CHAPTER XXXVIIICAPTAIN BRIGGS FINDS THE WAYThe full significance of the curse burning deep into his brain, old Captain Briggs sat there on the bed a moment longer, his eyes fixed on the slip of paper. Then, with a new and very strange expression, as of a man who suddenly has understood, has chosen and is determined, he carefully folded the paper and thrust it into the pocket of his bathrobe. He stood up, peered at Ezra, advanced and laid a hand upon the old man’s shoulder.“Ezra,” said he in a deep voice, “there’s times when men have got tobemen, and this is one of ’em. You and I have gone some pretty rough voyages in years past. I don’t recall that either of us was ever afraid or refused duty in any wind or weather. We aren’t going to now. Whatever’s duty, that’s what we’re going to do. It’ll maybe lead me to a terribly dark port, but if that’s where I’ve got to go, as a good seaman, so be it.“And now,” he added in another tone, “now that’s all settled, and no more to be said about it.” Affectionately he patted the shoulder of the broken-hearted Ezra. “Come, brace up now; brace up!”“Cap’n Briggs, sir,” choked Ezra, distraught with grief, “you ain’t goin’ to believe what Master Hal said, be you? He accused himself o’ stealin’ that there money, to pertect me. It was reallymeas done it, sir, nothim!”“We won’t discuss that any more, Ezra,” the captainanswered, with a smile of deep affection. “It doesn’t much signify. There’s so much more to all this than just one particular case of theft. You don’t understand, Ezra. Come now, sir; pull yourself together! No more of this!”“But ain’t you goin’ to do anythin’ to bring him back, cap’n?” asked the old man. He got up and faced the captain with a look of grief and pain. “That there boy of ourn, oh, he can’t be let go to the devil this way! Ain’t there nothin’ you can do to save him?”“Yes, Ezra, there is.”“Praise God fer that, cap’n! You hadn’t ought to be too hard on Hal. You an’ me, we’re old, but we’d oughta try an’ understand a young un. Young folks is always stickin’ up the circus-bills along the road o’ life, an’ old uns is always comin’ along an’ tearin’ ’em down; an’ that ain’t right, cap’n. You an’ me has got to understand!”“I understand perfectly,” smiled the captain, his eyes steady and calm. “I know exactly what I’ve got to do.”“An’ you’ll do it?” Ezra’s trembling eagerness was pitiful. “You’re going’ to do it, cap’n?”Alpheus Briggs nodded. His voice blended with a sudden furious gust of wind as he answered:“I’m going to do it, Ezra. I’m surely going to.”“An’ whatisit?” insisted Ezra. “Run after him an’ bring him back?”“Bring him back. That’s just it.”“Praise the Lord!” The old man’s eyes were wet. “When? When you goin’ to do it?”“Very soon, now.”“You got to hurry, cap’n. We mustn’t let anythin’ happen to our Hal. He’s run kinda wild, mebbe, but he’s everythin’ we got to love. Ef you can git himback agin, we’ll be so doggone good to him he’llhaftado better. But you mustn’t lose no time. Ef he gits aboard that thereKittiwinkan’ tries to make sail out through the Narrers, he’s like as not to git stove up on Geyser.”The captain smiled as he made answer:“I sha’n’t lose any unnecessary time, Ezra. But I can’t do it all in a moment. And you must let me do this in my own way.”The old man peered up at him through tears.“You know best how to chart this course, now.”“Yes, I believe I do. To save that boy, I’ve got to make a journey, and I’ll need a little time to get ready. But just the minute Iamready, I’ll go. You can depend on that!”“A journey? I’ll go too!”“No, Ezra, this is a journey I must take all alone.”“Well, you know best, cap’n,” the old fellow assented. “But ef you need any help, call on!”“I will, Ezra. Now go to your room and rest. You’re badly used up. There’s nothing you can do to help, just now.”“But won’t you be wantin’ me to pack y’r duffel? An’ rig Bucephalus?”“When I want you, I’ll let you know,” smiled Briggs. With one hand still on the old man’s shoulder, his other hand took Ezra’s in a strong clasp.“Ezra,” said he, “you’ve always stood by, through thick and thin, and I know you will now. You’ve been the most loyal soul in this whole world. No needle ever pointed north half as constant as you’ve pointed toward your duty by Hal and me. You’re a man, Ezra,a man—and I’m not ashamed to say I love you for it!”His grip tightened on the old man’s hand. For a moment he looked square into Ezra’s wondering, half-frightenedeyes. Then he loosened his grasp, turned and walked from the room.Along the hall he went, and down the stairs. His face, calm, beatified, seemed shining with an inner light that ennobled its patriarchal features.“Thank God,” he whispered, “for light to see my duty, and for strength to do it!”As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the front door opened, and Dr. Filhiol staggered in, admitting a furious gust of wind and rain. With great difficulty he was managing himself, holding the injured dog. Ruddy was yelping; one leg hung limp and useless.For a tense moment the doctor confronted Briggs. He pushed the door shut, with rage and bitterness.“And you, sir,” he suddenly exclaimed, “you go against my orders; you leave your bed and expose yourself to serious consequences, for the sake of a beast—who will do a thing likethis!”Furiously he nodded downward at the dog.The captain advanced and, with a hand that trembled, caressed the rough muzzle.“Hal?” asked he, under his breath. “This, too?”“Yes, this! Nearly killed the poor creature, sir! Kicked him. And that wasn’t enough. When the dog still tried to follow him, grabbed him up and dashed him down on the steps. This leg’s broken. Ribs, too, I think. A miracle the dog wasn’t killed. Your grandson’s intention was to kill him, all right enough, but I guess he didn’t want to take time for it!” Filhiol’s lips were trembling with passion, so that he could hardly articulate. “This is horrible! Injury to a man is bad enough, but a man can defend himself, and will. But injury to a defenseless, trusting animal—my God, sir, if I’d been anything but a cripple, and if I’d had a weapon handy, I’d have had your grandson’s blood, so help me!”The captain made no answer, but set his teeth into his bearded lip. He patted the dog’s head. Ruddy licked his hand.“Well, sir?” demanded Filhiol. “What have you to say now?”“Nothing. Hal’s gone, and words have no value. Can you repair this damage?”“Yes, if the internal injuries aren’t too bad. But that’s not the point. Hal, there, goes scot free and—”Alpheus Briggs raised his hand for silence.“Please, no more!” he begged. “I can’t stand it, doctor. You’ve got to spare me now!”Filhiol looked at him with understanding.“Forgive me,” said he. “But help me with poor old Ruddy, here!”“Ezra can help you. On a pinch, call in Dr. Marsh, if you like.”“Oh, I think my professional skill is still adequate to set a dog’s leg,” Filhiol retorted.“And you don’t know how grateful I am to you for doing it,” said the captain. “I’m grateful, too, for your not insisting on any more talk about Hal. You’re good as gold! I wish you knew how much I thank you!”The doctor growled something inarticulate and fondled the whimpering animal. Alpheus Briggs forced himself to speak again.“Please excuse me now. I’ve got something very important to do.” His hand slid into the pocket of his bathrobe, closed on the paper there, and crumpled it. “Will you give me a little time to myself? I want an hour or two undisturbed.”The temptation was strong on the captain to take the hand of Filhiol and say some words that might perhaps serve as a good-by, but he restrained himself. Where poor old Ezra had understood nothing, Filhiolwould very swiftly comprehend. So Alpheus Briggs, even in this supreme moment of leave-taking, held his peace.The doctor, however, appeared suddenly suspicious.“Captain,” he asked, “before I promise you the privacy you ask, I’ve got one question for you. Have you overheard any of Hal’s reading lately, or have you seen any of his translations from the Malay?”By no slightest quiver of a muscle did the old man betray himself.“No,” he answered. “What do you mean, doctor? Why do you ask?”“That’s something I can’t tell you,” said Filhiol, thankful that no hint had reached Briggs concerning the curse. Swiftly he thought. Yes, it would well suit his purpose now to get the captain out of the way. That would give Filhiol time to run through the litter of papers in Hal’s room, and to destroy the translation that might have such fatal consequences if it should come into the captain’s hands.“Very well, sir,” said he. “Take whatever time you need to settle matters relative to Hal’s leaving. By rights I ought to order you back to bed; but I know you wouldn’t obey me now, anyhow, so what’s the use? Only, be reasonably sensible, captain. Even though Halhasmade a fearful mess of everything, your life is worth a very great deal to lots of people!”The captain nodded. Filhiol’s admonitions suddenly seemed very trivial, just as the world and life itself had all at once become. Already these were retreating from his soul, leaving it alone, with the one imperative of duty. At the last page of the book of life, Alpheus Briggs realized with swift insight how slight the value really was of that poor volume, and how gladly—when love and duty bade him—he could forever close it.“We’ll talk this all over in the morning, doctor,” said he. “But till then, no more of it. I’ve got to get my bearings and answer my helm better before I’ll know exactly what to do. You understand?”“Yes, captain, I think I do,” answered the doctor, with compassion. He said no more, but hobbled towards the kitchen, there to summon Ezra and do what could be done for Ruddy.Thus Captain Briggs was left alone. Alone with the stern consummation of his duty, as he saw it.CHAPTER XXXIX“ONE MUST DIE”Briggs entered his cabin, and locked both doors; then fastened the window giving on the porch. He went to the fireplace, overhung with all that savage arsenal, and put a couple of birch-logs on the glowing coals.He sat down in his big chair by the fire, pondered a moment with the fireglow on his deep-wrinkled, bearded face, then from the pocket of his bathrobe drew the crumpled bit of paper. Again he studied it, reading it over two or three times. In a low voice he slowly pronounced the words, as if to grave them on his consciousness:“The curse must be fulfilled, to the last breath, for by Shiva and the Trimurthi, what is written is written. But if he through whom the curse descendeth on another is stricken to horror and to death, then the Almighty Vishnu, merciful, closes that page. And he who through another’s sin was cursed, is cleansed. Thus may the curse be fulfilled. But always one of two must die.Tuan Allah poonia krajah!It is the work of the Almighty One! One of two must die!”For some minutes he pondered all this. Before him rose visions—the miasmatic Malay town; the battle in the Straits; the yellow and ghostlike presence of the witch-woman, shrilling her curse at him; the death of Scurlock and the boy, of Mahmud Baba, of Kuala Pahang, of theamokMalay who, shot through the spine and half paralyzed, still had writhed forward, horribly, to kill.“No wonder the curse has followed me,” murmured the old man. “I haven’t suffered yet as any one would have to suffer to pay for all that. For all that, and so much more—God, how much more! It’s justice, that’s all; and who can complain about justice? Poor Hal, poor boy of mine! No justice abouthishaving to bear it, is there? Why shouldhesuffer for whatIdid fifty years ago? Thank God! Oh, thank God!” he exclaimed with passionate fervor, “that I can pay it all, and make him free!”He relapsed into silence a little while, his face not at all marked with grief or pain, but haloed with a high and steadfast calm. The drumming rain on the porch roof, the shuddering impact of the wind as the storm set its shoulders against Snug Haven, saddened him with thoughts of the fugitive, bearing the curse that was not his, out there somewhere in the tumult and the on-drawing night, trying to flee the whips of atavism. But through that sadness rose happier thoughts.“It’s only for a little while now,” said the captain. “The curse is nearly ended. When I’ve paid the score, it will lift, and he’ll come back again. Poor Hal—how little he knew, when he was writing this paper, that he was giving me the chart to steer my right course! If the hand of some divine Providence isn’t in this, then there’s no Providence to rule this world!”Another thought struck him. Hal knew nothing of the fact that his grandfather had found the curse. He must never know. In the life of better things that soon was to open out for him, no embittering self-accusation must intrude. All proof must be destroyed.Captain Briggs tossed the curse of Dengan Jouga into the flames just beginning to flicker upward from the curling birch-bark. The paper browned and puffed into flame. It shriveled to a crisp black shell, on which, for a moment or two, the writing glowed inangry lines of crimson. Captain Briggs caught one last glimpse of a word or two, grotesquely distorted—”The curse—horror and death—one—must die—”Despite himself he shuddered. The hate and malice of the old witch-woman seemed visibly glaring out at him from the flames, after half a century. From the other side of the world, even from “beyond the Silken Sea,” words of vengeance blinked at him, then suddenly vanished; and with a gust of the storm-wind, up the chimney whirled the feather bit of ash. The captain drew his bath robe a little closer round him, and glanced behind him into the dark corners of the cabin.