea o’ life. Go slow. You can’t never tell what a woman or a jury’ll do, an’ most women jump at a chanst quicker ’n what they do at a mouse. Go easy!”“For an old pair of scissors with only one blade, you seem to understand the cut of the feminine gender pretty well,” smiled the boy.“Understand females?” replied Ezra, drawing out a corn-cob and a pouch of shag. “Not me! Some men think they do, but then, some men is dum fools. They’re dangerous, women is. No charted coast, no lights but love-light, an’ that most always turns out to be a will-o’-the-wisp, that piles ye up on the rocks. When a man gits stuck on a gal, seems like he’s like a fly stuck on fly-paper—sure to git his leg pulled.”Hal laughed again, and departed with that kind of casual celerity which any wise old head can easily interpret. Ezra, striking into a ditty with a monotonous chorus of “Blow the man down,” began gathering up the breakfast-dishes. The captain and his guest made their way to the quarterdeck and settled themselves in rockers.Briggs had hardly more than lighted his pipe, when his attention was caught by a white-canvas-covered wagon, bearing on its side the letters: “R. F. D.”“Hello,” said he, a shade of anxiety crossing his face. “Hello, there’s the mail.”He tried to speak with unconcern, but into his voice crept foreboding that matched his look. As he strode down the walk, Filhiol squinted after him.“It’s a sin and shame, the way he’s worried now,” the doctor murmured. “That boy’s got the devil in him. He’ll kill the captain, yet. A swim, a shave and a suit of white flannels don’t change a man’s heart. What’s bred in the bone—”Captain Briggs came to a stand at the gate. His nervousness betrayed itself by the thick cloud of tobacco-smoke that rose from his lips. Leisurely the mail-wagon zigzagged from side to side of the street as the postman slid papers and letters into the boxes and hoisted the red flags, always taking good care that no card escaped him, unread.“Mornin’, cap’n,” said the postman. “Here’s your weather report, an’ here’s your ‘Shippin’ News.’ An’ here’s a letter from Boston, from the college. You don’t s’pose Hal’s in any kind o’ rookus down there, huh? An’ here’s a letter from Squire Bean, down to the Center. Don’t cal’late there’s any law-doin’s, do you?”“What do you mean?” demanded the captain, trying to keep a brave front. “What could there be?”“Oh,youknow, ’bout how Hal rimracked McLaughlin. I heered tell, down-along, he’s goin’ to sue for swingein’ damages. Hal durn nigh killed the critter.”“Who told you?” demanded the captain.“Oh, they’re all talkin’. An’ I see Mac, myself, goin’ inta the squire’s house on a crutch an’ with onearm in a sling, early this mornin’. This here letter must of been wrote right away after that. Course I hope it ain’t nuthin’, but looks to me like ’tis. Well—”He eyed the captain expectantly, hoping the old man might open the letter and give the news which he could bear to all and sundry. But, no; the captain merely nodded, thrust the letters into the capacious breast-pocket of his square-rigged coat and with a non-committal “Thank you,” made his way back to the piazza.His shoulders drooped not, neither did his step betray any weakness. The disgruntled postman muttered something surly, clucked to his horse, and in disappointment pursued his business—the leisurely handling of Uncle Sam’s mail and everybody’s private affairs.The same robin—or perhaps, after all, it was a different one—was singing in the elm, as Alpheus Briggs returned to the house. Down the shaded street the metallic rhythm of the anvil was breaking through the contrabass of the surf. But now this melody fell on deaf ears, for Captain Briggs. Heavily he came up the steps, and with weariness sank down in the big rocker. Sadly he shook his head.“It’s come, I’m afraid,” said he dejectedly. “I was hoping it wouldn’t. Hoping McLaughlin would let it go. But that was hoping too much. He’s no man to swallow a beating. See here now, will you?”The captain pulled out his letter from Squire Bean, and extended it to Filhiol.“Local attorney?” asked the doctor, with a look of anxiety.“Yes,” answered the captain. “This letter meansonly one thing. Barometer’s falling again. We’ll have to take in more canvas, sir.”He tore the envelope with fingers now trembling. The letter revealed a crabbed hand-writing, thus:Endicutt, Massachusetts,June 19, 1918.Captain Alpheus Briggs,South Endicutt.Dear Sir: Captain Fergus McLaughlin has placed in my hands the matter of the assault and battery committed upon him by your grandson, Hal Briggs. Captain McLaughlin is in bad shape, is minus a front tooth, has his right arm broke, and cannot walk without a crutch. You are legally liable for these injuries, and would be immediately summoned into court except Capt. McLaughlin has regard for your age and position in the community. There is, however, no doubt, legal damages coming to the Capt. If you call, we can discuss amt. of same, otherwise let the law take its course.Resp’ly,Johab Bean, J. P.,Ex-Candidate for Judge of Dis’t Court.Captain Briggs read this carefully, then, tugging at his beard, passed it over to Dr. Filhiol.“It’s all as I was afraid it would be,” said the captain. “McLaughlin’s not going to take the medicine he’s really deserved for long years of buckoing poor devils. No, doctor. First time he meets amanthat can stand up to him and pay him back with interest, he steers a course for the law. That’s your bully and your coward! Thank God, for all my doings, I never fought my fights before a judge or jury! It was the best man win, fist to fist, or knife to knife if it came to that—but the law, sir, never!”“Well, that doesn’t matter now,” said Filhiol. “I’m afraid you’re in for whacking damages. Hal’s lucky that he wasn’t a signed-on member of the crew.There’d have been mutiny for you to get him out of, and iron bars. Lucky again, he didn’t hit just a trifle harder. If he had, it might have been murder, and in this State they send men to the chair for that. Yes, captain, you’re lucky it’s no worse. If you have only a hundred or two dollars to pay for doctor’s bills and damages, you’ll be most fortunate.”“A hundred or two dollars!” ejaculated the captain. “Judas priest! You don’t think there’ll be any such bill as that for repairs and demurrage on McLaughlin’s hulk, do you?”“I think that would be a very moderate sum,” answered Filhiol. “I’m willing to stand back of you, captain, all the way. I’ll go into court and examine McLaughlin, myself, as an expert witness. It’s more than possible Squire Bean is exaggerating, to shake you down.”“You’ll stand back of me, doctor?” exclaimed the captain, his face lighting up. “You’ll go into court, and steer me straight?”“By all means, sir!”Briggs nearly crushed the doctor’s hand in a powerful grip.“Well spoken, sir!” said he. “It’s like you, doctor. Well, all I can do is to thank you, and accept your offer. That puts a better slant to our sails, right away. Good, sir—very, very good!”His expression was quite different as he tore open the letter from the college. Perhaps, after all, this was only some routine communication. But as he read the neat, typewritten lines, a look of astonishment developed; and this in turn gave way to a most pitiful dismay.The captain’s hands were shaking, now, so that he could hardly hold the letter. His face had gone quite bloodless. All the voice he could muster was a kindof whispering gasp, as he stretched out the sheet of paper to the wondering Filhiol:“Read—read that, doctor! The curse—the curse! Oh, God is being very hard on me, in my old age! Readthat!”CHAPTER XXVTROUBLED SOULSDr. Filhiol trembled as he took the letter and read:Cambridge, Massachusetts,June 18, 1918.Dear Sir:I regret that I must write you again in regard to your grandson, Haldane Briggs, but necessity leaves no choice. This communication does not deal with an unimportant breach of discipline, such as we overlooked last year, but involves matters impossible to condone.During the final week of the college year Mr. Briggs’s conduct cannot be too harshly stigmatized. Complaint has been entered against him for gambling and for having appeared on the college grounds intoxicated. On the evening of Thursday last Mr. Briggs attempted to bring liquor into a college dormitory, and when the proctor made a protest, Mr. Briggs assaulted him.In addition, we find your grandson has not applied the money sent by you to the settlement of his term bill, but has diverted it for his own uses. The bill is herewith enclosed, and I trust that you will give it your immediate attention.Mr. Briggs, because of his undesirable habits, has not recently been properly attending to his courses, with the exception of his Oriental language work, in which he has continued to take a real interest. His examination marks in other studies have been so high as to lead to an inquiry, and we find that Mr. Briggs has been hiring some person unknown to take his place in three examinations and to pass them for him—a form of cheating which the large size of some of our courses unfortunately renders possible.Any one of Mr. Briggs’s infractions of the rules would result in his dismissal. Taken as a total, they render that dismissal peremptory and final. I regret to inform you thatyour grandson’s connection with the university is definitely terminated.Regretting that my duty compels me to communicate news of such an unpleasant nature, I am,Very sincerely yours,Hawley D. Travers, A.B., A.M., LL.B.ToCaptain Alpheus Briggs,South Endicutt, Massachusetts.Down sank the head of Captain Briggs. The old man’s beard flowed over the smart bravery of his blue coat, and down his weather-hardened cheeks trickled slow tears of old age, scanty but freighted with a bitterness the tears of youth can never feel.For a moment the captain sat annihilated under life’s most grievous blow—futility and failure after years of patient labor, years of saving and of self-denial, of hopes, of dreams. One touch of the harsh finger of Fate and all the gleaming iridescence of the bubble had vanished. From somewhere dark and far a voice seemed echoing in his ears:“Even though you flee to the ends of the earth, my curse will reach you. You shall pray to die, but still you cannot die! What is written in the Book must be fulfilled!”Suddenly the captain got up and made his way into the house. Like a wounded animal seeking its lair he retreated into his cabin.The doctor peered after him, letter in hand. From the galley Ezra’s voice drifted in nasal song, with words strangely trivial for so tragic a situation:“Blow, boys, blow, for Californ-io!There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told,On the banks of Sacramento!”“H-m!” grunted the doctor. “Poor old captain! God, but this will finish him! That Hal—damnthat Hal! If something would only happen to him now, so I could have him for a patient! I’m a law-abiding man, but still—”In the cabin Briggs sank down in the big rocking-chair before the fireplace. He was trembling. Something cold seemed clutching at his heart like tentacles. He looked about, as if he half-thought something were watching him from the far corner. Then his eye fell on the Malay kris suspended against the chimney. He peered at the lotus-bud handle, the wavy blade of steel, the dark groove where still lay the poison, thecuraré.“Merciful God!” whispered Captain Briggs, and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. He suddenly stretched out hands that shook. “Oh, haven’t I suffered enough and repented enough? Haven’t I labored enough and paid enough?” He pressed a hand to his forehead, moist and cold. “He’s all I’ve got, Lord—the boy is all I’ve got! Take me,me—but don’t let vengeance come throughhim! The sin was mine! Let me pay! Don’t drag him down to hell! Take me—but let him live and be a man!”No answer save that Briggs seemed to hear the words of the old witch-woman ringing with all the force of long-repressed memories:“Your blood, your blood I will have! Even though you flee from me forever, your blood will I have!”“Yes, yes! My blood, not his!” cried the old captain, standing up. Haggard, he peered at the kris, horrible reminder of a past he would have given life itself to obliterate so that it might not go on forever poisoning his race. There the kris hung like a sword of Damocles forever ready to fall upon his heart and pierce it. And all at once a burning rage and hate against the kris flared up in him. That thing accursedshould be destroyed. No longer should it hang there on his fireplace to goad him into madness.Up toward the kris he extended his hand. For a moment he dared not lay hold on it; but all at once he forced himself to lift it from its hooks. At touch of it again, after so long a time, he began to tremble. But he constrained himself to study it, striving to fathom what power lay in it. Peering with curiosity and revulsion he noted the lotus-bud, symbol of sleep; the keen edge spotted with dark stains of blood and rust; the groove with its dried poison, one scratch thereof a solvent for all earthly problems whatsoever.And suddenly a new thought came to him. His hand tightened on the grip. His head came up, his eye cleared, and with a look half of amazement, half triumph, he cried:“I’ve got the answer here! The answer, so help me God! Before that boy of mine goes down into the gutter—before he defiles his family and all the memories of his race, here’s the answer. Lord knows I hope he will come about on a new tack yet and be something he ought to be; but if he don’t, he’ll never live to drag our family name down through the sewer!”Savage pride thrilled the old man. All his hope yearned toward the saving of the boy; but, should that be impossible, he knew Hal would not sink to the dregs of life.The kris now seemed beneficent to Captain Briggs. Closely he studied the blade, and even drew his thumb along the edge, testing its keenness. Just how, he wondered, did the poison work? Was it painless? Quick it was; that much he knew. Quick and sure. Not in anger, but with a calm resolve he stood there, thinking. And like the after-swells of a tempest, other echoes now bore in upon him—echoes of wordsspoken half a hundred years ago by Mahmud Baba:“Even though I wash coal with rosewater a whole year long, shall I ever make it white? Even though the rain fall a whole year, will it make the sea less salt? One drop of indigo—and lo! the jar of milk is ruined! Seed sown upon a lake will never grow!”Again the captain weighed the kris in hand.“Maybe the singer was right, after all,” thought he. “I’ve done my best. I’ve given all I had to give. He’ll have his chance, the boy shall, but if, after that—”