“This—is very strange!” he whispered.Still he sat pondering. Especially he recalled the Malay he had shot through the spine. That lithe, strong man, suddenly paralyzed into a thing half dead and yet alive, was particularly horrible to remember. Helplessness, death that still did not die....A spark snapped out upon the floor. He set his foot on it.“That’s the only way to deal with evil,” said he. “Stamp it out! And if we’re the evil ourselves, if we’re the spark of devil-fire, out we must go! What misery I could have saved for Hal, if I’d understood before—and what a cheap price! An old, used-up life for a new, strong, fresh one.”His mind, seeking what way of death would be most fitting, reverted to the poisoned kris, symbol of the evil he had done and of the old, terrible days. He peered up at the mantelpiece; but, look as he would, failed to discover the kris. He rose to his feet, and explored the brickwork with his hands in the half-light reflected from the fire. Nothing there. The hooks, empty, showed where the Malay blade had been taken down, but of the blade itself no trace remained.The old captain shivered, amazed and wondering.In this event there seemed more than the hand of mere coincidence. Hal was gone; the kris had vanished. The captain could not keep cold tentacles of fear from reaching for his heart. To him it seemed as if he could almost see the eyeless face looming above him, could almost hear the implacable mockery of its far, mirthless laughter.“God!” he whispered. “This won’t do! I—I’ll lose my nerve if I keep on this way, and nerve is what I’ve got to have now!”Why had Hal taken that knife? What wild notion had inspired the boy? Alpheus Briggs could not imagine. But something predestined, terrible, seemed closing in. The captain felt the urge of swift measures. If Hal were to be rescued, it must be at once.Turning from the fireplace of such evil associations, he lighted the ship’s lamp that hung above it. He sat down at the desk, opened a drawer and took out two photographs. These he studied a few minutes, with the lamp-light on his white hair, his venerable beard, his heavy features. Closely he inspected the photographs.One was a group, showing himself with the family that once had been, but now had almost ceased to be. The other was a portrait of Hal. Carefully the old man observed this picture, taken but a year ago, noting the fine, broad forehead, the powerful shoulders, the strength of the face that looked out so frankly at him. For the first time he perceived a quality in this face he had never seen before—the undertone of arrogant power, born of unbeaten physical strength.The captain shook his head with infinite sadness.“That’s the real curse that lay on me,” he murmured. “That’s what I’ve got to pay for now. Well, so be it.”He kissed both pictures tenderly, and put them backinto the drawer. From it he took a box, and from the box a revolver—an old revolver, the very same that he had carried in theSilver Fleecefifty long years ago.“You’ve done very great evil,” said Alpheus Briggs slowly. “Now you’re going to pay for it by doing at least one good act. That’s justice. God is being very good to me, showing me the way.”He broke open the revolver, spun the cylinder and snapped the hammer two or three times.“It’s all right,” judged he. “This is an important job. It mustn’t be made a mess of.”He looked for and found a few cartridges, and carefully loaded the weapon, then snapped it shut, and laid it on the desk. The sound of Dr. Filhiol, coming with another cane along the hall, caused him to slide the gun into the drawer. Filhiol knocked at the door, and Briggs arose to open it. He showed no signs of perturbation. A calm serenity glowed in his eyes.“Isn’t it time you got your writing finished and went to bed?” the doctor demanded tartly.“Almost time. I’m just finishing up. I sha’n’t be long now. Tell me, how’s Ruddy?”“We’ve made a fair job of it, and Ezra’s gone to his room. He’s taking everything terribly to heart. Anything I can do for you?”“Nothing, thank you. Good night.”The captain’s hand enfolded Filhiol’s. Neither by any undue pressure nor by word did he give the doctor any hint of the fact that this good-by was final. The old doctor turned and very wearily stumped away up-stairs. Briggs turned back into his cabin.“A good, true friend,” said he. “Another one I’m sorry to leave, just as I’m sorry to leave the girl and Ezra. But—well—”At his task once more, he fetched from the safe his black metal cash-box, and set himself to looking over afew deeds, mortgages and other papers, making sure that all was in order for the welfare of Hal. He reread his will, assuring himself that nothing could prevent Hal from coming into the property, and also that a bequest to Ezra was in correct form. This done, he replaced the papers in the safe.On his desk a little clock was ticking, each motion of its balance-wheel bringing nearer the tragedy impending. The captain glanced at it.“Getting late,” said he. “Only one more thing to do now, and then I’m ready.”He set himself to write a letter that should make all things clear to Hal. But first he brought out the revolver once more, and laid it on the desk as a kind ofmemento mori, lest in the writing his soul should weaken.The lamp, shining down upon the old man’s gnarled fingers as they painfully traced the words of explanation and farewell, also struck high-lights from the revolver.The captain’s eyes, now and then leaving the written pages as he paused to think, rested upon the gun. At sight of it he smiled; and once he reached out, caressed it and smiled.CHAPTER XLON THEKITTIWINKWhen Hal left Snug Haven, he bent his shoulders to the storm and with his suit-cases plowed through the gathering dusk toward Hadlock’s Cove.Cold, slashing rain and boistering gusts left his wrath uncooled. Ugly, brutalized, he kept his way past the smithy—past Laura’s house, and so with glowering eyes on into the evening that caught and ravened at him.The sight of Laura’s house filled him with an access of rage. That calm security of shaded windows behind the rain-scourged hedge seemed to typify the girl’s protection against him. He twisted his mouth into an ugly grin.“Think you’re safe, don’t you?” he growled, pausing a moment to glower at the house. “Think I can’t get you, eh? I haven’t even begun yet!”In the turmoil of his mind, no clear plan had as yet taken form. He knew only that he had a boat and full supplies, that from him the ocean held no secrets, that his muscles and his will had never yet known defeat, and that the girl was his if he could take her.“She’ll turn me down cold and get away with it, will she?” he snarled. “She will—like hell!”Forward he pushed again, meeting no one, and so passed Geyser Rock, now booming under the charges of the surf. He skirted a patch of woods, flailed by the wind, and beyond this turned through a stone wall, to follow a path that led down to the cove. On either side of the path stretched a rolling field, rich with tallgrasses, with daisies, buttercups, milfoil and devil’s paint-brush, drenched and beaten down in the dusk by the sweep of the storm.Louder and more loud rose, fell, the thunders of the sea, as Hal approached the rocky dune at the far side of the field—a dune that on its other edge sank to a shingle beach that bordered the cove.To eastward, this beach consolidated itself into the rocky headland of Barberry Point, around which the breakers were curving to hurl themselves on the shingle. The wind, however, was at this point almost parallel with the shore. Hal reckoned, as he tramped across the field, that with good judgment and stiff work he could get theKittiwinkto sea at once.And after that, what? He did not know. No definite idea existed in that half-crazed, passion-scourged brain. The driving power of his strength accursed, took no heed of anything but flight. Away, away, only to be away!“God!” he panted, stumbling up the dune to its top, where salt spray and stinging rain skirled upon him in skittering drives. He dropped his burdens, and flung out both huge arms toward the dark, tumbling void of waters, streaked with crawling lines of white. “God! that’s what I want! That’s what they’re trying to keep me away from! I’m going to have it now—by God, I am!”He stood there a moment, his oilskin hat slapping about his face. At his right, three hundred yards away or so, he could just glimpse the dark outlines of Jim Gordon’s little store that supplied rough needs of lobstermen and fishers. Hal’s lip curled with scorn of the men he knew were gathered in that dingy, smoky place, swapping yarns and smoking pipes. They preferred that to the freedom of the night, the storm, the sea! At them he shook his fist.“There’s not one of you that’s half the man I am!” he shouted. “You sit in there and run me down. I know! You’re doing it now—telling how gramp had to pay because I licked a bully, and how I’ve got to apologize! But you don’t dare come out into a night like this. I can outsail you and outfight you all—and to hell with you!”His rage somehow a little eased, he turned to the task immediately confronting him. The beach sloped sharply to the surf. A litter of driftwood, kelp and mulched rubbish was swirling back and forth among the churning pebbles that with each refluent wave went clattering down in a mad chorus. Here, there, drawn up out of harm’s way, lay lobster-pots and dories. Just visible as a white blur tossing on the obscure waters, theKittiwinkrode at her buoy.“Great little boat!” cried Hal. A vast longing swept over him to be aboard, and away. The sea was calling his youth, strength, daring.Laura? And would he go without the girl? Yes. Sometime, soon perhaps, he would come back, would seize her, carry her away; but for now that plan had grown as vaguely formless as his destination. Fumes of liquor in his brain, of passion in his heart, blent with the roaring confusion of the tempest. All was confusion, all a kind of wild and orgiastic dream, culmination of heredity, of a spirit runamok.Night, storm and wind shouted to the savage in this man. And, standing erect there in the dark, arms up to fleeing cloud and ravening gale, he howled back with mad laughter:“Coming now! By God, I’m coming now!”There was foam on his lips as he strode down the beach, flung the suit-cases into a dory—and with a run and a huge-shouldered shove across the shingle fairly flung the boat into the surf.Waist-deep in chilling smothers of brine, he floundered, dragged himself into the dory that shipped heavy seas, and flung the oars on to the thole-pins. He steadied her nose into the surf, and with a few strong pulls got her through the tumble. A matter of two or three minutes, with such strength as lay in his arms of steel, brought him to the lee of theKittiwink’sstern. He hove the suit-cases to the deck of the dancing craft, then scrambled aboard and made the painter fast.Again he laughed, exultingly. Now for the first time in his life his will could be made law. Now he stood on his own deck, with plenty of supplies below, and—above, about him—the unlimited power of the gale to drive him any whither he should choose.He strode to the companionway, his feet sure on the swaying deck, his body lithely meeting every plunge, and slid back the hatch-cover. Down into the cabin he pitched the cases and followed them. He struck a match. It died. He cursed bitterly, tried again, and lighted the cabin-lamp. His eyes, with the affection of ownership, roved around the little place, taking in the berths, the folding-table, the stools. He threw the suit-cases into a berth, opened one and took out a square-face, which he uncorked and tipped high.“Ah!” he sighed. “Some class!” He set the bottle in the rack and breathed deeply. “Nice little berths, eh? Laura—she’d look fine here. She’d fit great, as crew. And if she gave me any of her lip, then—”His fist, doubled, swayed under the lamp-shine as he surveyed it proudly.“Great little boat,” judged Hal. “She’ll outsail ’em all, and I’m the boy to make her walk!”Huge, heavy, evil-faced, he stood there, swaying as theKittiwinkrode the swells. He cast open his reefer,took out pipe and tobacco, and lighted up. As he sucked at the stem, his hard lips, corded throat and great jaws gave an impression of brutal power, in no wise differing from that of old Alpheus Briggs, half a hundred years ago.“Make me go to school and wear a blue ribbon,” he gibed, his voice a contrabass to the shrilling of the wind aloft in the rig, the groaning and creaking of the timbers. “Make me go round apologizing to drunken bums. Like—hell!”A gleam of metal from the opened suit-case attracted his eyes. He took up the kris, and with vast approval studied it. The feel of the lotus-bud handle seemed grateful to his palm. Its balance joyed him. The keen, wavy blade, maculated with the rust of blood and brine, and with the groove where lay another stain whose meaning he knew not, held for him a singular fascination. Back, forth he slashed the weapon, whistling it through the air, flashing it under the lamp-light.“Fine!” he approved, with thickened speech. “Glad I got it—might come handy in a pinch, what?”He stopped swinging the kris, and once more observed it, more closely still. Tentatively he ran his thumb along the edge, testing it, then scratched with some inchoate curiosity at the poison crystallized in the groove.“Wonder what that stuff is, anyhow?” said he. “Doesn’t look like the rest. Maybe it’s the blood of some P. I., like McLaughlin.Thatought to make a dirty-looking stain, same as this. Maybe it will, some of these days, if he crosses my bows. Maybe it will at that!”CHAPTER XLIFATE STRIKESHal tossed the kris into the berth, and was just about to reach for the bottle again when athump-thump-thumpingalong the hull startled his attention.“What the devil’s that, now?” he growled, stiffening. The sound of voices, then a scramble of feet on deck, flung him toward the companion-ladder. “Who’s there?”“He’s here, boys, all right!” exulted a voice above. “We got him this time, the—”Have you seen a bulldog bristle to the attack with bared teeth and throaty growl? So, now, Hal Briggs.“Got me, have you?” he flung up at the invaders. “More o’ that rotten gurry-bucket’s crew, eh? More o’ Bucko McLaughlin’s plug-uglies!”“Easy there,” sounded a caution, as if holding some one back from advancing on Hal. “He’s mebbe got a gun.”“T’ hell wid it!” shouted another. “He ain’t gonna lambaste half our crew an’ the ole man, an’ git away wid it! Come on, if there’s one o’ ye wid the guts of a man. We’ll rush the son of a pup!”Heavy sea-boots appeared on the ladder. Hal leaped, grabbed, flung his muscles into a backward haul—and before the first attacker realized what had happened, he landed on his back. One pile-driver fist to the jaw, and the invader quivered into oblivion, blood welling from a lip split to the teeth.“There’s one o’ you!” shouted Hal. “One more!” He laughed uproariously, half drunk with alcohol, wholly drunk with the strong waters of battle. “Looks like I’d have to make a job of it, and clean the bunch! Who’s next?”Only silence answered a moment. This swift attack and sudden loss seemed to have disconcerted Mac’s men. Hal kicked the fallen enemy into a corner, and faced the companionway. His strategic position, he realized, was almost impregnable. Only a madman would have ventured up to that narrow and slippery deck in the night, with an undetermined number of men armed, perhaps, with murderous weapons, awaiting him. Hal was no madman. A steady fighter, he, and of good generalship. In his heart he meant, as he stood there, to kill or cripple every one of those now arrayed against him. He dared take no chances. Tense as a taut spring, he crouched and waited.Then as he heard whisperings, furious gusts of mumbled words, oaths at the very top of the companion, an idea took him. He snatched up the unconscious man, thrust him up the ladder and struggled behind him with titanic force. His legs, massive pillars, braced themselves against the sides of the companion. Like a battle-ax he swung the vanquished enemy, beating about him with this human flail. With fortune, might he not sweep one or two assailants off into the running seas?He saw vague forms, felt the impact of blows, as his weapon struck. Came a rush. Overborne, he fell backward to the floor. Up he leaped, as feet clattered down the ladder, and snatched the kris.But he could not drive it home in the bulky, dark form leaping down at him. For, lightning-swift, sinewed arms of another man behind him whipped round his neck, jerked his head back, bore him downward.He realized that he was lost. He had forgotten the forward hatch, opening down into the galley; he hadforgotten the little passageway behind him. Now one of McLaughlin’s men, familiar with the build of theKittiwink, had got a strangling grip on him. A wild yell of triumph racketed through the cabin, as three more men dropped into that little space.Hal knew he must use strategy. Backward he fell: and as he fell, he twisted. His right hand still held the kris; his left got a grip on the other’s throat.That other man immediately grew dumb, and ceased to breathe, as the terrible fingers closed. Volleys of blows and kicks rained on Hal ineffectively. Still the fingers tightened; the man’s face grew horribly dusky, slaty-blue under the lamp-light, while his tongue protruded and his staring eyes injected themselves with blood.The arm round Hal’s neck loosened, fell limp. Hal flung the man from him, groveled up under the cross-cutting slash of blows, and bored in.The crash of a stool on his right wrist numbed his arm to the elbow; the stool, shattered, fell apart, and one leg made smithereens of the lamp-globe. The smoky flare redly lighted a horrible, fantastic war. Hal fought to snatch up the knife again; the others to keep him from it, to trample him, bash him in, smear his brains and blood on the floor. Scientific fighting went to pot. This was just jungle war, the war of gouge and bite, confused, unreal.All the boy knew was that he swayed, bent and recovered in the midst of terrible blows, and that one arm would not serve him. The other fist landed here, there; and now it had grown red, though whether from its own blood or from the wounds of foemen, who could tell? Strange fires spangled outward before Hal’s eyes; he tasted blood, and, clacking his jaws, set his teeth into a hand and through it.Something wrenched, cracked dully. Blasphemyhowled through the smoky air, voicing the anguish of a broken arm. A rolling, swaying, tumbling mass, the men trampled the fallen one, pulping his face. Broken glass gritted under hammering bootheels, as the shards of lamp-chimney were ground fine.Back, forth, strained the fighters, with each heave and wallow of the boat. The floor grew slippery. The folding-table, torn from its hinges, collapsed into kindling; and one of these sticks, aimed at Hal’s head, missed him, but struck the square-face.Liquor gurgled down; the smell of whisky added its fetor to the stench of oil, bilge, sweat and blood. The floor grew slippery, and crimson splashes blotched the cabin walls.“Kill—the son—of—” strainingly grunted some one.Hal choked out a gasping, husky laugh. Only one eye was doing duty now; but that one still knew the kris was lying in the corner by the starboard berth.He tugged, bucked, burst through, fell on the kris, grappled its knob and writhed up, crouching.He flung the blade aloft to strike. Everything was whirling in a haze of dust and dancing confusion, lurid under the flare. Grinning, bleeding faces, rage-distorted, gyrated before him. He swirled the kris at the nearest.A hand, vising his wrist, snapped the blade downward, drove it back. Hal felt a swift sting, a burning, lancinating pain in his right pectoral muscle. It seemed to pierce the chest, the lung itself.He dropped his arm, staring. The kris, smeared brightly red, thumped to the floor.“Got ’im, b’ God!” wheezed somebody.“Got him—yes, an’ now it won’t be healthy fer us, if we’re caught here, neither!” panted another.The men stood away from him, peering curiously.Hal confronted them, one arm limp. The other hand rested against the cabin bulkhead. He swayed, with the swaying of the boat; his head, sagging forward, seemed all at once very heavy. He felt a hot trickle down his breast.“You—you’ve got me, you—” he coughed, and, leaning his back against the bulkhead, got his free hand feebly to the wound. It came away horribly red. By the smoky, feeble flare, he blinked at it. The three hulking men still on foot—vague figures, with black shadows on bearded faces, with eyes of fear and dying anger—found no answer. One sopped at a cut cheek with his sleeve; another rubbed his elbow and growled a curse. On the cabin floor two lay inert, amid the trample of débris.“Nowyou’ve done it, Coombs,” suddenly spat the smallest of McLaughlin’s men. He shook a violent forefinger at the blood-smeared kris that had fallen near the ladder. “Now we got murder on our hands, you damn fool! We didn’t come here to kill the son of a dog. We only come to give him a damn good beatin’-up, an’ now see what you’ve went an’ done! We got to clear out, all of us! An’ stick, too; we got to fix this story right!”“What—what d’you mean?” stammered Coombs, he of the bleeding cheek. He had gone ashy pale. The whiteness of his skin make startling contrast with the oozing blood. “What story? What we gotta do?”“Get ashore an’ all chew it over an’ agree on how we wasn’t within a mile o’ here to-night. Fix it, an’ git ready to swear to it! If we don’t, we’ll all go up! Come along out o’ here! Quick!”“Aw, hell! If he dies, serves him right!” spoke up the third man. “They can’t touch us fer killin’ a skunk!”“You’ll soon find out if they can or not!” retorted the small man, livid with fear. “Out o’ here now!”“An’ not fix him up none? Not bandage him ner nothing?” put in Coombs. “Gosh!”“Bandage nothin’!” cried the small man. “Tully’s right. We got to be clearin’. ButIsay, set fire to her an’ burn her where she lays, an’ him in her, an’—”“Yes, an’ have the whole damn town here, an’ everythin’! You got a head on you like a capstan. Come on, beat it!”“We can’t go an’ leave our fellers here, can we?” demanded Coombs, while Hal, sliding down along the bulkhead, collapsed upon the blood-stained floor. He felt his life oozing out hotly, but now had no power even to raise a hand. Coombs peered down, his eyes unnaturally big. “We can’t leavethem! That’d be a dead give-away. An’ we hadn’t oughta leave a man bleed to death that way, neither.”“T’ hell with ’im!” shrilled the little man, more and more panic-stricken. “We should worry! Git hold o’ Nears an’ Dunning here, an’ on deck with ’em. We can git ’em ashore, an’ the others, too, in the dory. We can all git down to Hammill’s fish-shed an’ no one the wiser. Give us a hand here, you!”“I’m goin’ to stay an’ fix this here man up,” decided Coombs. “I reckon I stuck him, or he stuck himself because I gaffled onta his hand. Anyhow, I done it. You clear out, if you wanta. I ain’t goin’ to let that feller—”“You’re comin’ with us, an’ no double-crossin’!” shouted Tully, his bruised face terrible, one eye blackened and swollen. He bored a big-knuckled fist against Coombs’s nose. “If you’re caught here, we’realldone. You’re comin’ now, or, by the jumpin’ jews-harps, I’ll knock you cold myself, an’ lug you straight ashore!”“An’ I’ll help ye!” volunteered the little man, with a string of oaths. “Come on now, git busy!”Overborne, Coombs had to yield. The three men prepared to make good their escape and to cover all tracks. Not even lifting Hal into a berth, but leaving him sprawled face-downward on the floor, with blood more and more soaking his heavy reefer, they dragged the unconscious men to the companion, hauled them up and across the pitching, slippery deck, and dropped them like potato sacks into the dory that had brought them. Then they did likewise with the unconscious man Hal had used as a flail against them. In the dark and storm, all this took minutes and caused great exertion. But at last it was done; and now Tully once more descended to the cabin.He looked around with great care, blinking his one still serviceable eye, his torn face horrible by the guttering oil-flame that danced as puffs of wind entered the hatch.“What you doin’ down there, Tully?” demanded a voice from above. “Friskin’ him fer his watch?”“I’ll friskyouwhen I git you ashore!” Tully flung up at him. Coombs slid down into the cabin.“That’s all right,” said he, “but I ain’t trustin’ you much!”“Aw, go to hell!” Tully spat. He stooped and began pawing over the ruck on the floor. Here he picked up a cap, there a piece of torn sleeve. He even found a button, and pocketed that. His search was thorough. When it ended, nothing incriminating was left.“I reckon they won’t git much on usnow,” he grinned, and contemplatively worked back and forth a loosened tooth that hardly hung to the gum. “An’ if they try to lay it on us, they can’t prove nothin’. All of us swearin’ together can git by. There ain’t no witness excepthim,” with a jerk of the thumb at thegasping, unconscious form. “Nobody, unless he gits well, which he ain’t noways likely to.”He rolled Hal over, looked down with malice and hate at the pale, battered face, listened a moment to the laboring, slowrâleof the breath, and nodded with satisfaction. Even the bloody froth on Hal’s blue lips gave him joy.“You got what’s comin’ toyou, all right!” he sneered. “Got it proper. Thought you’d git funny with Mac an’ his gang, huh? Always butted through everythin’, did you? Well, this here was one proposition you couldn’t butt through. We was one too many feryou, all righto!”He turned, and saw Coombs with the kris in hand. Fear leaped into his face, but Coombs only gibed:“You’re a great one, ain’t you? Coverin’ up the story o’ what happened here an’ leavin’ that in a corner!”Fear gave way to sudden covetousness.“Gimme that there knife!” demanded Tully. “Thereisa souvenir! That there’s a krish. I can hide it O. K. Gimme it!”Coombs’s answer was to stoop, lay the kris down and set his huge sea-boot on it. A quick, upward wrench at the lotus-bud handle and the snaky, poisoned blade, maybe a thousand years old, snapped with a jangle of dissevered steel.“Here, you!” shouted Tully. But already Coombs had swung to the companion. One toss, and lotus-bud and shattered blade gyrated into the dark. The waves, white-foaming, received them; they vanished forever from the world of men.