CHAPTER XXIIDR. FILHIOL STANDS BYThrough the window both men could see him. The cabin-lamp over the captain’s table shed soft rays upon the boy as he stood there unconscious of being observed.He remained motionless a moment, gazing about him, taking account of any little changes that had been wrought in the past months. At sight of him the old captain, despite all his bodings of evil, could not but thrill with pride of this clean-limbed, powerful-shouldered grandson, scion of the old stock, last survivor of his race, and hope of all its future.Hal took a step to the table. The lithe ease and power of his stride impressed the doctor’s critical eye.“He’s all right enough, captain,” growled Filhiol. “He’s as normal as can be. He’s just overflowing with animal spirits, strength, and energy. Lord! What wouldn’t you or I give to be like that—again?”“I wouldn’t stand in those boots of his for all the money in Lloyd’s!” returned the captain in a hoarse whisper. “For look you, doctor, I have lived my life and got wisdom. My fires have burned low, leaving the ashes of peace—or so I hope. But that lad there, ah! there’s fires and volcanoes enough ahead for him! Maybe those same fires will kindle up my ashes, too, and sear my heart and soul! I thought I was entitled to heave anchor and lay in harbor a spell till I get my papers for the unknown port we don’t any of us comeback from, but maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe that’s not to be, doctor, after all.”“What rubbish!” retorted Filhiol. “Look at him now, will you? Isn’t he peaceful, and normal enough for anybody? See there, now, he’s going to take a book and read it like any well-behaved young man.”Hal had, indeed, taken a book from the captain’s table and had sat down with it before the fireplace. He did not, however, open the book. Instead, he leaned back and gazed intently up at the arsenal. He frowned, nodded, and then broke into a peculiar smile. His right fist clenched and rose, as if in imagination he were gripping one of those weapons, with Fergus McLaughlin as his immediate target.Silence fell once more, through which faintly penetrated the far-off, nasal minor of old Ezra, now engaged upon an endless chantey recounting the adventures of one “Boney”—aliasBonaparte. Peace seemed to have descended upon Snug Haven, but only for a minute.For all at once, with an oath of impatience, Hal flung the book to the floor. He stood up, thrust both hands deep into his pockets, and fell to pacing the floor in a poisonous temper.Of a sudden he stopped, wheeled toward the captain’s little private locker and strode to it. The locker door was secured with a brass padlock of unusual strength. Hal twisted it off between thumb and finger as easily as if it had been made of putty. He flung open the door, and took down a bottle.He seized a tumbler and slopped it levelful of whisky, which he gulped without a wink. Then he smeared his mouth with the back of his hand and stood there evil-eyed and growling.“Puh!That’s rotten stuff!” he ejaculated. “Grandpop certainly does keep a punk line here!” Back upon the shelf he slammed the bottle and the glass. “Wonder where that smooth Jamaica’s gone he used to have?”“God above! Did you see that, doctor?” breathed the old captain, gripping at the doctor’s hand. “He downed that like so much water. Isn’t that the exact way I used to swill liquor? By the Judas priest, I’ll soon stopthat!”Filhiol restrained him.“Wait!” he cautioned as the two old men peered in, unseen, through the window. “Even that doesn’t prove the original sin you seem determined to lay at the boy’s door. He’s unnerved after his fight. Let’s see what he’ll do next. If we’re going to judge him, we’ve got to watch a while.”Old Briggs sank back into his chair, and with eyes of misery followed the boy, hope of all his dreams. Hal’s next move was not long delayed.“Ezra!” they heard him harshly call. “You, Ezra! Comehere!”The chantey came to a sudden end. A moment, and Ezra appeared in the doorway leading from the cabin to the “dining-saloon.”“Well, Master Hal, what is it?” smiled the cook, beaming with affection. In one hand he held a “copper,” just such as aboard theSilver Fleecehad heated water for the scalding of the Malays. “What d’you want, Master Hal?”“Look here, Ezra,” said the boy arrogantly, “I’ve been trying to find the rum grandpop always keeps in there. Couldn’t locate it, so I’ve been giving this whisky a trial, and—”“When whisky an’ young men lay ’longside one another, the whisky don’t want a trial. It wants lynchin’!”“I’m not askingyouropinion!” sneered Hal.“Yes, but I’m givin’ it, Master Hal,” persisted Ezra. “When the devil goes fishin’ fer boys, he sticks a petticoat an’ a bottle o’ rum on the hook.”“Get me the Jamaica, you!” demanded Hal with growing anger. “I’ve got no time for your line of bull!”“Lots that ain’t got no time for nothin’ in this world will have time to burn in the next! You’ll get no rum from me, Master Hal. An’ what’s more, if I’d ha’ thought you was goin’ to slip your cable an’ run ashore in any such dognation fool way on a wave o’ booze, I’d of hid the whisky whereyouwouldn’t of run it down!”“You’d have hidden it!” echoed Hal, his face darkening, the veins on neck and forehead beginning to swell. “You’ve got the infernal nerve to stand there—you, a servant—and tell me you’d hide anything away from me in my own house?”“This here craft is registered under your grandpa’s name an’ is sailin’ under his house-flag,” the old cook reminded him. His face was still bland as ever, but in his eyes lurked a queer little gleam. “It ain’t the same thing at all—not yet.”“Damn your infernal lip!” shouted Hal, advancing. Captain Briggs, quivering, half-rose from his chair. “You’ve got the damned impudence to stand there and dictate tome?”“Master Hal,” retorted Ezra with admirable self-restraint, “you’re sailin’ a bit too wide wide o’ your course now. There’s breakers ahead, sir. Look out!”“I believe you’ve been at the Jamaica yourself, you thieving son of Satan!” snarled Hal. “I’ll not stand here parleying with a servant. Get me that Jamaica, or I’ll break your damned, obstinate neck!”“Now, Master Hal, I warn you—”“To hell with you!”“With me, Master Hal? With old Ezra?”“With everything that stands in my way!”Despite Hal’s furious rage the steadfast old sailor-man still resolutely faced him. Captain Briggs, now again hearing almost the identical words he himself had poured out in the cabin of theSilver Fleece, sank back into his chair with a strange, throaty gasp.“Doctor!” he gulped. “Do you hear that?”“Wait!” the doctor cautioned, leaning forward. “This is very strange. It is, by Jove, sir! Some amazing coincidence, or—”“Next thing you know he’ll knock Ezra down!” whispered the captain, staring. He seemed paralyzed, as though tranced by the scene. “That’s what I did to the cabin-boy, when my rum was wrong. Remember? It’s all coming round again, doctor. It’s a nightmare in a circle—a fifty-year circle! Remember Kuala Pahang? She—she died! I wonder what woman’s got to die this time?”“That’s all pure poppycock!” the doctor ejaculated. He was trembling violently. With a great effort, leaning heavily on his stick, he arose. Captain Briggs, too, shook off the spell that seemed to grip him and stood up.“Hal!” he tried to articulate; but his voice failed him. Turning, he lurched toward the front door.From within sounded a cry, a trampling noise. Something clattered to the floor.“Hal! My God, Hal!” the captain shouted hoarsely.As he reached the door Ezra came staggering out into the hall, a hand pressed to his face.“Ezra! What is it? For Heaven’s sake, Ezra, what’s Hal done to you?”The old man could make no answer. Limply hesagged against the newel-post, a sorry picture of grief and pain. The captain put an arm about his shoulders, and with burning indignation cried:“What did he do? Hit you?”Ezra shook his head in stout negation. Even through all the shock and suffering of the blow, his loyalty remained sublimely constant.“Hit me? Why, no, sir,” he tried to smile, though his lips were white. “Hewouldn’t strike old Ezra. There’s no mutiny aboard this little craft of ours. Two gentlemen may disagree, an’ all that, but as fer Master Hal strikin’ me, no,sir!”“But I heard him say—”“Oh, that’s nothin’, cap’n,” the old cook insisted, still, however, keeping his cheek-bone covered with his hand. “Boys will be boys. They’re a bit loose with their jaw-tackle, maybe. But there, there, don’t you git all har’red up, captain. Men an’ pins is jest alike, that way—no good ef they lose their heads. Ca’m down, cap’n!”“What’s that on your face. Blood?”“Blood, sir? How would blood git on my doggone face, anyhow? That’s—h-m—”“Don’t you lie to me, Ezra! I’m not blind. He cut you with something! What was it?”“Honest to God, cap’n, he never! I admit we had a bit of an argyment, an’ I slipped an’ kind of fell ag’in’ the—the binnacle, cap’n. I’ll swear that on the ship’s Bible!”“Don’t you stand there and perjure your immortal soul just to shield that boy!” Briggs sternly reproved, loving the old man all the more for the brave lie. “But I know you will, anyhow. What authority have I got aboard my own ship, when I can’t even get the truth? Ezra, you wouldn’t admit it, if Hal took that kris in there and cut your head off!”“How could I then, sir?”“That’ll do, Ezra! Where is he now?”“I don’t know, sir.”“I’ll damn soon find out!” the captain cried, stung to the first profanity of years. He tramped into the cabin, terrible.“Come here, sir!” he cried in a tone never before heard in Snug Haven.No answer. Hal was not there. Neither was the bottle of whisky. A chair had been tipped over, and on the floor lay the captain’s wonderful chronometer, with shattered glass.This destruction, joined to Ezra’s innocent blood, seemed to freeze the captain’s marrow. He stood there a moment, staring. Then, wide-eyed, he peered around.“Mutiny and bloodshed,” he whispered. “God deliver us from what’s to be! Hal Briggs, sir!” he called crisply. “Come here!” The captain, terrible in wrath, strode through the open door.A creaking of the back stairs constituted the only answer. The captain hurried up those stairs. As he reached the top he heard the door of Hal’s room shut, and the key turn.“You, sir!” he cried, knocking violently at the panels. A voice issued:“It’s no use, gramp. I’m not coming out, and you’re not coming in. It’s been nothing but hell ever since I struck this damn place. If it doesn’t stop I’m going to get mad and do some damage round here. All I want now is to be let alone. Go ’way, and don’t bother me!”“Hal! Open that door, sir!”Never a word came back. The captain knocked and threatened, but got no reply.At last, realizing that he was only lowering hisdignity by such vain efforts, he departed. His eyes glowered strangely as he made his way down-stairs.Ezra had disappeared. But the old doctor was standing in the hallway, under the gleam of a ship’s lantern there. He looked very wan and anxious.“Captain,” said he, with timid hesitation. “I feel that my presence may add to your embarrassment. Therefore, I think I had best return to Salem this evening. If you will ask Ezra to harness up my horse, I’ll be much obliged.”“I’ll do nothing of the kind, doctor! You’re my friend and my guest, and you’re not going to be driven out by any such exhibition of brutal bad manners! I ask you, sir, to stay. I haven’t seen you for fifty years, sir; and you do no more than lay ’longside, and then want to hoist canvas again and beat away? Never, sir! Here you stay, to-night, aboard me. There’s a cabin and as nice a berth as any seafaring man could ask. Go and leave me now, would you? Not much, sir!”“If you really want me to stay, captain—”Briggs took Filhiol by the hand and looked steadily into his anxious, withered face.“Listen,” said he, in a deep, quiet tone. “I’m in trouble, doctor. Deep, black, bitter trouble. Nobody in this world but you can help me steer a straight course now, if there’s any waytosteer one, which God grant! Stand by me now, doctor. You did once before on the oldSilver Fleece. I’ve got your stitches in me yet. Now, after fifty years, I need you again, though it’s worse this time than any knife-cut ever was. Stand by me, doctor, for a little while. That’s all I ask.Stand by!”

DR. FILHIOL STANDS BY

Through the window both men could see him. The cabin-lamp over the captain’s table shed soft rays upon the boy as he stood there unconscious of being observed.

He remained motionless a moment, gazing about him, taking account of any little changes that had been wrought in the past months. At sight of him the old captain, despite all his bodings of evil, could not but thrill with pride of this clean-limbed, powerful-shouldered grandson, scion of the old stock, last survivor of his race, and hope of all its future.

Hal took a step to the table. The lithe ease and power of his stride impressed the doctor’s critical eye.

“He’s all right enough, captain,” growled Filhiol. “He’s as normal as can be. He’s just overflowing with animal spirits, strength, and energy. Lord! What wouldn’t you or I give to be like that—again?”

“I wouldn’t stand in those boots of his for all the money in Lloyd’s!” returned the captain in a hoarse whisper. “For look you, doctor, I have lived my life and got wisdom. My fires have burned low, leaving the ashes of peace—or so I hope. But that lad there, ah! there’s fires and volcanoes enough ahead for him! Maybe those same fires will kindle up my ashes, too, and sear my heart and soul! I thought I was entitled to heave anchor and lay in harbor a spell till I get my papers for the unknown port we don’t any of us comeback from, but maybe I’m mistaken. Maybe that’s not to be, doctor, after all.”

“What rubbish!” retorted Filhiol. “Look at him now, will you? Isn’t he peaceful, and normal enough for anybody? See there, now, he’s going to take a book and read it like any well-behaved young man.”

Hal had, indeed, taken a book from the captain’s table and had sat down with it before the fireplace. He did not, however, open the book. Instead, he leaned back and gazed intently up at the arsenal. He frowned, nodded, and then broke into a peculiar smile. His right fist clenched and rose, as if in imagination he were gripping one of those weapons, with Fergus McLaughlin as his immediate target.

Silence fell once more, through which faintly penetrated the far-off, nasal minor of old Ezra, now engaged upon an endless chantey recounting the adventures of one “Boney”—aliasBonaparte. Peace seemed to have descended upon Snug Haven, but only for a minute.

For all at once, with an oath of impatience, Hal flung the book to the floor. He stood up, thrust both hands deep into his pockets, and fell to pacing the floor in a poisonous temper.

Of a sudden he stopped, wheeled toward the captain’s little private locker and strode to it. The locker door was secured with a brass padlock of unusual strength. Hal twisted it off between thumb and finger as easily as if it had been made of putty. He flung open the door, and took down a bottle.

He seized a tumbler and slopped it levelful of whisky, which he gulped without a wink. Then he smeared his mouth with the back of his hand and stood there evil-eyed and growling.

“Puh!That’s rotten stuff!” he ejaculated. “Grandpop certainly does keep a punk line here!” Back upon the shelf he slammed the bottle and the glass. “Wonder where that smooth Jamaica’s gone he used to have?”

“God above! Did you see that, doctor?” breathed the old captain, gripping at the doctor’s hand. “He downed that like so much water. Isn’t that the exact way I used to swill liquor? By the Judas priest, I’ll soon stopthat!”

Filhiol restrained him.

“Wait!” he cautioned as the two old men peered in, unseen, through the window. “Even that doesn’t prove the original sin you seem determined to lay at the boy’s door. He’s unnerved after his fight. Let’s see what he’ll do next. If we’re going to judge him, we’ve got to watch a while.”

Old Briggs sank back into his chair, and with eyes of misery followed the boy, hope of all his dreams. Hal’s next move was not long delayed.

“Ezra!” they heard him harshly call. “You, Ezra! Comehere!”

The chantey came to a sudden end. A moment, and Ezra appeared in the doorway leading from the cabin to the “dining-saloon.”

“Well, Master Hal, what is it?” smiled the cook, beaming with affection. In one hand he held a “copper,” just such as aboard theSilver Fleecehad heated water for the scalding of the Malays. “What d’you want, Master Hal?”

“Look here, Ezra,” said the boy arrogantly, “I’ve been trying to find the rum grandpop always keeps in there. Couldn’t locate it, so I’ve been giving this whisky a trial, and—”

“When whisky an’ young men lay ’longside one another, the whisky don’t want a trial. It wants lynchin’!”

“I’m not askingyouropinion!” sneered Hal.

“Yes, but I’m givin’ it, Master Hal,” persisted Ezra. “When the devil goes fishin’ fer boys, he sticks a petticoat an’ a bottle o’ rum on the hook.”

“Get me the Jamaica, you!” demanded Hal with growing anger. “I’ve got no time for your line of bull!”

“Lots that ain’t got no time for nothin’ in this world will have time to burn in the next! You’ll get no rum from me, Master Hal. An’ what’s more, if I’d ha’ thought you was goin’ to slip your cable an’ run ashore in any such dognation fool way on a wave o’ booze, I’d of hid the whisky whereyouwouldn’t of run it down!”

“You’d have hidden it!” echoed Hal, his face darkening, the veins on neck and forehead beginning to swell. “You’ve got the infernal nerve to stand there—you, a servant—and tell me you’d hide anything away from me in my own house?”

“This here craft is registered under your grandpa’s name an’ is sailin’ under his house-flag,” the old cook reminded him. His face was still bland as ever, but in his eyes lurked a queer little gleam. “It ain’t the same thing at all—not yet.”

“Damn your infernal lip!” shouted Hal, advancing. Captain Briggs, quivering, half-rose from his chair. “You’ve got the damned impudence to stand there and dictate tome?”

“Master Hal,” retorted Ezra with admirable self-restraint, “you’re sailin’ a bit too wide wide o’ your course now. There’s breakers ahead, sir. Look out!”

“I believe you’ve been at the Jamaica yourself, you thieving son of Satan!” snarled Hal. “I’ll not stand here parleying with a servant. Get me that Jamaica, or I’ll break your damned, obstinate neck!”

“Now, Master Hal, I warn you—”

“To hell with you!”

“With me, Master Hal? With old Ezra?”

“With everything that stands in my way!”

Despite Hal’s furious rage the steadfast old sailor-man still resolutely faced him. Captain Briggs, now again hearing almost the identical words he himself had poured out in the cabin of theSilver Fleece, sank back into his chair with a strange, throaty gasp.

“Doctor!” he gulped. “Do you hear that?”

“Wait!” the doctor cautioned, leaning forward. “This is very strange. It is, by Jove, sir! Some amazing coincidence, or—”

“Next thing you know he’ll knock Ezra down!” whispered the captain, staring. He seemed paralyzed, as though tranced by the scene. “That’s what I did to the cabin-boy, when my rum was wrong. Remember? It’s all coming round again, doctor. It’s a nightmare in a circle—a fifty-year circle! Remember Kuala Pahang? She—she died! I wonder what woman’s got to die this time?”

“That’s all pure poppycock!” the doctor ejaculated. He was trembling violently. With a great effort, leaning heavily on his stick, he arose. Captain Briggs, too, shook off the spell that seemed to grip him and stood up.

“Hal!” he tried to articulate; but his voice failed him. Turning, he lurched toward the front door.

From within sounded a cry, a trampling noise. Something clattered to the floor.

“Hal! My God, Hal!” the captain shouted hoarsely.

As he reached the door Ezra came staggering out into the hall, a hand pressed to his face.

“Ezra! What is it? For Heaven’s sake, Ezra, what’s Hal done to you?”

The old man could make no answer. Limply hesagged against the newel-post, a sorry picture of grief and pain. The captain put an arm about his shoulders, and with burning indignation cried:

“What did he do? Hit you?”

Ezra shook his head in stout negation. Even through all the shock and suffering of the blow, his loyalty remained sublimely constant.

“Hit me? Why, no, sir,” he tried to smile, though his lips were white. “Hewouldn’t strike old Ezra. There’s no mutiny aboard this little craft of ours. Two gentlemen may disagree, an’ all that, but as fer Master Hal strikin’ me, no,sir!”

“But I heard him say—”

“Oh, that’s nothin’, cap’n,” the old cook insisted, still, however, keeping his cheek-bone covered with his hand. “Boys will be boys. They’re a bit loose with their jaw-tackle, maybe. But there, there, don’t you git all har’red up, captain. Men an’ pins is jest alike, that way—no good ef they lose their heads. Ca’m down, cap’n!”

“What’s that on your face. Blood?”

“Blood, sir? How would blood git on my doggone face, anyhow? That’s—h-m—”

“Don’t you lie to me, Ezra! I’m not blind. He cut you with something! What was it?”

“Honest to God, cap’n, he never! I admit we had a bit of an argyment, an’ I slipped an’ kind of fell ag’in’ the—the binnacle, cap’n. I’ll swear that on the ship’s Bible!”

“Don’t you stand there and perjure your immortal soul just to shield that boy!” Briggs sternly reproved, loving the old man all the more for the brave lie. “But I know you will, anyhow. What authority have I got aboard my own ship, when I can’t even get the truth? Ezra, you wouldn’t admit it, if Hal took that kris in there and cut your head off!”

“How could I then, sir?”

“That’ll do, Ezra! Where is he now?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“I’ll damn soon find out!” the captain cried, stung to the first profanity of years. He tramped into the cabin, terrible.

“Come here, sir!” he cried in a tone never before heard in Snug Haven.

No answer. Hal was not there. Neither was the bottle of whisky. A chair had been tipped over, and on the floor lay the captain’s wonderful chronometer, with shattered glass.

This destruction, joined to Ezra’s innocent blood, seemed to freeze the captain’s marrow. He stood there a moment, staring. Then, wide-eyed, he peered around.

“Mutiny and bloodshed,” he whispered. “God deliver us from what’s to be! Hal Briggs, sir!” he called crisply. “Come here!” The captain, terrible in wrath, strode through the open door.

A creaking of the back stairs constituted the only answer. The captain hurried up those stairs. As he reached the top he heard the door of Hal’s room shut, and the key turn.

“You, sir!” he cried, knocking violently at the panels. A voice issued:

“It’s no use, gramp. I’m not coming out, and you’re not coming in. It’s been nothing but hell ever since I struck this damn place. If it doesn’t stop I’m going to get mad and do some damage round here. All I want now is to be let alone. Go ’way, and don’t bother me!”

“Hal! Open that door, sir!”

Never a word came back. The captain knocked and threatened, but got no reply.

At last, realizing that he was only lowering hisdignity by such vain efforts, he departed. His eyes glowered strangely as he made his way down-stairs.

Ezra had disappeared. But the old doctor was standing in the hallway, under the gleam of a ship’s lantern there. He looked very wan and anxious.

“Captain,” said he, with timid hesitation. “I feel that my presence may add to your embarrassment. Therefore, I think I had best return to Salem this evening. If you will ask Ezra to harness up my horse, I’ll be much obliged.”

“I’ll do nothing of the kind, doctor! You’re my friend and my guest, and you’re not going to be driven out by any such exhibition of brutal bad manners! I ask you, sir, to stay. I haven’t seen you for fifty years, sir; and you do no more than lay ’longside, and then want to hoist canvas again and beat away? Never, sir! Here you stay, to-night, aboard me. There’s a cabin and as nice a berth as any seafaring man could ask. Go and leave me now, would you? Not much, sir!”

“If you really want me to stay, captain—”

Briggs took Filhiol by the hand and looked steadily into his anxious, withered face.

“Listen,” said he, in a deep, quiet tone. “I’m in trouble, doctor. Deep, black, bitter trouble. Nobody in this world but you can help me steer a straight course now, if there’s any waytosteer one, which God grant! Stand by me now, doctor. You did once before on the oldSilver Fleece. I’ve got your stitches in me yet. Now, after fifty years, I need you again, though it’s worse this time than any knife-cut ever was. Stand by me, doctor, for a little while. That’s all I ask.Stand by!”