“On deck with you now!” commanded Coombs. “If we’re goin’ to do this at all, we’re goin’ to make a good job of it. You go first!”Tully had to obey. Coombs puffed out the light and—leavingHal Briggs in utter dark, bleeding, poisoned, dying—followed on up the ladder. The dory pushed away, laden with three unconscious men and three others by no means unscathed of battle. Toward the shore it struggled, borne on the hungry surges.Thus fled the men of McLaughlin’s crew—avenged. Thus, brought low by the cursèd thing that had come half-way ’round the world and waited half a hundred years to strike, Hal sank toward the great blackness.Lotus-bud, symbol of sleep, and poisoned blade—cobra-fang from the dim, mysterious Orient—now with their work well done, lay under waves of storm in a wild, northern sea.Above, in the black, storm-whipped sky, was the blind face of Destiny peering with laughter down upon the fulfilment of its prophecy?CHAPTER XLIIIN EXTREMISIt would be difficult to tell how long the wounded boy lay there, but after a certain time, some vague glimmering of consciousness returned. No light came back. Neither was motion possible to him. His understanding now was merely pain, confusion and a great roaring wind and wave. Utter weakness gripped his body; but more than this seemed to enchain him. By no effort of his reviving will could he move hand or foot; and even the slow breath he took, each respiration a stab of agony, seemed for some reason a mighty effort.Though Hal knew it not, already thecuraréwas at work, thecuraréwhose terrible effect is this: that it paralyzes every muscle, first the voluntaries, then those of the respiratory centers and of the heart itself. Yet he could think and feel.Curarédoes not numb sensation or attack the brain. It strikes its victims down by rendering them more helpless than an infant; and then, fingering its way to the breath and to the blood, closes on those a grip that has one outcome only.Hal Briggs, who had so gloried in the strength and swift control of all his muscles, who had so wrought evil and violent things, trusting to his unbeatable power, now lay there, chained, immobile, paralyzed.He thought, after a few vain efforts to move:“I must be badly cut to be as weak as this. I must be bled almost to death. I’m going to die. That’s certain!”Still, he was not afraid. The soul of him confronteddeath, unterrified. Even while his laboring heart struggled against the slow instillation of thecuraré, and even while his lungs caught sluggishly at the air, his mind was undaunted.He wanted light, but there was none. A velvet dark enveloped everything—a dark in which the creaking fabric of theKittiwinkheaved, plunged till it rolled his inert body back against the shell of the craft, then forward again.“I got some of them, anyhow,” he reflected, with strange calmness. “They didn’t get away without a lot of punishment. If they hadn’t knifed me, I’d have cleaned up the whole bunch!”A certain satisfaction filled his thoughts. If one must die, it is good to know the enemy has taken grievous harm.Still, what, after all, did it matter? He felt so very languid, so transfixed with that insistent pain in the right lung! Even though he had killed them all, would that have recompensed him for the failure of all his cherished plans, for the loss of the life that was to have meant so wildly much to him?He felt a warm oozing on his breast, and knew blood was still seeping. His lips tasted salty, but he could not even spit away the blood on them.Curaréis of a hundred different types. This, which he had received, had numbed his muscles beyond any possibility of waking them to action. A few vain efforts convinced him he could not move. So there he lay, suffering, wondering how any loss of blood—so long as life remained—could so paralyze him.His thoughts drifted to Snug Haven, to his grandfather, to Ezra, to Laura, but now in more confusion. He realized that he was fainting and could do nothing to prevent it. A humming, different from the storm-wind, welled up in his ears. He felt that he was sinkingdown, away. Then all at once he ceased alike to think, to feel.When next he came to some vague consciousness, he sensed—millions of miles away—a touch on his shoulder, a voice in his ears. He knew that voice; and yet, somehow, he could not tell whose voice it was. He understood that his head was being raised. Very dimly, through closed eyelids that he could not open, he perceived the faint glimmer of a light.“Hal!” he heard his name. And then again: “Hal!”The futile effort to move, to answer, spent his last forces. Once more the blackness of oblivion received him mercifully.“Hal! Oh, God! Hal, speak to me!Answer me!” Laura’s voice trembled, broke as she pleaded. “Oh—they’ve killed you!They’ve killed you!”With eyes of terror she peered down at him. In her shaking hand the little electric search-lamp sent its trembling beam to illuminate the terrible sight there on the cabin floor. The girl could get only broken impressions—a pale, wan face; closed eyes that would not open; a fearful welter of blood on throat and chest.“Look at me! Speak to me! You aren’t dead—look at me! It’s Laura! Hal—Hal!”Her words were disjointed. For a moment presence of mind left her. For a moment, she was just a frightened girl, suddenly confronted by this horrible thing, by the broken, dying body of the man she had so loved. And while that moment lasted she cried out; she gathered Hal to her breast; she called to him and called again, and got no answer.But soon her first anguish passed. She whipped back her reason and forced herself to think. The prescience she had felt of evil had indeed come true. Thefurtive, dark figures that from her window she had seen slinking toward Hadlock’s Cove, had indeed sought Hal just as she had felt that they were seeking him. And the numb grief that, after she had seen Hal passing down the road, had still chained her at that upper window peering out into the darkening storm, had all at once given place to action.What strategies she had had to employ to escape from the house! What a battle with the tempest she had fought, with wind and rain tearing at her long coat, the pocket of which had held the flashlight! Ay, and that battle had been only a skirmish compared to the launching of a dory, the mad struggle through the surf. All thought of danger flung to the wings of heaven, all fear of Hal abandoned, and of losing her good name in case of being seen by any one, so she had battled her way to him—to warn him, to save him.Laura, suddenly grown calm with that heroic resolution which inspires every true woman in the moment of need, let the boy’s head fall back and mustered her thoughts. She realized the essential thing was go for help, at once. Strong as she was, and nerved with desperation, she knew the task of dragging Hal up the companionway, of getting him into her dory, of carrying him ashore in the gale-beaten surf surpassed her powers.So she must leave him, even though he should die alone there.But, first, she could at least give him some aid. She peered about her, flicking the electric beam over the trampled confusion. What could she use for bandages? A smashed suit-case yawned wide, its contents slewed about. She caught up a shirt, tore it into broad strips and, laying the flashlight in the berth, bent to her work.“Oh, God!” she whispered, as she laid bare thewound; but though she felt giddy, she kept on. The sagging dead weight of Hal’s body almost overbore her strength. She held it up, however, and very tightly bound him, up around the massive neck, over the back, across the high-arched, muscular chest. She knotted her bandages, and let Hal sink down again.Then she smoothed back his drabbled hair. She bent and kissed him; snatched the light, turned and fled up the companion, clambered down into the dory, and cast loose.All the strength of her young arms had to strain their uttermost. Passionately she labored. The wounded man no longer was the brute who had so cruelly sought to wrong her. He was no longer the untamed savage, the bully, the thief. No, in his helplessness he had gone swiftly back to the boy she had known and loved—just Hal, her boy.The storm-devils, snatching at her, seemed incarnate things that fought her for his life. The wind that drove her away from the shingle-beach and toward the rocks below Jim Gordon’s store, the lathering crests that spewed their cold surges into the dory as it heaved high and swung far down, seemed shouting: “Death to Hal!”Laura, her hair down and flying wild, pulled till wrists and arms seemed breaking. For a few minutes she thought herself lost; but presently, when breath and strength were at the ragged edge, she began to hear the loud, rattling clamor of pebbles on the shingle. A breaker caught the dory, flung it half round, upset it. Into the water, strangling, struggling, Laura plunged. The backwash caught her, tugged at her. She found footing, lost it, fell and choked a cry in cold brine.The next breaker heaved her up. She crawled through wrack and weed, over jagged stones, and fell exhausted on a sodden windrow of drift.For a minute she could move no further, but had to lie under the pelting rain, with the dark hands of ocean clutching to drag her back. But presently a little strength revived. She crawled forward once more, staggered to her feet, and, falling, getting up again, won to the top of the dune.Off to her left, dim through the shouting night, the vague light-blurs of old man Gordon’s windows were fronting the tempest. The girl struggled forward, sobbing for breath. Not all the fury of the North Atlantic, flung against that shore, had turned her from her task.Astonished beyond words, the lobstermen and fishers eyed her with blank faces as she burst in the door. Under the light of tin reflectors, quids remained unchewed, pipes unsmoked. Bearded jaws fell. Eyes blinked.The girl’s wet, draggled hair, her bloodless face and burning eyes stunned them all.“Quick, quick!” she implored. “Hal Briggs—”“What’s he done now, girl?” cried old Sy Whittaker, starting up. “He ain’t hurtyou, has he? If hehas—”“He’s been stabbed, aboard theKittiwink! He’s bleeding to death there!”Chairs scraped. Excitement blazed.“What’s that, Laura?” cried Gordon. “Stabbed? Who done it?”“Oh, no matter—go, quick—go,go!”“Damn funny!” growled a voice from behind the stove. “Gal goin’ aboard night like this, an’ him stabbed. Looks mighty bad!”“You’ll look a damn sight wuss if you say that agin, or anythin’ like it!” shouted the old storekeeper with doubled fist. “Hal Briggs ain’t worryin’ me none, but this here is Laura, old man Maynard’s gal,an’ by the Jeeruzlem nobody ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ about her! Tell me, gal,” he added, “is he hurt bad?”She caught him by the arm. He had to hold her up.“Dying, Jim! Bleeding to death! Oh, for the love of God—hurry,hurry!”Around them the rough, bearded men jostled in pea-coats, slickers, sou’westers. The tin reflectors struck harsh lights and shadows from rugged faces of astonishment.“Who could o’ done it?” began Shorrocks, the blacksmith. “They’d oughta be ketched, an’—”“Never you mind about that!” cried Gordon. He caught from a nail a formless old felt hat and jammed it on his head; he snatched up a lighted lantern standing on the counter, and with a hobnailed clatter ran for the door.“Everybody out!” he bellowed. “Everybody out now, to help Laura!”Into the storm he flung himself. All hands cascaded toward the door.“You stay here, gal!” advised Asahel Calkins, lobsterman. “Ain’t no night fer you!”“I can’t stay! Let me go, too!” she pleaded. They made way for her. With the men she ran. Two or three others had lanterns, but these made no more than tiny dancing blurs of light in the drenching dark. Along a path, then into the field and up to the storm-scourged dune they stumbled, pantingly, bucking the gale. The lanterns set giant legs of shadows striding up against the curtain of the rain-drive, as the men pressed onward. Snapping, Laura’s skirts flailed.Over the dune they charged, and scuffled down to the dories. Disjointed words, cries, commands whipped away. Strong hands hustled a dory down. Laura was clambering in already, but Jim Gordon pulled her back.“No, gal, no!” he ordered sternly. His voice flared on the wind as he shoved her into the arms of Shorrocks. “You, Henry, look out for her. Don’t let her do nothin’ foolish!”He set his lantern in the dory, impressed Calkins and another into his service, and scrambled aboard. A dozen hands ran the dory out through the first breakers. Oars caught; and as the men came up the beach, dripping in the vague lantern-light, the dory pulled away.To Laura, waiting with distracted fear among the fishermen, it seemed an hour; yet at the most hardly fifteen minutes had passed before the little boat came leaping shoreward in white smothers. Out jumped Gordon. Laura ran to him, knee-deep in a breaker.“Is he—dead?” she shivered, with clacking teeth.“Nope. Ain’t much time to lose, though, an’ that’s a fact. He’s cutsome, looks like! Goddy mighty, but there must o’ been some fight out there!”He turned to the dory. With others, he lifted out a heavy body, wrapped in sailcloth, horribly suggestive of a burial at sea. Laura gripped her hands together for self-mastery.“Oh, hurry, hurry!” she entreated.“We’ll do all we kin, gal,” some one answered, “but we ain’t no real amb’lance-corpse. It’s goin’ to be a slow job, gittin’ him home.”“Here, Laura, you carry a lantern an’ go ahead, ’cross the field,” commanded Gordon, with deep wisdom. Only to give her something to do, something to occupy her mind, was kindness of the deepest. Into her hand old Calkins thrust a lantern.