CHAPTER XXIIISUNSHINEThe miracle of a new day’s sunshine—golden over green earth, foam-collared shore and shining sea—brought another miracle almost as great as that which had transformed somber night to radiant morning. This miracle was the complete reversal of the situation at Snug Harbor, and the return of peace and happiness. But all this cannot be told in two breaths. We must not run too far ahead of our story.So, to go on in orderly fashion we must know that Ezra’s carefully prepared supper turned out to be a melancholy failure. The somber dejection of the three old men at table, and then the miserable evening of the captain and the doctor on the piazza, talking of old days with infinite regret, of the present with grief and humiliation, of the future with black bodings, made a sorry time of it all.Night brought but little sleep to Captain Briggs. The doctor slept well enough, and Ezra seconded him. But the good fortune of oblivion was not for the old captain. Through what seemed a black eternity he lay in the bunk in his cabin, brooding, agonizing, listening to the murmur of the sea, the slow tolling of hours from the tall clock in the hallway. The cessation of the ticking of his chronometer left a strange vacancy in his soul. Deeply he mourned it.After an infinite time, half-sleep won upon him, troubled by ugly dreams. Alpheus Briggs seemed tobehold again the stifling alleyways of the Malay town, the carabaos and chattering gharrimen, the peddlers and whining musicians, the smoky torch-flares and dark, slow-moving river. He seemed to smell, once more, the odors of spice and curry, the smoke of torches and wood fires, the dank and reeking mud of the marshy, fever-bitten shore.And then the vision changed. He was at sea again; witnessing the death of Scurlock, the boy and Kuala Pahang, in the blood-tinged waters. Came the battle with the Malays, in the grotesque exaggerations of a dream; and then the torments of the hell-ship, cargoing slaves. The old captain seemed stifled by the reek and welter of that freight; he seemed to hear their groans and cries—and all at once he heard again, as in a voice from infinite distances, the curse of Shiva, flung at him by Dengan Jouga, witch-woman of the Malay tribesmen:“The evil spirit will pursue you, even beyond the wind, even beyond the Silken Sea! Vishnu will repay you! Dead men shall come from their graves, like wolves, to follow you. Birds of the ocean foam will poison you. Life will become to you a thing more terrible than the venom of the katchubong flower, and evil seed will grow within your heart.“Evil seed will grow and flourish there, dragging you down to death, down to the longing for death, and yet you cannot die! And the blind face in the sky will watch you,sahib—watch you, and laugh, because you cannot die! That is the curse of Vishnu on your soul!”In the captain’s dream, the groaning and crying of the wounded and perishing men aboard theSilver Fleeceseemed to blend with that of the dying slaves. And gradually all this echoing agony transmuted itself into a sinister and terrible mirth, a horrifying, ghastly laughter, far and strange, ceaseless, monotonous, maddening.Somewhere in a boundless sky of black, the captain seemed to behold a vast spiral, whirling, ever-whirling in and in; and at its center, vague, formless yet filled with menace, he dimly saw an eyeless face, indeed, that still for all its blindness seemed to be watching him. And as it watched, it laughed, blood-freezingly.Captain Briggs roused to his senses. He found himself sitting up in bed, by the open window, through which drifted the solemn roar and hissing backwash of a rising surf. A pallid moon-crescent, tangled in spun gossamer-fabric of drifting cloud, cast tenuous, fairy shadows across the garden. Staring, the captain rubbed his eye.“Judas priest!” he muttered. “What—where—Ah! Dreaming, eh? Only dreaming? Thank God for that!”Then, with a pang of transfixing pain, back surged memories of what had happened last night. He slid out of bed, struck a match and looked at his watch. The hour was just a bit after two.Noiselessly Briggs crept from his room, climbed the stairs and came to Hal’s door. The menace of Kuala Pahang still weighed terribly upon him. Something of the vague superstitions of the sea seemed to have infused themselves into the captain’s blood. Shuddering, he remembered the curse that now for years had lain forgotten in the dusty archives of his youth; remembered even more than he had dreamed; remembered the words of thenenek kabayan, the witch-woman—that strange, yellow, ghostlike creature which had come upon him silently over his rum and gabbling in the cabin of the hell-ship:“Something you love—love more than your own life—will surely die. You will die then, but still you will not die. You will pray for death, but death will mock and will not come!”The old captain shivered as he stood before the door of Hal’s room. Suppose the ancient curse really had power? Suppose it should strike Hal, and Hal should die! What then?For a moment he heard nothing within the room, and his old heart nearly stopped, altogether. But almost at once he perceived Hal’s breathing, quiet and natural.“Oh, thank God!” the captain murmured, his soul suddenly expanding with blest relief. He remained there a while, keeping silent vigil at the door of his well-loved boy. Then, satisfied that all was well, he retraced his steps, got back into bed, and so presently fell into peaceful slumber.A knocking at his door, together with the voice of Ezra, awoke him.“Cap’n Briggs, sir! It’s six bells o’ the mornin’ watch. Time to turn out!”The captain blinked and rubbed his eyes.“Come in, Ezra,” bade he, mustering his wits. “H-m!” he grunted at sight of Ezra’s cheek-bone with an ugly cut across it. “The doctor up yet?”“Yes, sir. He’s been cruisin’ out ’round the lawn an’ garden an hour. He’s real interestin’, ain’t he? But he’s too kind o’ mournful-like to set right onmystomach. Only happy when he’s miserable. Men’s different, that way, sir. Some heaves a sigh, where others would heave a brick.”“That’ll do, Ezra. What’s there to record on the log, so far?” asked Briggs, anxiously.“First thing thisA. M.I’m boarded by old Joe Pringle, the peddler from Kittery. Joe, he wanted to sell us anythin’ he could—a jew’s-harp, history o’ the world, Salvation Salve, a phonograft, an Eyetalian queen-bee, a—”“Hold hard! I don’t care anything about Joe.What’s the news this morning about—about—”“News, sir? Well, the white Leghorn’s bringin’ off a nestful. Five’s hatched already. Nature’s funny, ain’t it? We git chickens from eggs, an’ eggs from chickens, an’—”“Willyou stop your fool talk?” demanded the captain. He peered at Ezra with disapproval. To his lips he could not bring a direct question about the boy; and Ezra was equally unwilling to introduce the subject, fearing lest some word of blame might be spoken against his idol. “Tell me some news, I say!” the captain ordered.“News, cap’n? Well, Dr. Filhiol, there, fed his nag enough of our chicken-feed to last us a week. The doc, he calls the critter, Ned. But I think Sea Lawyer would be ’bout right.”“Sea Lawyer? How’s that?”“Well, sir, itcandraw a conveyance, but it’s doggone poor at it.”“Stop your foolishness, Ezra, and tell me what I want to know. How’s Hal this morning? Where is he, and what’s he doing?”“Master Hal? Why, he’s all right, sir.”“He is, eh?” The captain’s hands were clenched with nervousness.Ezra nodded assent.“Don’t ye worry none about Master Hal,” said he gravely. “Worry’s wuss’n a dozen leaks an’ no pump. Ef yemustworry, worry somebody else.”“What’s the boy doing? Drinking again?”“Not a drink, cap’n. Now my idea about liquor is—”“Judas priest!” interrupted Briggs. “You’ll drive me crazy! If the world was coming to an end you’d argue with Gabriel. You say Hal’s not touched it this morning?”“Nary drop, sir.”“Oh, that’s good news!”“Good news is like a hard-b’iled egg, cap’n. You don’t have to break it easy. Hal’s fine an’ fit this mornin’, sir. I thought maybe he might hunt a little tot o’ rum, this mornin’, but no; no, sir, he’s sober as a deacon. The way he apologized was as han’some.”“Apologized? Who to?”“Me an’ the doctor. He come out to the barn, an’ begged our pardons in some o’ the doggondest purtiest language I ever clapped an ear to. He’s slick. Everythin’s all right between Master Hal an’ I an’ the doctor. After he apologized he went fer a swim, down to Geyser Rock.”“Did, eh? He’s wonderful in the water! Not another man inthistown dares take that dive. I—I’m mighty glad he had the decency to apologize. Hal’s steering the right course now. He’s proved himself a man anyhow. Last night I’d almost lost faith in him and in all humanity.”“It ain’t so important fer a man to have faith in humanity as fer humanity to have faith in him,” affirmed the old cook. “Now, cap’n, you git up, please. You’ll want to see Master Hal afore breakfast. Listen to me, cap’n, don’t never drive that boy out, same’s I was drove. Master Hal’s sound an’ good at heart. But he’s had his own head too long now fer you to try rough tactics.”“Rough! When was I ever rough with Hal?”“Mebbe if you had of been a few times when he was small it’d of been better. But it’s too late now. Let him keep all canvas aloft; but hold a hard helm on him. Hold it hard!”The sound of singing somewhere across the road toward the shore drew the captain’s attention out thewindow. Striding home from his morning plunge, Hal was returning to Snug Harbor, “coming up with a song from the sea.”The captain put on his bathrobe, then went to the window and sat down there. He leaned his arms on the sill, and peered out at Hal. Ezra discreetly withdrew.No sign seemed visible on Hal of last night’s rage and war. Sleep, and the exhilaration of battling with the savage surf along the face of Geyser Rock, had swept away all traces of his brutality. Molded into his wet bathing-suit that revealed every line of that splendidly virile body, he drew near.All at once he caught sight of Captain Briggs. He stopped his song, by the lantern-flanked gateway, and waved a hand of greeting.“Top o’ the morning to you, grandfather!” cried he. There he stood overflooded with life, strength, spirits. His body gleamed with glistening brine; his face, lighted by a smile of boyish frankness, shone in the morning sun. His thick, black hair that he had combed straight back with his fingers, dripped seawater on his bronzed, muscular shoulders.“God, what a man!” the captain thought. “Hard as nails, and ridged with muscle. He’s only twenty-one, but he’s better than ever I was, at my best!”And once again, he felt his old heart expand with pride and hope—hope that reached out to lay eager hold upon the future and its dreams.“I want to see you, sir, before breakfast,” said the captain.Hal nodded comprehension. From the hedge he broke a little twig, and held it up.“Here’s the switch, gramp,” said he whimsically. “You’d better use it now, while I’ve got bare legs.”The old man had to smile. With eyes of profoundaffection he gazed at Hal. Sunlight on his head and on Hal’s struck out wonderful contrasts of snow and jet. The luminous, celestial glow of a June morning on the New England coast—a morning gemmed with billions of dewdrops flashing on leaf and lawn, a morning overbrooded by azure deeps of sky unclouded—folded the world in beauty.A sense of completion, of loveliness fulfilled compassed everything. Autumn looks back, regretfully. Winter shivers between memories and hopes. Spring hopes more strongly still—but June, complete and resting, says: “Behold!”Such was that morning; and the captain, looking at his boy, felt its magic soothing the troubled heart within him. On the lawn, two or three robins were busy. Another, teetering high on the plumy crest of a shadowing elm, was emptying its heart of melody.A minute, old man and young looked steadily at each other. Then Hal came up the white-sanded walk, between the two rows of polished conches. He stopped at the old man’s window.“Grandfather,” said he in a low tone. “Will you listen to me, please?”“What have you got to say, sir?” demanded Briggs, and stiffened his resolution. “Well, sir?”“Listen, grandfather,” answered Hal, in a very manly way, that harmonized with his blue-eyed look, and with his whole air of ingenuous and boyish contrition. He crossed his bare arms, looked down a moment at the sand, dug at it a little with a toe, and then once more raised his head. “Listen, please. I’ve got just one thing to ask. Please don’t lecture me, and don’t be harsh. I stand here absolutely penitent, grandfather, begging to be forgiven. I’ve already apologized to Dr. Filhiol and Ezra—”“So I understand,” put in Briggs, still strivinghard to make his voice sound uncompromising. “Well?”“Well, grandfather—as for apologizing to you, that’s kind of a hard proposition. It isn’t that I don’t want to, but the relations between us have been so close that it’s pretty hard to make up a regular apology. You and I aren’t on a basis where I reallycouldapologize, as I could to anybody else. But I certainly did act the part of a ruffian on theSylvia Fletcher, and I was certainly a rotter here last night. There’s only one other thing—”“And what’s that, sir?” demanded Briggs. The captain still maintained judicial aloofness, despite all cravings of the heart. “What’s that?”“I—you may not believe it, gramp, but it’s true. I really don’t remember hardly anything about what happened aboard the schooner or here. I suppose I can’t stand even a couple of drinks. It all seems hazy to me now, like a kind of nightmare. It’s all indistinct, as if it weren’t me at all, but somebody else. I feel just as if I’d been watching another man do the things that I really know I myselfdiddo. The feeling is that somebody else took my body and used it, and made it do things that I myself didn’t want it to do. But I was powerless to stop it. Grampy, it’s true, true,true!”He paused, looking at his grandfather with eyes of tragic seriousness. Old Briggs shivered slightly, and drew the bathrobe more tightly around his shoulders.“Go on, Hal.”“Well, there isn’t much more to say. I know there’ll be consequences, and I’m willing to face them. I’ll cut out the booze altogether. It was foolish of me to get into it at all, but you know how it is at college. They all kidded me, for not drinking a little,and so—well. It’s my own fault, right enough. Anyhow, I’m done. You’ll forget it and forgive it, won’t you, grandpa?”“WillI, my boy?” the old man answered. He blinked to keep back the tears. “You know the answer, already!”“You really mean that, gramp?” exclaimed Hal, with boyish enthusiasm. “If I face the music, whatever it is, and keep away from any encores, will you let me by, this time?”The captain could answer only by stretching out his hand and gripping Hal’s. The boy took his old, wrinkled hand in a grip heartfelt and powerful. Thus for a moment the two men, old and young, felt the strong pressure of palms that cemented contrition and forgiveness. The captain was first to speak.“Everything’s all right now, Hal,” said he, “so far’s I’m concerned. Whatever’s wrong, outside Snug Haven, can be made right. I know you’ve had your lesson, boy.”“I should say so! I don’t need a second.”“No, no. You’ll remember this one, right enough. Well, now, least said soonest mended. It was pretty shoal water there, one while. But we’re floating again, and we’re not going to run on to any more sandbars, are we? Ah, there’s Ezra blowing his bo’sun’s whistle for breakfast. Let’s see which of us gets to mess-table first!”