“All ready!” cried he. “H’ist anchor, an’ away!”Seven or eight men got hold, round the edges of the sailcloth, and so, swinging the inert Hal as in a cradle, they stumbled to the road, with Laura going on ahead.To the right they turned, toward Snug Haven.Now Laura walked beside them. Once in a while she looked at the white face half seen in its white cradle, now beginning to be mottled with crimson stains.But she said no other word. Strong with the calm that had reasserted itself, she walked that night road of storm and agony.Thus was Hal Briggs borne back to his grandfather’s house.In the cabin at Snug Haven old Captain Briggs—having finished his letter to Hal and put that, too, in the safe—had now come to the last task of all, the sacrifice that, so he faithfully believed, was to remove the curse of Dengan Jouga from his boy.A strange lassitude weighed down upon the old man, the weariness that comes when a long journey is almost done and the lights of home begin to shine out through “the evening dews and damps.” The captain felt that he had come at last to journey’s end. He sat there at his desk, eying the revolver, a sturdy, resolute figure; an heroic figure, unflinchingly determined; a figure ennobled by impending sacrifice, thoughtful, quiet, strong. His face, that had been lined with grief, had grown quite calm. The light upon it seemed less from his old-time cabin-lamp than from some inner flame. With a new kind of happiness, more blessed than any he had ever known, he smiled.“Thank God!” he murmured, with devout earnestness. “It won’t be long now afore I’m with the others that have waited for me all this time up there on Croft Hill. I’m glad to go. It isn’t everybody than can save the person they love best of anything in the world, by dying. I thought God was hard with me, but after all I find He’s very good. He’ll understand. He’d ought to know, Himself, what dying means to save something that must be saved!”Once more he looked at Hal’s picture. Earnestly and simply, he kissed it. Then he laid it on the desk again.“Good-by,” said he. “Maybe you won’t ever understand. Maybe you’ll blame me. Lots will. I’ll be called a coward. You’ll have to bear some burden on account of me, but this is the only way.”His expression reflected the calm happiness which comes with realization that to die for one beloved is a better and more blessèd thing than life. Never had old Captain Briggs felt such joy. Not only was he opening the ways of life to Hal, but he was cleansing his own soul. And all at once he felt the horror of this brooding curse was lifting—this curse which, during fifty years, had been reaching out from the dark and violent past.He breathed deeply and picked up the revolver.“God, Thou art very good to me,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t understand the way till it was shown me. But now I understand.”Toward his berth he turned, to lie down there for the last time. As he advanced toward it he became vaguely conscious of some confusion outside. A sound of voices, gusty and faint through the wind, reached him. These came nearer, grew louder.Listening, he paused, with a frown. Of a sudden, feet clumped on the front steps. Heavily they thudded across the porch. And with sharp insistence his electric door-bell trilled its musicalbrrr!“What’s that, now?” said the captain. Premonitions of evil pierced his heart. As he hesitated, not knowing what to do, the front door boomed with the thudding of stout fists. A heavy boot kicked the panels. A voice bawled hoarsely:“Briggs! Ahoy, there, cap’n! Let us in! Fer God’s sake, let us in!”
CHAPTER XXXVIIICAPTAIN BRIGGS FINDS THE WAYThe full significance of the curse burning deep into his brain, old Captain Briggs sat there on the bed a moment longer, his eyes fixed on the slip of paper. Then, with a new and very strange expression, as of a man who suddenly has understood, has chosen and is determined, he carefully folded the paper and thrust it into the pocket of his bathrobe. He stood up, peered at Ezra, advanced and laid a hand upon the old man’s shoulder.“Ezra,” said he in a deep voice, “there’s times when men have got tobemen, and this is one of ’em. You and I have gone some pretty rough voyages in years past. I don’t recall that either of us was ever afraid or refused duty in any wind or weather. We aren’t going to now. Whatever’s duty, that’s what we’re going to do. It’ll maybe lead me to a terribly dark port, but if that’s where I’ve got to go, as a good seaman, so be it.“And now,” he added in another tone, “now that’s all settled, and no more to be said about it.” Affectionately he patted the shoulder of the broken-hearted Ezra. “Come, brace up now; brace up!”“Cap’n Briggs, sir,” choked Ezra, distraught with grief, “you ain’t goin’ to believe what Master Hal said, be you? He accused himself o’ stealin’ that there money, to pertect me. It was reallymeas done it, sir, nothim!”“We won’t discuss that any more, Ezra,” the captainanswered, with a smile of deep affection. “It doesn’t much signify. There’s so much more to all this than just one particular case of theft. You don’t understand, Ezra. Come now, sir; pull yourself together! No more of this!”“But ain’t you goin’ to do anythin’ to bring him back, cap’n?” asked the old man. He got up and faced the captain with a look of grief and pain. “That there boy of ourn, oh, he can’t be let go to the devil this way! Ain’t there nothin’ you can do to save him?”“Yes, Ezra, there is.”“Praise God fer that, cap’n! You hadn’t ought to be too hard on Hal. You an’ me, we’re old, but we’d oughta try an’ understand a young un. Young folks is always stickin’ up the circus-bills along the road o’ life, an’ old uns is always comin’ along an’ tearin’ ’em down; an’ that ain’t right, cap’n. You an’ me has got to understand!”“I understand perfectly,” smiled the captain, his eyes steady and calm. “I know exactly what I’ve got to do.”“An’ you’ll do it?” Ezra’s trembling eagerness was pitiful. “You’re going’ to do it, cap’n?”Alpheus Briggs nodded. His voice blended with a sudden furious gust of wind as he answered:“I’m going to do it, Ezra. I’m surely going to.”“An’ whatisit?” insisted Ezra. “Run after him an’ bring him back?”“Bring him back. That’s just it.”“Praise the Lord!” The old man’s eyes were wet. “When? When you goin’ to do it?”“Very soon, now.”“You got to hurry, cap’n. We mustn’t let anythin’ happen to our Hal. He’s run kinda wild, mebbe, but he’s everythin’ we got to love. Ef you can git himback agin, we’ll be so doggone good to him he’llhaftado better. But you mustn’t lose no time. Ef he gits aboard that thereKittiwinkan’ tries to make sail out through the Narrers, he’s like as not to git stove up on Geyser.”The captain smiled as he made answer:“I sha’n’t lose any unnecessary time, Ezra. But I can’t do it all in a moment. And you must let me do this in my own way.”The old man peered up at him through tears.“You know best how to chart this course, now.”“Yes, I believe I do. To save that boy, I’ve got to make a journey, and I’ll need a little time to get ready. But just the minute Iamready, I’ll go. You can depend on that!”“A journey? I’ll go too!”“No, Ezra, this is a journey I must take all alone.”“Well, you know best, cap’n,” the old fellow assented. “But ef you need any help, call on!”“I will, Ezra. Now go to your room and rest. You’re badly used up. There’s nothing you can do to help, just now.”“But won’t you be wantin’ me to pack y’r duffel? An’ rig Bucephalus?”“When I want you, I’ll let you know,” smiled Briggs. With one hand still on the old man’s shoulder, his other hand took Ezra’s in a strong clasp.“Ezra,” said he, “you’ve always stood by, through thick and thin, and I know you will now. You’ve been the most loyal soul in this whole world. No needle ever pointed north half as constant as you’ve pointed toward your duty by Hal and me. You’re a man, Ezra,a man—and I’m not ashamed to say I love you for it!”His grip tightened on the old man’s hand. For a moment he looked square into Ezra’s wondering, half-frightenedeyes. Then he loosened his grasp, turned and walked from the room.Along the hall he went, and down the stairs. His face, calm, beatified, seemed shining with an inner light that ennobled its patriarchal features.“Thank God,” he whispered, “for light to see my duty, and for strength to do it!”As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the front door opened, and Dr. Filhiol staggered in, admitting a furious gust of wind and rain. With great difficulty he was managing himself, holding the injured dog. Ruddy was yelping; one leg hung limp and useless.For a tense moment the doctor confronted Briggs. He pushed the door shut, with rage and bitterness.“And you, sir,” he suddenly exclaimed, “you go against my orders; you leave your bed and expose yourself to serious consequences, for the sake of a beast—who will do a thing likethis!”Furiously he nodded downward at the dog.The captain advanced and, with a hand that trembled, caressed the rough muzzle.“Hal?” asked he, under his breath. “This, too?”“Yes, this! Nearly killed the poor creature, sir! Kicked him. And that wasn’t enough. When the dog still tried to follow him, grabbed him up and dashed him down on the steps. This leg’s broken. Ribs, too, I think. A miracle the dog wasn’t killed. Your grandson’s intention was to kill him, all right enough, but I guess he didn’t want to take time for it!” Filhiol’s lips were trembling with passion, so that he could hardly articulate. “This is horrible! Injury to a man is bad enough, but a man can defend himself, and will. But injury to a defenseless, trusting animal—my God, sir, if I’d been anything but a cripple, and if I’d had a weapon handy, I’d have had your grandson’s blood, so help me!”The captain made no answer, but set his teeth into his bearded lip. He patted the dog’s head. Ruddy licked his hand.“Well, sir?” demanded Filhiol. “What have you to say now?”“Nothing. Hal’s gone, and words have no value. Can you repair this damage?”“Yes, if the internal injuries aren’t too bad. But that’s not the point. Hal, there, goes scot free and—”Alpheus Briggs raised his hand for silence.“Please, no more!” he begged. “I can’t stand it, doctor. You’ve got to spare me now!”Filhiol looked at him with understanding.“Forgive me,” said he. “But help me with poor old Ruddy, here!”“Ezra can help you. On a pinch, call in Dr. Marsh, if you like.”“Oh, I think my professional skill is still adequate to set a dog’s leg,” Filhiol retorted.“And you don’t know how grateful I am to you for doing it,” said the captain. “I’m grateful, too, for your not insisting on any more talk about Hal. You’re good as gold! I wish you knew how much I thank you!”The doctor growled something inarticulate and fondled the whimpering animal. Alpheus Briggs forced himself to speak again.“Please excuse me now. I’ve got something very important to do.” His hand slid into the pocket of his bathrobe, closed on the paper there, and crumpled it. “Will you give me a little time to myself? I want an hour or two undisturbed.”The temptation was strong on the captain to take the hand of Filhiol and say some words that might perhaps serve as a good-by, but he restrained himself. Where poor old Ezra had understood nothing, Filhiolwould very swiftly comprehend. So Alpheus Briggs, even in this supreme moment of leave-taking, held his peace.The doctor, however, appeared suddenly suspicious.“Captain,” he asked, “before I promise you the privacy you ask, I’ve got one question for you. Have you overheard any of Hal’s reading lately, or have you seen any of his translations from the Malay?”By no slightest quiver of a muscle did the old man betray himself.“No,” he answered. “What do you mean, doctor? Why do you ask?”“That’s something I can’t tell you,” said Filhiol, thankful that no hint had reached Briggs concerning the curse. Swiftly he thought. Yes, it would well suit his purpose now to get the captain out of the way. That would give Filhiol time to run through the litter of papers in Hal’s room, and to destroy the translation that might have such fatal consequences if it should come into the captain’s hands.“Very well, sir,” said he. “Take whatever time you need to settle matters relative to Hal’s leaving. By rights I ought to order you back to bed; but I know you wouldn’t obey me now, anyhow, so what’s the use? Only, be reasonably sensible, captain. Even though Halhasmade a fearful mess of everything, your life is worth a very great deal to lots of people!”The captain nodded. Filhiol’s admonitions suddenly seemed very trivial, just as the world and life itself had all at once become. Already these were retreating from his soul, leaving it alone, with the one imperative of duty. At the last page of the book of life, Alpheus Briggs realized with swift insight how slight the value really was of that poor volume, and how gladly—when love and duty bade him—he could forever close it.“We’ll talk this all over in the morning, doctor,” said he. “But till then, no more of it. I’ve got to get my bearings and answer my helm better before I’ll know exactly what to do. You understand?”“Yes, captain, I think I do,” answered the doctor, with compassion. He said no more, but hobbled towards the kitchen, there to summon Ezra and do what could be done for Ruddy.Thus Captain Briggs was left alone. Alone with the stern consummation of his duty, as he saw it.