SUNSHINE

The miracle of a new day’s sunshine—golden over green earth, foam-collared shore and shining sea—brought another miracle almost as great as that which had transformed somber night to radiant morning. This miracle was the complete reversal of the situation at Snug Harbor, and the return of peace and happiness. But all this cannot be told in two breaths. We must not run too far ahead of our story.

So, to go on in orderly fashion we must know that Ezra’s carefully prepared supper turned out to be a melancholy failure. The somber dejection of the three old men at table, and then the miserable evening of the captain and the doctor on the piazza, talking of old days with infinite regret, of the present with grief and humiliation, of the future with black bodings, made a sorry time of it all.

Night brought but little sleep to Captain Briggs. The doctor slept well enough, and Ezra seconded him. But the good fortune of oblivion was not for the old captain. Through what seemed a black eternity he lay in the bunk in his cabin, brooding, agonizing, listening to the murmur of the sea, the slow tolling of hours from the tall clock in the hallway. The cessation of the ticking of his chronometer left a strange vacancy in his soul. Deeply he mourned it.

After an infinite time, half-sleep won upon him, troubled by ugly dreams. Alpheus Briggs seemed tobehold again the stifling alleyways of the Malay town, the carabaos and chattering gharrimen, the peddlers and whining musicians, the smoky torch-flares and dark, slow-moving river. He seemed to smell, once more, the odors of spice and curry, the smoke of torches and wood fires, the dank and reeking mud of the marshy, fever-bitten shore.

And then the vision changed. He was at sea again; witnessing the death of Scurlock, the boy and Kuala Pahang, in the blood-tinged waters. Came the battle with the Malays, in the grotesque exaggerations of a dream; and then the torments of the hell-ship, cargoing slaves. The old captain seemed stifled by the reek and welter of that freight; he seemed to hear their groans and cries—and all at once he heard again, as in a voice from infinite distances, the curse of Shiva, flung at him by Dengan Jouga, witch-woman of the Malay tribesmen:

“The evil spirit will pursue you, even beyond the wind, even beyond the Silken Sea! Vishnu will repay you! Dead men shall come from their graves, like wolves, to follow you. Birds of the ocean foam will poison you. Life will become to you a thing more terrible than the venom of the katchubong flower, and evil seed will grow within your heart.

“Evil seed will grow and flourish there, dragging you down to death, down to the longing for death, and yet you cannot die! And the blind face in the sky will watch you,sahib—watch you, and laugh, because you cannot die! That is the curse of Vishnu on your soul!”

In the captain’s dream, the groaning and crying of the wounded and perishing men aboard theSilver Fleeceseemed to blend with that of the dying slaves. And gradually all this echoing agony transmuted itself into a sinister and terrible mirth, a horrifying, ghastly laughter, far and strange, ceaseless, monotonous, maddening.

Somewhere in a boundless sky of black, the captain seemed to behold a vast spiral, whirling, ever-whirling in and in; and at its center, vague, formless yet filled with menace, he dimly saw an eyeless face, indeed, that still for all its blindness seemed to be watching him. And as it watched, it laughed, blood-freezingly.

Captain Briggs roused to his senses. He found himself sitting up in bed, by the open window, through which drifted the solemn roar and hissing backwash of a rising surf. A pallid moon-crescent, tangled in spun gossamer-fabric of drifting cloud, cast tenuous, fairy shadows across the garden. Staring, the captain rubbed his eye.

“Judas priest!” he muttered. “What—where—Ah! Dreaming, eh? Only dreaming? Thank God for that!”

Then, with a pang of transfixing pain, back surged memories of what had happened last night. He slid out of bed, struck a match and looked at his watch. The hour was just a bit after two.

Noiselessly Briggs crept from his room, climbed the stairs and came to Hal’s door. The menace of Kuala Pahang still weighed terribly upon him. Something of the vague superstitions of the sea seemed to have infused themselves into the captain’s blood. Shuddering, he remembered the curse that now for years had lain forgotten in the dusty archives of his youth; remembered even more than he had dreamed; remembered the words of thenenek kabayan, the witch-woman—that strange, yellow, ghostlike creature which had come upon him silently over his rum and gabbling in the cabin of the hell-ship:

“Something you love—love more than your own life—will surely die. You will die then, but still you will not die. You will pray for death, but death will mock and will not come!”

The old captain shivered as he stood before the door of Hal’s room. Suppose the ancient curse really had power? Suppose it should strike Hal, and Hal should die! What then?

For a moment he heard nothing within the room, and his old heart nearly stopped, altogether. But almost at once he perceived Hal’s breathing, quiet and natural.

“Oh, thank God!” the captain murmured, his soul suddenly expanding with blest relief. He remained there a while, keeping silent vigil at the door of his well-loved boy. Then, satisfied that all was well, he retraced his steps, got back into bed, and so presently fell into peaceful slumber.

A knocking at his door, together with the voice of Ezra, awoke him.

“Cap’n Briggs, sir! It’s six bells o’ the mornin’ watch. Time to turn out!”

The captain blinked and rubbed his eyes.

“Come in, Ezra,” bade he, mustering his wits. “H-m!” he grunted at sight of Ezra’s cheek-bone with an ugly cut across it. “The doctor up yet?”

“Yes, sir. He’s been cruisin’ out ’round the lawn an’ garden an hour. He’s real interestin’, ain’t he? But he’s too kind o’ mournful-like to set right onmystomach. Only happy when he’s miserable. Men’s different, that way, sir. Some heaves a sigh, where others would heave a brick.”

“That’ll do, Ezra. What’s there to record on the log, so far?” asked Briggs, anxiously.

“First thing thisA. M.I’m boarded by old Joe Pringle, the peddler from Kittery. Joe, he wanted to sell us anythin’ he could—a jew’s-harp, history o’ the world, Salvation Salve, a phonograft, an Eyetalian queen-bee, a—”

“Hold hard! I don’t care anything about Joe.What’s the news this morning about—about—”

“News, sir? Well, the white Leghorn’s bringin’ off a nestful. Five’s hatched already. Nature’s funny, ain’t it? We git chickens from eggs, an’ eggs from chickens, an’—”

“Willyou stop your fool talk?” demanded the captain. He peered at Ezra with disapproval. To his lips he could not bring a direct question about the boy; and Ezra was equally unwilling to introduce the subject, fearing lest some word of blame might be spoken against his idol. “Tell me some news, I say!” the captain ordered.

“News, cap’n? Well, Dr. Filhiol, there, fed his nag enough of our chicken-feed to last us a week. The doc, he calls the critter, Ned. But I think Sea Lawyer would be ’bout right.”

“Sea Lawyer? How’s that?”

“Well, sir, itcandraw a conveyance, but it’s doggone poor at it.”

“Stop your foolishness, Ezra, and tell me what I want to know. How’s Hal this morning? Where is he, and what’s he doing?”

“Master Hal? Why, he’s all right, sir.”

“He is, eh?” The captain’s hands were clenched with nervousness.

Ezra nodded assent.

“Don’t ye worry none about Master Hal,” said he gravely. “Worry’s wuss’n a dozen leaks an’ no pump. Ef yemustworry, worry somebody else.”

“What’s the boy doing? Drinking again?”

“Not a drink, cap’n. Now my idea about liquor is—”

“Judas priest!” interrupted Briggs. “You’ll drive me crazy! If the world was coming to an end you’d argue with Gabriel. You say Hal’s not touched it this morning?”

“Nary drop, sir.”

“Oh, that’s good news!”

“Good news is like a hard-b’iled egg, cap’n. You don’t have to break it easy. Hal’s fine an’ fit this mornin’, sir. I thought maybe he might hunt a little tot o’ rum, this mornin’, but no; no, sir, he’s sober as a deacon. The way he apologized was as han’some.”

“Apologized? Who to?”

“Me an’ the doctor. He come out to the barn, an’ begged our pardons in some o’ the doggondest purtiest language I ever clapped an ear to. He’s slick. Everythin’s all right between Master Hal an’ I an’ the doctor. After he apologized he went fer a swim, down to Geyser Rock.”

“Did, eh? He’s wonderful in the water! Not another man inthistown dares take that dive. I—I’m mighty glad he had the decency to apologize. Hal’s steering the right course now. He’s proved himself a man anyhow. Last night I’d almost lost faith in him and in all humanity.”

“It ain’t so important fer a man to have faith in humanity as fer humanity to have faith in him,” affirmed the old cook. “Now, cap’n, you git up, please. You’ll want to see Master Hal afore breakfast. Listen to me, cap’n, don’t never drive that boy out, same’s I was drove. Master Hal’s sound an’ good at heart. But he’s had his own head too long now fer you to try rough tactics.”

“Rough! When was I ever rough with Hal?”

“Mebbe if you had of been a few times when he was small it’d of been better. But it’s too late now. Let him keep all canvas aloft; but hold a hard helm on him. Hold it hard!”

The sound of singing somewhere across the road toward the shore drew the captain’s attention out thewindow. Striding home from his morning plunge, Hal was returning to Snug Harbor, “coming up with a song from the sea.”

The captain put on his bathrobe, then went to the window and sat down there. He leaned his arms on the sill, and peered out at Hal. Ezra discreetly withdrew.

No sign seemed visible on Hal of last night’s rage and war. Sleep, and the exhilaration of battling with the savage surf along the face of Geyser Rock, had swept away all traces of his brutality. Molded into his wet bathing-suit that revealed every line of that splendidly virile body, he drew near.

All at once he caught sight of Captain Briggs. He stopped his song, by the lantern-flanked gateway, and waved a hand of greeting.