CAPTAIN BRIGGS FINDS THE WAY
The full significance of the curse burning deep into his brain, old Captain Briggs sat there on the bed a moment longer, his eyes fixed on the slip of paper. Then, with a new and very strange expression, as of a man who suddenly has understood, has chosen and is determined, he carefully folded the paper and thrust it into the pocket of his bathrobe. He stood up, peered at Ezra, advanced and laid a hand upon the old man’s shoulder.
“Ezra,” said he in a deep voice, “there’s times when men have got tobemen, and this is one of ’em. You and I have gone some pretty rough voyages in years past. I don’t recall that either of us was ever afraid or refused duty in any wind or weather. We aren’t going to now. Whatever’s duty, that’s what we’re going to do. It’ll maybe lead me to a terribly dark port, but if that’s where I’ve got to go, as a good seaman, so be it.
“And now,” he added in another tone, “now that’s all settled, and no more to be said about it.” Affectionately he patted the shoulder of the broken-hearted Ezra. “Come, brace up now; brace up!”
“Cap’n Briggs, sir,” choked Ezra, distraught with grief, “you ain’t goin’ to believe what Master Hal said, be you? He accused himself o’ stealin’ that there money, to pertect me. It was reallymeas done it, sir, nothim!”
“We won’t discuss that any more, Ezra,” the captainanswered, with a smile of deep affection. “It doesn’t much signify. There’s so much more to all this than just one particular case of theft. You don’t understand, Ezra. Come now, sir; pull yourself together! No more of this!”
“But ain’t you goin’ to do anythin’ to bring him back, cap’n?” asked the old man. He got up and faced the captain with a look of grief and pain. “That there boy of ourn, oh, he can’t be let go to the devil this way! Ain’t there nothin’ you can do to save him?”
“Yes, Ezra, there is.”
“Praise God fer that, cap’n! You hadn’t ought to be too hard on Hal. You an’ me, we’re old, but we’d oughta try an’ understand a young un. Young folks is always stickin’ up the circus-bills along the road o’ life, an’ old uns is always comin’ along an’ tearin’ ’em down; an’ that ain’t right, cap’n. You an’ me has got to understand!”
“I understand perfectly,” smiled the captain, his eyes steady and calm. “I know exactly what I’ve got to do.”
“An’ you’ll do it?” Ezra’s trembling eagerness was pitiful. “You’re going’ to do it, cap’n?”
Alpheus Briggs nodded. His voice blended with a sudden furious gust of wind as he answered:
“I’m going to do it, Ezra. I’m surely going to.”
“An’ whatisit?” insisted Ezra. “Run after him an’ bring him back?”
“Bring him back. That’s just it.”
“Praise the Lord!” The old man’s eyes were wet. “When? When you goin’ to do it?”
“Very soon, now.”
“You got to hurry, cap’n. We mustn’t let anythin’ happen to our Hal. He’s run kinda wild, mebbe, but he’s everythin’ we got to love. Ef you can git himback agin, we’ll be so doggone good to him he’llhaftado better. But you mustn’t lose no time. Ef he gits aboard that thereKittiwinkan’ tries to make sail out through the Narrers, he’s like as not to git stove up on Geyser.”
The captain smiled as he made answer:
“I sha’n’t lose any unnecessary time, Ezra. But I can’t do it all in a moment. And you must let me do this in my own way.”
The old man peered up at him through tears.
“You know best how to chart this course, now.”
“Yes, I believe I do. To save that boy, I’ve got to make a journey, and I’ll need a little time to get ready. But just the minute Iamready, I’ll go. You can depend on that!”
“A journey? I’ll go too!”
“No, Ezra, this is a journey I must take all alone.”
“Well, you know best, cap’n,” the old fellow assented. “But ef you need any help, call on!”
“I will, Ezra. Now go to your room and rest. You’re badly used up. There’s nothing you can do to help, just now.”
“But won’t you be wantin’ me to pack y’r duffel? An’ rig Bucephalus?”
“When I want you, I’ll let you know,” smiled Briggs. With one hand still on the old man’s shoulder, his other hand took Ezra’s in a strong clasp.
“Ezra,” said he, “you’ve always stood by, through thick and thin, and I know you will now. You’ve been the most loyal soul in this whole world. No needle ever pointed north half as constant as you’ve pointed toward your duty by Hal and me. You’re a man, Ezra,a man—and I’m not ashamed to say I love you for it!”
His grip tightened on the old man’s hand. For a moment he looked square into Ezra’s wondering, half-frightenedeyes. Then he loosened his grasp, turned and walked from the room.
Along the hall he went, and down the stairs. His face, calm, beatified, seemed shining with an inner light that ennobled its patriarchal features.
“Thank God,” he whispered, “for light to see my duty, and for strength to do it!”
As he reached the bottom of the stairs, the front door opened, and Dr. Filhiol staggered in, admitting a furious gust of wind and rain. With great difficulty he was managing himself, holding the injured dog. Ruddy was yelping; one leg hung limp and useless.
For a tense moment the doctor confronted Briggs. He pushed the door shut, with rage and bitterness.
“And you, sir,” he suddenly exclaimed, “you go against my orders; you leave your bed and expose yourself to serious consequences, for the sake of a beast—who will do a thing likethis!”
Furiously he nodded downward at the dog.
The captain advanced and, with a hand that trembled, caressed the rough muzzle.
“Hal?” asked he, under his breath. “This, too?”
“Yes, this! Nearly killed the poor creature, sir! Kicked him. And that wasn’t enough. When the dog still tried to follow him, grabbed him up and dashed him down on the steps. This leg’s broken. Ribs, too, I think. A miracle the dog wasn’t killed. Your grandson’s intention was to kill him, all right enough, but I guess he didn’t want to take time for it!” Filhiol’s lips were trembling with passion, so that he could hardly articulate. “This is horrible! Injury to a man is bad enough, but a man can defend himself, and will. But injury to a defenseless, trusting animal—my God, sir, if I’d been anything but a cripple, and if I’d had a weapon handy, I’d have had your grandson’s blood, so help me!”
The captain made no answer, but set his teeth into his bearded lip. He patted the dog’s head. Ruddy licked his hand.
“Well, sir?” demanded Filhiol. “What have you to say now?”
“Nothing. Hal’s gone, and words have no value. Can you repair this damage?”
“Yes, if the internal injuries aren’t too bad. But that’s not the point. Hal, there, goes scot free and—”
Alpheus Briggs raised his hand for silence.
“Please, no more!” he begged. “I can’t stand it, doctor. You’ve got to spare me now!”
Filhiol looked at him with understanding.
“Forgive me,” said he. “But help me with poor old Ruddy, here!”
“Ezra can help you. On a pinch, call in Dr. Marsh, if you like.”
“Oh, I think my professional skill is still adequate to set a dog’s leg,” Filhiol retorted.
“And you don’t know how grateful I am to you for doing it,” said the captain. “I’m grateful, too, for your not insisting on any more talk about Hal. You’re good as gold! I wish you knew how much I thank you!”
The doctor growled something inarticulate and fondled the whimpering animal. Alpheus Briggs forced himself to speak again.
“Please excuse me now. I’ve got something very important to do.” His hand slid into the pocket of his bathrobe, closed on the paper there, and crumpled it. “Will you give me a little time to myself? I want an hour or two undisturbed.”
The temptation was strong on the captain to take the hand of Filhiol and say some words that might perhaps serve as a good-by, but he restrained himself. Where poor old Ezra had understood nothing, Filhiolwould very swiftly comprehend. So Alpheus Briggs, even in this supreme moment of leave-taking, held his peace.
The doctor, however, appeared suddenly suspicious.
“Captain,” he asked, “before I promise you the privacy you ask, I’ve got one question for you. Have you overheard any of Hal’s reading lately, or have you seen any of his translations from the Malay?”
By no slightest quiver of a muscle did the old man betray himself.
“No,” he answered. “What do you mean, doctor? Why do you ask?”
“That’s something I can’t tell you,” said Filhiol, thankful that no hint had reached Briggs concerning the curse. Swiftly he thought. Yes, it would well suit his purpose now to get the captain out of the way. That would give Filhiol time to run through the litter of papers in Hal’s room, and to destroy the translation that might have such fatal consequences if it should come into the captain’s hands.
“Very well, sir,” said he. “Take whatever time you need to settle matters relative to Hal’s leaving. By rights I ought to order you back to bed; but I know you wouldn’t obey me now, anyhow, so what’s the use? Only, be reasonably sensible, captain. Even though Halhasmade a fearful mess of everything, your life is worth a very great deal to lots of people!”
The captain nodded. Filhiol’s admonitions suddenly seemed very trivial, just as the world and life itself had all at once become. Already these were retreating from his soul, leaving it alone, with the one imperative of duty. At the last page of the book of life, Alpheus Briggs realized with swift insight how slight the value really was of that poor volume, and how gladly—when love and duty bade him—he could forever close it.
“We’ll talk this all over in the morning, doctor,” said he. “But till then, no more of it. I’ve got to get my bearings and answer my helm better before I’ll know exactly what to do. You understand?”
“Yes, captain, I think I do,” answered the doctor, with compassion. He said no more, but hobbled towards the kitchen, there to summon Ezra and do what could be done for Ruddy.
Thus Captain Briggs was left alone. Alone with the stern consummation of his duty, as he saw it.
CHAPTER XXXIX“ONE MUST DIE”Briggs entered his cabin, and locked both doors; then fastened the window giving on the porch. He went to the fireplace, overhung with all that savage arsenal, and put a couple of birch-logs on the glowing coals.He sat down in his big chair by the fire, pondered a moment with the fireglow on his deep-wrinkled, bearded face, then from the pocket of his bathrobe drew the crumpled bit of paper. Again he studied it, reading it over two or three times. In a low voice he slowly pronounced the words, as if to grave them on his consciousness:“The curse must be fulfilled, to the last breath, for by Shiva and the Trimurthi, what is written is written. But if he through whom the curse descendeth on another is stricken to horror and to death, then the Almighty Vishnu, merciful, closes that page. And he who through another’s sin was cursed, is cleansed. Thus may the curse be fulfilled. But always one of two must die.Tuan Allah poonia krajah!It is the work of the Almighty One! One of two must die!”For some minutes he pondered all this. Before him rose visions—the miasmatic Malay town; the battle in the Straits; the yellow and ghostlike presence of the witch-woman, shrilling her curse at him; the death of Scurlock and the boy, of Mahmud Baba, of Kuala Pahang, of theamokMalay who, shot through the spine and half paralyzed, still had writhed forward, horribly, to kill.“No wonder the curse has followed me,” murmured the old man. “I haven’t suffered yet as any one would have to suffer to pay for all that. For all that, and so much more—God, how much more! It’s justice, that’s all; and who can complain about justice? Poor Hal, poor boy of mine! No justice abouthishaving to bear it, is there? Why shouldhesuffer for whatIdid fifty years ago? Thank God! Oh, thank God!” he exclaimed with passionate fervor, “that I can pay it all, and make him free!”He relapsed into silence a little while, his face not at all marked with grief or pain, but haloed with a high and steadfast calm. The drumming rain on the porch roof, the shuddering impact of the wind as the storm set its shoulders against Snug Haven, saddened him with thoughts of the fugitive, bearing the curse that was not his, out there somewhere in the tumult and the on-drawing night, trying to flee the whips of atavism. But through that sadness rose happier thoughts.“It’s only for a little while now,” said the captain. “The curse is nearly ended. When I’ve paid the score, it will lift, and he’ll come back again. Poor Hal—how little he knew, when he was writing this paper, that he was giving me the chart to steer my right course! If the hand of some divine Providence isn’t in this, then there’s no Providence to rule this world!”Another thought struck him. Hal knew nothing of the fact that his grandfather had found the curse. He must never know. In the life of better things that soon was to open out for him, no embittering self-accusation must intrude. All proof must be destroyed.Captain Briggs tossed the curse of Dengan Jouga into the flames just beginning to flicker upward from the curling birch-bark. The paper browned and puffed into flame. It shriveled to a crisp black shell, on which, for a moment or two, the writing glowed inangry lines of crimson. Captain Briggs caught one last glimpse of a word or two, grotesquely distorted—”The curse—horror and death—one—must die—”Despite himself he shuddered. The hate and malice of the old witch-woman seemed visibly glaring out at him from the flames, after half a century. From the other side of the world, even from “beyond the Silken Sea,” words of vengeance blinked at him, then suddenly vanished; and with a gust of the storm-wind, up the chimney whirled the feather bit of ash. The captain drew his bath robe a little closer round him, and glanced behind him into the dark corners of the cabin.“This—is very strange!” he whispered.Still he sat pondering. Especially he recalled the Malay he had shot through the spine. That lithe, strong man, suddenly paralyzed into a thing half dead and yet alive, was particularly horrible to remember. Helplessness, death that still did not die....A spark snapped out upon the floor. He set his foot on it.“That’s the only way to deal with evil,” said he. “Stamp it out! And if we’re the evil ourselves, if we’re the spark of devil-fire, out we must go! What misery I could have saved for Hal, if I’d understood before—and what a cheap price! An old, used-up life for a new, strong, fresh one.”His mind, seeking what way of death would be most fitting, reverted to the poisoned kris, symbol of the evil he had done and of the old, terrible days. He peered up at the mantelpiece; but, look as he would, failed to discover the kris. He rose to his feet, and explored the brickwork with his hands in the half-light reflected from the fire. Nothing there. The hooks, empty, showed where the Malay blade had been taken down, but of the blade itself no trace remained.The old captain shivered, amazed and wondering.In this event there seemed more than the hand of mere coincidence. Hal was gone; the kris had vanished. The captain could not keep cold tentacles of fear from reaching for his heart. To him it seemed as if he could almost see the eyeless face looming above him, could almost hear the implacable mockery of its far, mirthless laughter.“God!” he whispered. “This won’t do! I—I’ll lose my nerve if I keep on this way, and nerve is what I’ve got to have now!”Why had Hal taken that knife? What wild notion had inspired the boy? Alpheus Briggs could not imagine. But something predestined, terrible, seemed closing in. The captain felt the urge of swift measures. If Hal were to be rescued, it must be at once.Turning from the fireplace of such evil associations, he lighted the ship’s lamp that hung above it. He sat down at the desk, opened a drawer and took out two photographs. These he studied a few minutes, with the lamp-light on his white hair, his venerable beard, his heavy features. Closely he inspected the photographs.One was a group, showing himself with the family that once had been, but now had almost ceased to be. The other was a portrait of Hal. Carefully the old man observed this picture, taken but a year ago, noting the fine, broad forehead, the powerful shoulders, the strength of the face that looked out so frankly at him. For the first time he perceived a quality in this face he had never seen before—the undertone of arrogant power, born of unbeaten physical strength.The captain shook his head with infinite sadness.“That’s the real curse that lay on me,” he murmured. “That’s what I’ve got to pay for now. Well, so be it.”He kissed both pictures tenderly, and put them backinto the drawer. From it he took a box, and from the box a revolver—an old revolver, the very same that he had carried in theSilver Fleecefifty long years ago.“You’ve done very great evil,” said Alpheus Briggs slowly. “Now you’re going to pay for it by doing at least one good act. That’s justice. God is being very good to me, showing me the way.”He broke open the revolver, spun the cylinder and snapped the hammer two or three times.“It’s all right,” judged he. “This is an important job. It mustn’t be made a mess of.”He looked for and found a few cartridges, and carefully loaded the weapon, then snapped it shut, and laid it on the desk. The sound of Dr. Filhiol, coming with another cane along the hall, caused him to slide the gun into the drawer. Filhiol knocked at the door, and Briggs arose to open it. He showed no signs of perturbation. A calm serenity glowed in his eyes.“Isn’t it time you got your writing finished and went to bed?” the doctor demanded tartly.“Almost time. I’m just finishing up. I sha’n’t be long now. Tell me, how’s Ruddy?”“We’ve made a fair job of it, and Ezra’s gone to his room. He’s taking everything terribly to heart. Anything I can do for you?”“Nothing, thank you. Good night.”The captain’s hand enfolded Filhiol’s. Neither by any undue pressure nor by word did he give the doctor any hint of the fact that this good-by was final. The old doctor turned and very wearily stumped away up-stairs. Briggs turned back into his cabin.“A good, true friend,” said he. “Another one I’m sorry to leave, just as I’m sorry to leave the girl and Ezra. But—well—”At his task once more, he fetched from the safe his black metal cash-box, and set himself to looking over afew deeds, mortgages and other papers, making sure that all was in order for the welfare of Hal. He reread his will, assuring himself that nothing could prevent Hal from coming into the property, and also that a bequest to Ezra was in correct form. This done, he replaced the papers in the safe.On his desk a little clock was ticking, each motion of its balance-wheel bringing nearer the tragedy impending. The captain glanced at it.“Getting late,” said he. “Only one more thing to do now, and then I’m ready.”He set himself to write a letter that should make all things clear to Hal. But first he brought out the revolver once more, and laid it on the desk as a kind ofmemento mori, lest in the writing his soul should weaken.The lamp, shining down upon the old man’s gnarled fingers as they painfully traced the words of explanation and farewell, also struck high-lights from the revolver.The captain’s eyes, now and then leaving the written pages as he paused to think, rested upon the gun. At sight of it he smiled; and once he reached out, caressed it and smiled.
“ONE MUST DIE”
Briggs entered his cabin, and locked both doors; then fastened the window giving on the porch. He went to the fireplace, overhung with all that savage arsenal, and put a couple of birch-logs on the glowing coals.
He sat down in his big chair by the fire, pondered a moment with the fireglow on his deep-wrinkled, bearded face, then from the pocket of his bathrobe drew the crumpled bit of paper. Again he studied it, reading it over two or three times. In a low voice he slowly pronounced the words, as if to grave them on his consciousness:
“The curse must be fulfilled, to the last breath, for by Shiva and the Trimurthi, what is written is written. But if he through whom the curse descendeth on another is stricken to horror and to death, then the Almighty Vishnu, merciful, closes that page. And he who through another’s sin was cursed, is cleansed. Thus may the curse be fulfilled. But always one of two must die.Tuan Allah poonia krajah!It is the work of the Almighty One! One of two must die!”
For some minutes he pondered all this. Before him rose visions—the miasmatic Malay town; the battle in the Straits; the yellow and ghostlike presence of the witch-woman, shrilling her curse at him; the death of Scurlock and the boy, of Mahmud Baba, of Kuala Pahang, of theamokMalay who, shot through the spine and half paralyzed, still had writhed forward, horribly, to kill.
“No wonder the curse has followed me,” murmured the old man. “I haven’t suffered yet as any one would have to suffer to pay for all that. For all that, and so much more—God, how much more! It’s justice, that’s all; and who can complain about justice? Poor Hal, poor boy of mine! No justice abouthishaving to bear it, is there? Why shouldhesuffer for whatIdid fifty years ago? Thank God! Oh, thank God!” he exclaimed with passionate fervor, “that I can pay it all, and make him free!”
He relapsed into silence a little while, his face not at all marked with grief or pain, but haloed with a high and steadfast calm. The drumming rain on the porch roof, the shuddering impact of the wind as the storm set its shoulders against Snug Haven, saddened him with thoughts of the fugitive, bearing the curse that was not his, out there somewhere in the tumult and the on-drawing night, trying to flee the whips of atavism. But through that sadness rose happier thoughts.
“It’s only for a little while now,” said the captain. “The curse is nearly ended. When I’ve paid the score, it will lift, and he’ll come back again. Poor Hal—how little he knew, when he was writing this paper, that he was giving me the chart to steer my right course! If the hand of some divine Providence isn’t in this, then there’s no Providence to rule this world!”
Another thought struck him. Hal knew nothing of the fact that his grandfather had found the curse. He must never know. In the life of better things that soon was to open out for him, no embittering self-accusation must intrude. All proof must be destroyed.
Captain Briggs tossed the curse of Dengan Jouga into the flames just beginning to flicker upward from the curling birch-bark. The paper browned and puffed into flame. It shriveled to a crisp black shell, on which, for a moment or two, the writing glowed inangry lines of crimson. Captain Briggs caught one last glimpse of a word or two, grotesquely distorted—”The curse—horror and death—one—must die—”
Despite himself he shuddered. The hate and malice of the old witch-woman seemed visibly glaring out at him from the flames, after half a century. From the other side of the world, even from “beyond the Silken Sea,” words of vengeance blinked at him, then suddenly vanished; and with a gust of the storm-wind, up the chimney whirled the feather bit of ash. The captain drew his bath robe a little closer round him, and glanced behind him into the dark corners of the cabin.
“This—is very strange!” he whispered.
Still he sat pondering. Especially he recalled the Malay he had shot through the spine. That lithe, strong man, suddenly paralyzed into a thing half dead and yet alive, was particularly horrible to remember. Helplessness, death that still did not die....