“Top o’ the morning to you, grandfather!” cried he. There he stood overflooded with life, strength, spirits. His body gleamed with glistening brine; his face, lighted by a smile of boyish frankness, shone in the morning sun. His thick, black hair that he had combed straight back with his fingers, dripped seawater on his bronzed, muscular shoulders.

“God, what a man!” the captain thought. “Hard as nails, and ridged with muscle. He’s only twenty-one, but he’s better than ever I was, at my best!”

And once again, he felt his old heart expand with pride and hope—hope that reached out to lay eager hold upon the future and its dreams.

“I want to see you, sir, before breakfast,” said the captain.

Hal nodded comprehension. From the hedge he broke a little twig, and held it up.

“Here’s the switch, gramp,” said he whimsically. “You’d better use it now, while I’ve got bare legs.”

The old man had to smile. With eyes of profoundaffection he gazed at Hal. Sunlight on his head and on Hal’s struck out wonderful contrasts of snow and jet. The luminous, celestial glow of a June morning on the New England coast—a morning gemmed with billions of dewdrops flashing on leaf and lawn, a morning overbrooded by azure deeps of sky unclouded—folded the world in beauty.

A sense of completion, of loveliness fulfilled compassed everything. Autumn looks back, regretfully. Winter shivers between memories and hopes. Spring hopes more strongly still—but June, complete and resting, says: “Behold!”

Such was that morning; and the captain, looking at his boy, felt its magic soothing the troubled heart within him. On the lawn, two or three robins were busy. Another, teetering high on the plumy crest of a shadowing elm, was emptying its heart of melody.

A minute, old man and young looked steadily at each other. Then Hal came up the white-sanded walk, between the two rows of polished conches. He stopped at the old man’s window.

“Grandfather,” said he in a low tone. “Will you listen to me, please?”

“What have you got to say, sir?” demanded Briggs, and stiffened his resolution. “Well, sir?”

“Listen, grandfather,” answered Hal, in a very manly way, that harmonized with his blue-eyed look, and with his whole air of ingenuous and boyish contrition. He crossed his bare arms, looked down a moment at the sand, dug at it a little with a toe, and then once more raised his head. “Listen, please. I’ve got just one thing to ask. Please don’t lecture me, and don’t be harsh. I stand here absolutely penitent, grandfather, begging to be forgiven. I’ve already apologized to Dr. Filhiol and Ezra—”

“So I understand,” put in Briggs, still strivinghard to make his voice sound uncompromising. “Well?”

“Well, grandfather—as for apologizing to you, that’s kind of a hard proposition. It isn’t that I don’t want to, but the relations between us have been so close that it’s pretty hard to make up a regular apology. You and I aren’t on a basis where I reallycouldapologize, as I could to anybody else. But I certainly did act the part of a ruffian on theSylvia Fletcher, and I was certainly a rotter here last night. There’s only one other thing—”

“And what’s that, sir?” demanded Briggs. The captain still maintained judicial aloofness, despite all cravings of the heart. “What’s that?”

“I—you may not believe it, gramp, but it’s true. I really don’t remember hardly anything about what happened aboard the schooner or here. I suppose I can’t stand even a couple of drinks. It all seems hazy to me now, like a kind of nightmare. It’s all indistinct, as if it weren’t me at all, but somebody else. I feel just as if I’d been watching another man do the things that I really know I myselfdiddo. The feeling is that somebody else took my body and used it, and made it do things that I myself didn’t want it to do. But I was powerless to stop it. Grampy, it’s true, true,true!”

He paused, looking at his grandfather with eyes of tragic seriousness. Old Briggs shivered slightly, and drew the bathrobe more tightly around his shoulders.

“Go on, Hal.”

“Well, there isn’t much more to say. I know there’ll be consequences, and I’m willing to face them. I’ll cut out the booze altogether. It was foolish of me to get into it at all, but you know how it is at college. They all kidded me, for not drinking a little,and so—well. It’s my own fault, right enough. Anyhow, I’m done. You’ll forget it and forgive it, won’t you, grandpa?”

“WillI, my boy?” the old man answered. He blinked to keep back the tears. “You know the answer, already!”

“You really mean that, gramp?” exclaimed Hal, with boyish enthusiasm. “If I face the music, whatever it is, and keep away from any encores, will you let me by, this time?”

The captain could answer only by stretching out his hand and gripping Hal’s. The boy took his old, wrinkled hand in a grip heartfelt and powerful. Thus for a moment the two men, old and young, felt the strong pressure of palms that cemented contrition and forgiveness. The captain was first to speak.

“Everything’s all right now, Hal,” said he, “so far’s I’m concerned. Whatever’s wrong, outside Snug Haven, can be made right. I know you’ve had your lesson, boy.”

“I should say so! I don’t need a second.”

“No, no. You’ll remember this one, right enough. Well, now, least said soonest mended. It was pretty shoal water there, one while. But we’re floating again, and we’re not going to run on to any more sandbars, are we? Ah, there’s Ezra blowing his bo’sun’s whistle for breakfast. Let’s see which of us gets to mess-table first!”

CHAPTER XXIVDARKENING SHADOWSBreakfast—served on a regulation ship’s table, with swivel-chairs screwed to the floor and with a rack above for tumblers and plates—made up by its overflowing happiness for all the heartache of the night before. Hal radiated life and high spirits. The captain’s forebodings of evil had vanished in his newly-revivified hopes. Dr. Filhiol became downright cheerful, and so far forgot his nerves as to drink a cup of weak coffee. As for Ezra, he seemed in his best form.“Judgin’ by your togs, Master Hal,” said he, as Hal—breakfast done—lighted his pipe and blew smoke up into the sunlit air, “I cal’late Laura Maynard’s got jest the same chances of not takin’ a walk with you, this mornin’, that Ruddy, here, has got of learnin’ them heathen Chinee books o’ yourn. It says in the Bible to love y’r neighbor as y’rself, so you got Scripture backin’ fer Laura.”“Plus the evidence of my own senses, Ezra,” laughed the boy, as he drew at his pipe. His fresh-shaven, tanned face with those now placid blue eyes seemed to have no possible relation with the mask of vicious hate and rage of the night before.As he sat there, observing Ezra with a smile, he appeared no other than an extraordinary well-grown, powerfully developed young man.“Must have been the rum that did it,” the captaintried to convince himself. “Works that way with some people. They lose all anchors, canvas, sticks and everything—go on the rocks when they’ve only shipped a drink or two. There’ll be no more rum for Hal. He’s passed his word he’s through. That means heisthrough, because whatever else he may or may not be, he’s a Briggs. So then, that’s settled!”“Now that you’ve put me in mind of Laura, I think Iwilltake a walk down-street,” said Hal. “I might just possibly happen to meet her. Glad you reminded me, Ezra.”“I guess you don’t need much remindin’,” replied the old cook solemnly. “But sail a steady course an’ don’t carry too much canvas. You’re too young a cap’n to be lookin’ for a mate, on the sea o’ life. Go slow. You can’t never tell what a woman or a jury’ll do, an’ most women jump at a chanst quicker ’n what they do at a mouse. Go easy!”“For an old pair of scissors with only one blade, you seem to understand the cut of the feminine gender pretty well,” smiled the boy.“Understand females?” replied Ezra, drawing out a corn-cob and a pouch of shag. “Not me! Some men think they do, but then, some men is dum fools. They’re dangerous, women is. No charted coast, no lights but love-light, an’ that most always turns out to be a will-o’-the-wisp, that piles ye up on the rocks. When a man gits stuck on a gal, seems like he’s like a fly stuck on fly-paper—sure to git his leg pulled.”Hal laughed again, and departed with that kind of casual celerity which any wise old head can easily interpret. Ezra, striking into a ditty with a monotonous chorus of “Blow the man down,” began gathering up the breakfast-dishes. The captain and his guest made their way to the quarterdeck and settled themselves in rockers.Briggs had hardly more than lighted his pipe, when his attention was caught by a white-canvas-covered wagon, bearing on its side the letters: “R. F. D.”“Hello,” said he, a shade of anxiety crossing his face. “Hello, there’s the mail.”He tried to speak with unconcern, but into his voice crept foreboding that matched his look. As he strode down the walk, Filhiol squinted after him.“It’s a sin and shame, the way he’s worried now,” the doctor murmured. “That boy’s got the devil in him. He’ll kill the captain, yet. A swim, a shave and a suit of white flannels don’t change a man’s heart. What’s bred in the bone—”Captain Briggs came to a stand at the gate. His nervousness betrayed itself by the thick cloud of tobacco-smoke that rose from his lips. Leisurely the mail-wagon zigzagged from side to side of the street as the postman slid papers and letters into the boxes and hoisted the red flags, always taking good care that no card escaped him, unread.“Mornin’, cap’n,” said the postman. “Here’s your weather report, an’ here’s your ‘Shippin’ News.’ An’ here’s a letter from Boston, from the college. You don’t s’pose Hal’s in any kind o’ rookus down there, huh? An’ here’s a letter from Squire Bean, down to the Center. Don’t cal’late there’s any law-doin’s, do you?”“What do you mean?” demanded the captain, trying to keep a brave front. “What could there be?”“Oh,youknow, ’bout how Hal rimracked McLaughlin. I heered tell, down-along, he’s goin’ to sue for swingein’ damages. Hal durn nigh killed the critter.”“Who told you?” demanded the captain.“Oh, they’re all talkin’. An’ I see Mac, myself, goin’ inta the squire’s house on a crutch an’ with onearm in a sling, early this mornin’. This here letter must of been wrote right away after that. Course I hope it ain’t nuthin’, but looks to me like ’tis. Well—”He eyed the captain expectantly, hoping the old man might open the letter and give the news which he could bear to all and sundry. But, no; the captain merely nodded, thrust the letters into the capacious breast-pocket of his square-rigged coat and with a non-committal “Thank you,” made his way back to the piazza.His shoulders drooped not, neither did his step betray any weakness. The disgruntled postman muttered something surly, clucked to his horse, and in disappointment pursued his business—the leisurely handling of Uncle Sam’s mail and everybody’s private affairs.The same robin—or perhaps, after all, it was a different one—was singing in the elm, as Alpheus Briggs returned to the house. Down the shaded street the metallic rhythm of the anvil was breaking through the contrabass of the surf. But now this melody fell on deaf ears, for Captain Briggs. Heavily he came up the steps, and with weariness sank down in the big rocker. Sadly he shook his head.“It’s come, I’m afraid,” said he dejectedly. “I was hoping it wouldn’t. Hoping McLaughlin would let it go. But that was hoping too much. He’s no man to swallow a beating. See here now, will you?”The captain pulled out his letter from Squire Bean, and extended it to Filhiol.“Local attorney?” asked the doctor, with a look of anxiety.“Yes,” answered the captain. “This letter meansonly one thing. Barometer’s falling again. We’ll have to take in more canvas, sir.”He tore the envelope with fingers now trembling. The letter revealed a crabbed hand-writing, thus:Endicutt, Massachusetts,June 19, 1918.Captain Alpheus Briggs,South Endicutt.Dear Sir: Captain Fergus McLaughlin has placed in my hands the matter of the assault and battery committed upon him by your grandson, Hal Briggs. Captain McLaughlin is in bad shape, is minus a front tooth, has his right arm broke, and cannot walk without a crutch. You are legally liable for these injuries, and would be immediately summoned into court except Capt. McLaughlin has regard for your age and position in the community. There is, however, no doubt, legal damages coming to the Capt. If you call, we can discuss amt. of same, otherwise let the law take its course.Resp’ly,Johab Bean, J. P.,Ex-Candidate for Judge of Dis’t Court.Captain Briggs read this carefully, then, tugging at his beard, passed it over to Dr. Filhiol.“It’s all as I was afraid it would be,” said the captain. “McLaughlin’s not going to take the medicine he’s really deserved for long years of buckoing poor devils. No, doctor. First time he meets amanthat can stand up to him and pay him back with interest, he steers a course for the law. That’s your bully and your coward! Thank God, for all my doings, I never fought my fights before a judge or jury! It was the best man win, fist to fist, or knife to knife if it came to that—but the law, sir, never!”“Well, that doesn’t matter now,” said Filhiol. “I’m afraid you’re in for whacking damages. Hal’s lucky that he wasn’t a signed-on member of the crew.There’d have been mutiny for you to get him out of, and iron bars. Lucky again, he didn’t hit just a trifle harder. If he had, it might have been murder, and in this State they send men to the chair for that. Yes, captain, you’re lucky it’s no worse. If you have only a hundred or two dollars to pay for doctor’s bills and damages, you’ll be most fortunate.”“A hundred or two dollars!” ejaculated the captain. “Judas priest! You don’t think there’ll be any such bill as that for repairs and demurrage on McLaughlin’s hulk, do you?”“I think that would be a very moderate sum,” answered Filhiol. “I’m willing to stand back of you, captain, all the way. I’ll go into court and examine McLaughlin, myself, as an expert witness. It’s more than possible Squire Bean is exaggerating, to shake you down.”“You’ll stand back of me, doctor?” exclaimed the captain, his face lighting up. “You’ll go into court, and steer me straight?”“By all means, sir!”Briggs nearly crushed the doctor’s hand in a powerful grip.“Well spoken, sir!” said he. “It’s like you, doctor. Well, all I can do is to thank you, and accept your offer. That puts a better slant to our sails, right away. Good, sir—very, very good!”His expression was quite different as he tore open the letter from the college. Perhaps, after all, this was only some routine communication. But as he read the neat, typewritten lines, a look of astonishment developed; and this in turn gave way to a most pitiful dismay.The captain’s hands were shaking, now, so that he could hardly hold the letter. His face had gone quite bloodless. All the voice he could muster was a kindof whispering gasp, as he stretched out the sheet of paper to the wondering Filhiol:“Read—read that, doctor! The curse—the curse! Oh, God is being very hard on me, in my old age! Readthat!”

DARKENING SHADOWS

Breakfast—served on a regulation ship’s table, with swivel-chairs screwed to the floor and with a rack above for tumblers and plates—made up by its overflowing happiness for all the heartache of the night before. Hal radiated life and high spirits. The captain’s forebodings of evil had vanished in his newly-revivified hopes. Dr. Filhiol became downright cheerful, and so far forgot his nerves as to drink a cup of weak coffee. As for Ezra, he seemed in his best form.

“Judgin’ by your togs, Master Hal,” said he, as Hal—breakfast done—lighted his pipe and blew smoke up into the sunlit air, “I cal’late Laura Maynard’s got jest the same chances of not takin’ a walk with you, this mornin’, that Ruddy, here, has got of learnin’ them heathen Chinee books o’ yourn. It says in the Bible to love y’r neighbor as y’rself, so you got Scripture backin’ fer Laura.”

“Plus the evidence of my own senses, Ezra,” laughed the boy, as he drew at his pipe. His fresh-shaven, tanned face with those now placid blue eyes seemed to have no possible relation with the mask of vicious hate and rage of the night before.

As he sat there, observing Ezra with a smile, he appeared no other than an extraordinary well-grown, powerfully developed young man.

“Must have been the rum that did it,” the captaintried to convince himself. “Works that way with some people. They lose all anchors, canvas, sticks and everything—go on the rocks when they’ve only shipped a drink or two. There’ll be no more rum for Hal. He’s passed his word he’s through. That means heisthrough, because whatever else he may or may not be, he’s a Briggs. So then, that’s settled!”

“Now that you’ve put me in mind of Laura, I think Iwilltake a walk down-street,” said Hal. “I might just possibly happen to meet her. Glad you reminded me, Ezra.”

“I guess you don’t need much remindin’,” replied the old cook solemnly. “But sail a steady course an’ don’t carry too much canvas. You’re too young a cap’n to be lookin’ for a mate, on the sea o’ life. Go slow. You can’t never tell what a woman or a jury’ll do, an’ most women jump at a chanst quicker ’n what they do at a mouse. Go easy!”

“For an old pair of scissors with only one blade, you seem to understand the cut of the feminine gender pretty well,” smiled the boy.

“Understand females?” replied Ezra, drawing out a corn-cob and a pouch of shag. “Not me! Some men think they do, but then, some men is dum fools. They’re dangerous, women is. No charted coast, no lights but love-light, an’ that most always turns out to be a will-o’-the-wisp, that piles ye up on the rocks. When a man gits stuck on a gal, seems like he’s like a fly stuck on fly-paper—sure to git his leg pulled.”

Hal laughed again, and departed with that kind of casual celerity which any wise old head can easily interpret. Ezra, striking into a ditty with a monotonous chorus of “Blow the man down,” began gathering up the breakfast-dishes. The captain and his guest made their way to the quarterdeck and settled themselves in rockers.

Briggs had hardly more than lighted his pipe, when his attention was caught by a white-canvas-covered wagon, bearing on its side the letters: “R. F. D.”

“Hello,” said he, a shade of anxiety crossing his face. “Hello, there’s the mail.”

He tried to speak with unconcern, but into his voice crept foreboding that matched his look. As he strode down the walk, Filhiol squinted after him.

“It’s a sin and shame, the way he’s worried now,” the doctor murmured. “That boy’s got the devil in him. He’ll kill the captain, yet. A swim, a shave and a suit of white flannels don’t change a man’s heart. What’s bred in the bone—”

Captain Briggs came to a stand at the gate. His nervousness betrayed itself by the thick cloud of tobacco-smoke that rose from his lips. Leisurely the mail-wagon zigzagged from side to side of the street as the postman slid papers and letters into the boxes and hoisted the red flags, always taking good care that no card escaped him, unread.

“Mornin’, cap’n,” said the postman. “Here’s your weather report, an’ here’s your ‘Shippin’ News.’ An’ here’s a letter from Boston, from the college. You don’t s’pose Hal’s in any kind o’ rookus down there, huh? An’ here’s a letter from Squire Bean, down to the Center. Don’t cal’late there’s any law-doin’s, do you?”

“What do you mean?” demanded the captain, trying to keep a brave front. “What could there be?”

“Oh,youknow, ’bout how Hal rimracked McLaughlin. I heered tell, down-along, he’s goin’ to sue for swingein’ damages. Hal durn nigh killed the critter.”

“Who told you?” demanded the captain.

“Oh, they’re all talkin’. An’ I see Mac, myself, goin’ inta the squire’s house on a crutch an’ with onearm in a sling, early this mornin’. This here letter must of been wrote right away after that. Course I hope it ain’t nuthin’, but looks to me like ’tis. Well—”

He eyed the captain expectantly, hoping the old man might open the letter and give the news which he could bear to all and sundry. But, no; the captain merely nodded, thrust the letters into the capacious breast-pocket of his square-rigged coat and with a non-committal “Thank you,” made his way back to the piazza.

His shoulders drooped not, neither did his step betray any weakness. The disgruntled postman muttered something surly, clucked to his horse, and in disappointment pursued his business—the leisurely handling of Uncle Sam’s mail and everybody’s private affairs.

The same robin—or perhaps, after all, it was a different one—was singing in the elm, as Alpheus Briggs returned to the house. Down the shaded street the metallic rhythm of the anvil was breaking through the contrabass of the surf. But now this melody fell on deaf ears, for Captain Briggs. Heavily he came up the steps, and with weariness sank down in the big rocker. Sadly he shook his head.

“It’s come, I’m afraid,” said he dejectedly. “I was hoping it wouldn’t. Hoping McLaughlin would let it go. But that was hoping too much. He’s no man to swallow a beating. See here now, will you?”

The captain pulled out his letter from Squire Bean, and extended it to Filhiol.

“Local attorney?” asked the doctor, with a look of anxiety.

“Yes,” answered the captain. “This letter meansonly one thing. Barometer’s falling again. We’ll have to take in more canvas, sir.”

He tore the envelope with fingers now trembling. The letter revealed a crabbed hand-writing, thus:

Endicutt, Massachusetts,

June 19, 1918.

Captain Alpheus Briggs,

South Endicutt.

Dear Sir: Captain Fergus McLaughlin has placed in my hands the matter of the assault and battery committed upon him by your grandson, Hal Briggs. Captain McLaughlin is in bad shape, is minus a front tooth, has his right arm broke, and cannot walk without a crutch. You are legally liable for these injuries, and would be immediately summoned into court except Capt. McLaughlin has regard for your age and position in the community. There is, however, no doubt, legal damages coming to the Capt. If you call, we can discuss amt. of same, otherwise let the law take its course.

Resp’ly,

Johab Bean, J. P.,

Ex-Candidate for Judge of Dis’t Court.

Captain Briggs read this carefully, then, tugging at his beard, passed it over to Dr. Filhiol.

“It’s all as I was afraid it would be,” said the captain. “McLaughlin’s not going to take the medicine he’s really deserved for long years of buckoing poor devils. No, doctor. First time he meets amanthat can stand up to him and pay him back with interest, he steers a course for the law. That’s your bully and your coward! Thank God, for all my doings, I never fought my fights before a judge or jury! It was the best man win, fist to fist, or knife to knife if it came to that—but the law, sir, never!”

“Well, that doesn’t matter now,” said Filhiol. “I’m afraid you’re in for whacking damages. Hal’s lucky that he wasn’t a signed-on member of the crew.There’d have been mutiny for you to get him out of, and iron bars. Lucky again, he didn’t hit just a trifle harder. If he had, it might have been murder, and in this State they send men to the chair for that. Yes, captain, you’re lucky it’s no worse. If you have only a hundred or two dollars to pay for doctor’s bills and damages, you’ll be most fortunate.”

“A hundred or two dollars!” ejaculated the captain. “Judas priest! You don’t think there’ll be any such bill as that for repairs and demurrage on McLaughlin’s hulk, do you?”

“I think that would be a very moderate sum,” answered Filhiol. “I’m willing to stand back of you, captain, all the way. I’ll go into court and examine McLaughlin, myself, as an expert witness. It’s more than possible Squire Bean is exaggerating, to shake you down.”

“You’ll stand back of me, doctor?” exclaimed the captain, his face lighting up. “You’ll go into court, and steer me straight?”

“By all means, sir!”

Briggs nearly crushed the doctor’s hand in a powerful grip.

“Well spoken, sir!” said he. “It’s like you, doctor. Well, all I can do is to thank you, and accept your offer. That puts a better slant to our sails, right away. Good, sir—very, very good!”

His expression was quite different as he tore open the letter from the college. Perhaps, after all, this was only some routine communication. But as he read the neat, typewritten lines, a look of astonishment developed; and this in turn gave way to a most pitiful dismay.

The captain’s hands were shaking, now, so that he could hardly hold the letter. His face had gone quite bloodless. All the voice he could muster was a kindof whispering gasp, as he stretched out the sheet of paper to the wondering Filhiol:

“Read—read that, doctor! The curse—the curse! Oh, God is being very hard on me, in my old age! Readthat!”

CHAPTER XXVTROUBLED SOULSDr. Filhiol trembled as he took the letter and read:Cambridge, Massachusetts,June 18, 1918.Dear Sir:I regret that I must write you again in regard to your grandson, Haldane Briggs, but necessity leaves no choice. This communication does not deal with an unimportant breach of discipline, such as we overlooked last year, but involves matters impossible to condone.During the final week of the college year Mr. Briggs’s conduct cannot be too harshly stigmatized. Complaint has been entered against him for gambling and for having appeared on the college grounds intoxicated. On the evening of Thursday last Mr. Briggs attempted to bring liquor into a college dormitory, and when the proctor made a protest, Mr. Briggs assaulted him.In addition, we find your grandson has not applied the money sent by you to the settlement of his term bill, but has diverted it for his own uses. The bill is herewith enclosed, and I trust that you will give it your immediate attention.Mr. Briggs, because of his undesirable habits, has not recently been properly attending to his courses, with the exception of his Oriental language work, in which he has continued to take a real interest. His examination marks in other studies have been so high as to lead to an inquiry, and we find that Mr. Briggs has been hiring some person unknown to take his place in three examinations and to pass them for him—a form of cheating which the large size of some of our courses unfortunately renders possible.Any one of Mr. Briggs’s infractions of the rules would result in his dismissal. Taken as a total, they render that dismissal peremptory and final. I regret to inform you thatyour grandson’s connection with the university is definitely terminated.Regretting that my duty compels me to communicate news of such an unpleasant nature, I am,Very sincerely yours,Hawley D. Travers, A.B., A.M., LL.B.ToCaptain Alpheus Briggs,South Endicutt, Massachusetts.Down sank the head of Captain Briggs. The old man’s beard flowed over the smart bravery of his blue coat, and down his weather-hardened cheeks trickled slow tears of old age, scanty but freighted with a bitterness the tears of youth can never feel.For a moment the captain sat annihilated under life’s most grievous blow—futility and failure after years of patient labor, years of saving and of self-denial, of hopes, of dreams. One touch of the harsh finger of Fate and all the gleaming iridescence of the bubble had vanished. From somewhere dark and far a voice seemed echoing in his ears:“Even though you flee to the ends of the earth, my curse will reach you. You shall pray to die, but still you cannot die! What is written in the Book must be fulfilled!”Suddenly the captain got up and made his way into the house. Like a wounded animal seeking its lair he retreated into his cabin.The doctor peered after him, letter in hand. From the galley Ezra’s voice drifted in nasal song, with words strangely trivial for so tragic a situation:“Blow, boys, blow, for Californ-io!There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told,On the banks of Sacramento!”“H-m!” grunted the doctor. “Poor old captain! God, but this will finish him! That Hal—damnthat Hal! If something would only happen to him now, so I could have him for a patient! I’m a law-abiding man, but still—”In the cabin Briggs sank down in the big rocking-chair before the fireplace. He was trembling. Something cold seemed clutching at his heart like tentacles. He looked about, as if he half-thought something were watching him from the far corner. Then his eye fell on the Malay kris suspended against the chimney. He peered at the lotus-bud handle, the wavy blade of steel, the dark groove where still lay the poison, thecuraré.“Merciful God!” whispered Captain Briggs, and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. He suddenly stretched out hands that shook. “Oh, haven’t I suffered enough and repented enough? Haven’t I labored enough and paid enough?” He pressed a hand to his forehead, moist and cold. “He’s all I’ve got, Lord—the boy is all I’ve got! Take me,me—but don’t let vengeance come throughhim! The sin was mine! Let me pay! Don’t drag him down to hell! Take me—but let him live and be a man!”No answer save that Briggs seemed to hear the words of the old witch-woman ringing with all the force of long-repressed memories:“Your blood, your blood I will have! Even though you flee from me forever, your blood will I have!”“Yes, yes! My blood, not his!” cried the old captain, standing up. Haggard, he peered at the kris, horrible reminder of a past he would have given life itself to obliterate so that it might not go on forever poisoning his race. There the kris hung like a sword of Damocles forever ready to fall upon his heart and pierce it. And all at once a burning rage and hate against the kris flared up in him. That thing accursedshould be destroyed. No longer should it hang there on his fireplace to goad him into madness.Up toward the kris he extended his hand. For a moment he dared not lay hold on it; but all at once he forced himself to lift it from its hooks. At touch of it again, after so long a time, he began to tremble. But he constrained himself to study it, striving to fathom what power lay in it. Peering with curiosity and revulsion he noted the lotus-bud, symbol of sleep; the keen edge spotted with dark stains of blood and rust; the groove with its dried poison, one scratch thereof a solvent for all earthly problems whatsoever.And suddenly a new thought came to him. His hand tightened on the grip. His head came up, his eye cleared, and with a look half of amazement, half triumph, he cried:“I’ve got the answer here! The answer, so help me God! Before that boy of mine goes down into the gutter—before he defiles his family and all the memories of his race, here’s the answer. Lord knows I hope he will come about on a new tack yet and be something he ought to be; but if he don’t, he’ll never live to drag our family name down through the sewer!”Savage pride thrilled the old man. All his hope yearned toward the saving of the boy; but, should that be impossible, he knew Hal would not sink to the dregs of life.The kris now seemed beneficent to Captain Briggs. Closely he studied the blade, and even drew his thumb along the edge, testing its keenness. Just how, he wondered, did the poison work? Was it painless? Quick it was; that much he knew. Quick and sure. Not in anger, but with a calm resolve he stood there, thinking. And like the after-swells of a tempest, other echoes now bore in upon him—echoes of wordsspoken half a hundred years ago by Mahmud Baba:“Even though I wash coal with rosewater a whole year long, shall I ever make it white? Even though the rain fall a whole year, will it make the sea less salt? One drop of indigo—and lo! the jar of milk is ruined! Seed sown upon a lake will never grow!”Again the captain weighed the kris in hand.“Maybe the singer was right, after all,” thought he. “I’ve done my best. I’ve given all I had to give. He’ll have his chance, the boy shall, but if, after that—”

TROUBLED SOULS

Dr. Filhiol trembled as he took the letter and read:

Cambridge, Massachusetts,

June 18, 1918.

Dear Sir:I regret that I must write you again in regard to your grandson, Haldane Briggs, but necessity leaves no choice. This communication does not deal with an unimportant breach of discipline, such as we overlooked last year, but involves matters impossible to condone.During the final week of the college year Mr. Briggs’s conduct cannot be too harshly stigmatized. Complaint has been entered against him for gambling and for having appeared on the college grounds intoxicated. On the evening of Thursday last Mr. Briggs attempted to bring liquor into a college dormitory, and when the proctor made a protest, Mr. Briggs assaulted him.In addition, we find your grandson has not applied the money sent by you to the settlement of his term bill, but has diverted it for his own uses. The bill is herewith enclosed, and I trust that you will give it your immediate attention.Mr. Briggs, because of his undesirable habits, has not recently been properly attending to his courses, with the exception of his Oriental language work, in which he has continued to take a real interest. His examination marks in other studies have been so high as to lead to an inquiry, and we find that Mr. Briggs has been hiring some person unknown to take his place in three examinations and to pass them for him—a form of cheating which the large size of some of our courses unfortunately renders possible.Any one of Mr. Briggs’s infractions of the rules would result in his dismissal. Taken as a total, they render that dismissal peremptory and final. I regret to inform you thatyour grandson’s connection with the university is definitely terminated.Regretting that my duty compels me to communicate news of such an unpleasant nature, I am,

Dear Sir:

I regret that I must write you again in regard to your grandson, Haldane Briggs, but necessity leaves no choice. This communication does not deal with an unimportant breach of discipline, such as we overlooked last year, but involves matters impossible to condone.

During the final week of the college year Mr. Briggs’s conduct cannot be too harshly stigmatized. Complaint has been entered against him for gambling and for having appeared on the college grounds intoxicated. On the evening of Thursday last Mr. Briggs attempted to bring liquor into a college dormitory, and when the proctor made a protest, Mr. Briggs assaulted him.

In addition, we find your grandson has not applied the money sent by you to the settlement of his term bill, but has diverted it for his own uses. The bill is herewith enclosed, and I trust that you will give it your immediate attention.

Mr. Briggs, because of his undesirable habits, has not recently been properly attending to his courses, with the exception of his Oriental language work, in which he has continued to take a real interest. His examination marks in other studies have been so high as to lead to an inquiry, and we find that Mr. Briggs has been hiring some person unknown to take his place in three examinations and to pass them for him—a form of cheating which the large size of some of our courses unfortunately renders possible.

Any one of Mr. Briggs’s infractions of the rules would result in his dismissal. Taken as a total, they render that dismissal peremptory and final. I regret to inform you thatyour grandson’s connection with the university is definitely terminated.

Regretting that my duty compels me to communicate news of such an unpleasant nature, I am,

Very sincerely yours,

Hawley D. Travers, A.B., A.M., LL.B.

ToCaptain Alpheus Briggs,

South Endicutt, Massachusetts.

Down sank the head of Captain Briggs. The old man’s beard flowed over the smart bravery of his blue coat, and down his weather-hardened cheeks trickled slow tears of old age, scanty but freighted with a bitterness the tears of youth can never feel.

For a moment the captain sat annihilated under life’s most grievous blow—futility and failure after years of patient labor, years of saving and of self-denial, of hopes, of dreams. One touch of the harsh finger of Fate and all the gleaming iridescence of the bubble had vanished. From somewhere dark and far a voice seemed echoing in his ears:

“Even though you flee to the ends of the earth, my curse will reach you. You shall pray to die, but still you cannot die! What is written in the Book must be fulfilled!”

Suddenly the captain got up and made his way into the house. Like a wounded animal seeking its lair he retreated into his cabin.

The doctor peered after him, letter in hand. From the galley Ezra’s voice drifted in nasal song, with words strangely trivial for so tragic a situation:

“Blow, boys, blow, for Californ-io!There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told,On the banks of Sacramento!”

“H-m!” grunted the doctor. “Poor old captain! God, but this will finish him! That Hal—damnthat Hal! If something would only happen to him now, so I could have him for a patient! I’m a law-abiding man, but still—”

In the cabin Briggs sank down in the big rocking-chair before the fireplace. He was trembling. Something cold seemed clutching at his heart like tentacles. He looked about, as if he half-thought something were watching him from the far corner. Then his eye fell on the Malay kris suspended against the chimney. He peered at the lotus-bud handle, the wavy blade of steel, the dark groove where still lay the poison, thecuraré.

“Merciful God!” whispered Captain Briggs, and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. He suddenly stretched out hands that shook. “Oh, haven’t I suffered enough and repented enough? Haven’t I labored enough and paid enough?” He pressed a hand to his forehead, moist and cold. “He’s all I’ve got, Lord—the boy is all I’ve got! Take me,me—but don’t let vengeance come throughhim! The sin was mine! Let me pay! Don’t drag him down to hell! Take me—but let him live and be a man!”

No answer save that Briggs seemed to hear the words of the old witch-woman ringing with all the force of long-repressed memories:

“Your blood, your blood I will have! Even though you flee from me forever, your blood will I have!”

“Yes, yes! My blood, not his!” cried the old captain, standing up. Haggard, he peered at the kris, horrible reminder of a past he would have given life itself to obliterate so that it might not go on forever poisoning his race. There the kris hung like a sword of Damocles forever ready to fall upon his heart and pierce it. And all at once a burning rage and hate against the kris flared up in him. That thing accursedshould be destroyed. No longer should it hang there on his fireplace to goad him into madness.

Up toward the kris he extended his hand. For a moment he dared not lay hold on it; but all at once he forced himself to lift it from its hooks. At touch of it again, after so long a time, he began to tremble. But he constrained himself to study it, striving to fathom what power lay in it. Peering with curiosity and revulsion he noted the lotus-bud, symbol of sleep; the keen edge spotted with dark stains of blood and rust; the groove with its dried poison, one scratch thereof a solvent for all earthly problems whatsoever.

And suddenly a new thought came to him. His hand tightened on the grip. His head came up, his eye cleared, and with a look half of amazement, half triumph, he cried:

“I’ve got the answer here! The answer, so help me God! Before that boy of mine goes down into the gutter—before he defiles his family and all the memories of his race, here’s the answer. Lord knows I hope he will come about on a new tack yet and be something he ought to be; but if he don’t, he’ll never live to drag our family name down through the sewer!”

Savage pride thrilled the old man. All his hope yearned toward the saving of the boy; but, should that be impossible, he knew Hal would not sink to the dregs of life.

The kris now seemed beneficent to Captain Briggs. Closely he studied the blade, and even drew his thumb along the edge, testing its keenness. Just how, he wondered, did the poison work? Was it painless? Quick it was; that much he knew. Quick and sure. Not in anger, but with a calm resolve he stood there, thinking. And like the after-swells of a tempest, other echoes now bore in upon him—echoes of wordsspoken half a hundred years ago by Mahmud Baba:

“Even though I wash coal with rosewater a whole year long, shall I ever make it white? Even though the rain fall a whole year, will it make the sea less salt? One drop of indigo—and lo! the jar of milk is ruined! Seed sown upon a lake will never grow!”

Again the captain weighed the kris in hand.

“Maybe the singer was right, after all,” thought he. “I’ve done my best. I’ve given all I had to give. He’ll have his chance, the boy shall, but if, after that—”

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