A spark snapped out upon the floor. He set his foot on it.
“That’s the only way to deal with evil,” said he. “Stamp it out! And if we’re the evil ourselves, if we’re the spark of devil-fire, out we must go! What misery I could have saved for Hal, if I’d understood before—and what a cheap price! An old, used-up life for a new, strong, fresh one.”
His mind, seeking what way of death would be most fitting, reverted to the poisoned kris, symbol of the evil he had done and of the old, terrible days. He peered up at the mantelpiece; but, look as he would, failed to discover the kris. He rose to his feet, and explored the brickwork with his hands in the half-light reflected from the fire. Nothing there. The hooks, empty, showed where the Malay blade had been taken down, but of the blade itself no trace remained.
The old captain shivered, amazed and wondering.In this event there seemed more than the hand of mere coincidence. Hal was gone; the kris had vanished. The captain could not keep cold tentacles of fear from reaching for his heart. To him it seemed as if he could almost see the eyeless face looming above him, could almost hear the implacable mockery of its far, mirthless laughter.
“God!” he whispered. “This won’t do! I—I’ll lose my nerve if I keep on this way, and nerve is what I’ve got to have now!”
Why had Hal taken that knife? What wild notion had inspired the boy? Alpheus Briggs could not imagine. But something predestined, terrible, seemed closing in. The captain felt the urge of swift measures. If Hal were to be rescued, it must be at once.
Turning from the fireplace of such evil associations, he lighted the ship’s lamp that hung above it. He sat down at the desk, opened a drawer and took out two photographs. These he studied a few minutes, with the lamp-light on his white hair, his venerable beard, his heavy features. Closely he inspected the photographs.
One was a group, showing himself with the family that once had been, but now had almost ceased to be. The other was a portrait of Hal. Carefully the old man observed this picture, taken but a year ago, noting the fine, broad forehead, the powerful shoulders, the strength of the face that looked out so frankly at him. For the first time he perceived a quality in this face he had never seen before—the undertone of arrogant power, born of unbeaten physical strength.
The captain shook his head with infinite sadness.
“That’s the real curse that lay on me,” he murmured. “That’s what I’ve got to pay for now. Well, so be it.”
He kissed both pictures tenderly, and put them backinto the drawer. From it he took a box, and from the box a revolver—an old revolver, the very same that he had carried in theSilver Fleecefifty long years ago.
“You’ve done very great evil,” said Alpheus Briggs slowly. “Now you’re going to pay for it by doing at least one good act. That’s justice. God is being very good to me, showing me the way.”
He broke open the revolver, spun the cylinder and snapped the hammer two or three times.
“It’s all right,” judged he. “This is an important job. It mustn’t be made a mess of.”
He looked for and found a few cartridges, and carefully loaded the weapon, then snapped it shut, and laid it on the desk. The sound of Dr. Filhiol, coming with another cane along the hall, caused him to slide the gun into the drawer. Filhiol knocked at the door, and Briggs arose to open it. He showed no signs of perturbation. A calm serenity glowed in his eyes.
“Isn’t it time you got your writing finished and went to bed?” the doctor demanded tartly.
“Almost time. I’m just finishing up. I sha’n’t be long now. Tell me, how’s Ruddy?”
“We’ve made a fair job of it, and Ezra’s gone to his room. He’s taking everything terribly to heart. Anything I can do for you?”
“Nothing, thank you. Good night.”
The captain’s hand enfolded Filhiol’s. Neither by any undue pressure nor by word did he give the doctor any hint of the fact that this good-by was final. The old doctor turned and very wearily stumped away up-stairs. Briggs turned back into his cabin.
“A good, true friend,” said he. “Another one I’m sorry to leave, just as I’m sorry to leave the girl and Ezra. But—well—”
At his task once more, he fetched from the safe his black metal cash-box, and set himself to looking over afew deeds, mortgages and other papers, making sure that all was in order for the welfare of Hal. He reread his will, assuring himself that nothing could prevent Hal from coming into the property, and also that a bequest to Ezra was in correct form. This done, he replaced the papers in the safe.
On his desk a little clock was ticking, each motion of its balance-wheel bringing nearer the tragedy impending. The captain glanced at it.
“Getting late,” said he. “Only one more thing to do now, and then I’m ready.”
He set himself to write a letter that should make all things clear to Hal. But first he brought out the revolver once more, and laid it on the desk as a kind ofmemento mori, lest in the writing his soul should weaken.
The lamp, shining down upon the old man’s gnarled fingers as they painfully traced the words of explanation and farewell, also struck high-lights from the revolver.
The captain’s eyes, now and then leaving the written pages as he paused to think, rested upon the gun. At sight of it he smiled; and once he reached out, caressed it and smiled.
CHAPTER XLON THEKITTIWINKWhen Hal left Snug Haven, he bent his shoulders to the storm and with his suit-cases plowed through the gathering dusk toward Hadlock’s Cove.Cold, slashing rain and boistering gusts left his wrath uncooled. Ugly, brutalized, he kept his way past the smithy—past Laura’s house, and so with glowering eyes on into the evening that caught and ravened at him.The sight of Laura’s house filled him with an access of rage. That calm security of shaded windows behind the rain-scourged hedge seemed to typify the girl’s protection against him. He twisted his mouth into an ugly grin.“Think you’re safe, don’t you?” he growled, pausing a moment to glower at the house. “Think I can’t get you, eh? I haven’t even begun yet!”In the turmoil of his mind, no clear plan had as yet taken form. He knew only that he had a boat and full supplies, that from him the ocean held no secrets, that his muscles and his will had never yet known defeat, and that the girl was his if he could take her.“She’ll turn me down cold and get away with it, will she?” he snarled. “She will—like hell!”Forward he pushed again, meeting no one, and so passed Geyser Rock, now booming under the charges of the surf. He skirted a patch of woods, flailed by the wind, and beyond this turned through a stone wall, to follow a path that led down to the cove. On either side of the path stretched a rolling field, rich with tallgrasses, with daisies, buttercups, milfoil and devil’s paint-brush, drenched and beaten down in the dusk by the sweep of the storm.Louder and more loud rose, fell, the thunders of the sea, as Hal approached the rocky dune at the far side of the field—a dune that on its other edge sank to a shingle beach that bordered the cove.To eastward, this beach consolidated itself into the rocky headland of Barberry Point, around which the breakers were curving to hurl themselves on the shingle. The wind, however, was at this point almost parallel with the shore. Hal reckoned, as he tramped across the field, that with good judgment and stiff work he could get theKittiwinkto sea at once.And after that, what? He did not know. No definite idea existed in that half-crazed, passion-scourged brain. The driving power of his strength accursed, took no heed of anything but flight. Away, away, only to be away!“God!” he panted, stumbling up the dune to its top, where salt spray and stinging rain skirled upon him in skittering drives. He dropped his burdens, and flung out both huge arms toward the dark, tumbling void of waters, streaked with crawling lines of white. “God! that’s what I want! That’s what they’re trying to keep me away from! I’m going to have it now—by God, I am!”He stood there a moment, his oilskin hat slapping about his face. At his right, three hundred yards away or so, he could just glimpse the dark outlines of Jim Gordon’s little store that supplied rough needs of lobstermen and fishers. Hal’s lip curled with scorn of the men he knew were gathered in that dingy, smoky place, swapping yarns and smoking pipes. They preferred that to the freedom of the night, the storm, the sea! At them he shook his fist.“There’s not one of you that’s half the man I am!” he shouted. “You sit in there and run me down. I know! You’re doing it now—telling how gramp had to pay because I licked a bully, and how I’ve got to apologize! But you don’t dare come out into a night like this. I can outsail you and outfight you all—and to hell with you!”His rage somehow a little eased, he turned to the task immediately confronting him. The beach sloped sharply to the surf. A litter of driftwood, kelp and mulched rubbish was swirling back and forth among the churning pebbles that with each refluent wave went clattering down in a mad chorus. Here, there, drawn up out of harm’s way, lay lobster-pots and dories. Just visible as a white blur tossing on the obscure waters, theKittiwinkrode at her buoy.“Great little boat!” cried Hal. A vast longing swept over him to be aboard, and away. The sea was calling his youth, strength, daring.Laura? And would he go without the girl? Yes. Sometime, soon perhaps, he would come back, would seize her, carry her away; but for now that plan had grown as vaguely formless as his destination. Fumes of liquor in his brain, of passion in his heart, blent with the roaring confusion of the tempest. All was confusion, all a kind of wild and orgiastic dream, culmination of heredity, of a spirit runamok.Night, storm and wind shouted to the savage in this man. And, standing erect there in the dark, arms up to fleeing cloud and ravening gale, he howled back with mad laughter:“Coming now! By God, I’m coming now!”There was foam on his lips as he strode down the beach, flung the suit-cases into a dory—and with a run and a huge-shouldered shove across the shingle fairly flung the boat into the surf.Waist-deep in chilling smothers of brine, he floundered, dragged himself into the dory that shipped heavy seas, and flung the oars on to the thole-pins. He steadied her nose into the surf, and with a few strong pulls got her through the tumble. A matter of two or three minutes, with such strength as lay in his arms of steel, brought him to the lee of theKittiwink’sstern. He hove the suit-cases to the deck of the dancing craft, then scrambled aboard and made the painter fast.Again he laughed, exultingly. Now for the first time in his life his will could be made law. Now he stood on his own deck, with plenty of supplies below, and—above, about him—the unlimited power of the gale to drive him any whither he should choose.He strode to the companionway, his feet sure on the swaying deck, his body lithely meeting every plunge, and slid back the hatch-cover. Down into the cabin he pitched the cases and followed them. He struck a match. It died. He cursed bitterly, tried again, and lighted the cabin-lamp. His eyes, with the affection of ownership, roved around the little place, taking in the berths, the folding-table, the stools. He threw the suit-cases into a berth, opened one and took out a square-face, which he uncorked and tipped high.“Ah!” he sighed. “Some class!” He set the bottle in the rack and breathed deeply. “Nice little berths, eh? Laura—she’d look fine here. She’d fit great, as crew. And if she gave me any of her lip, then—”His fist, doubled, swayed under the lamp-shine as he surveyed it proudly.“Great little boat,” judged Hal. “She’ll outsail ’em all, and I’m the boy to make her walk!”Huge, heavy, evil-faced, he stood there, swaying as theKittiwinkrode the swells. He cast open his reefer,took out pipe and tobacco, and lighted up. As he sucked at the stem, his hard lips, corded throat and great jaws gave an impression of brutal power, in no wise differing from that of old Alpheus Briggs, half a hundred years ago.“Make me go to school and wear a blue ribbon,” he gibed, his voice a contrabass to the shrilling of the wind aloft in the rig, the groaning and creaking of the timbers. “Make me go round apologizing to drunken bums. Like—hell!”A gleam of metal from the opened suit-case attracted his eyes. He took up the kris, and with vast approval studied it. The feel of the lotus-bud handle seemed grateful to his palm. Its balance joyed him. The keen, wavy blade, maculated with the rust of blood and brine, and with the groove where lay another stain whose meaning he knew not, held for him a singular fascination. Back, forth he slashed the weapon, whistling it through the air, flashing it under the lamp-light.“Fine!” he approved, with thickened speech. “Glad I got it—might come handy in a pinch, what?”He stopped swinging the kris, and once more observed it, more closely still. Tentatively he ran his thumb along the edge, testing it, then scratched with some inchoate curiosity at the poison crystallized in the groove.“Wonder what that stuff is, anyhow?” said he. “Doesn’t look like the rest. Maybe it’s the blood of some P. I., like McLaughlin.Thatought to make a dirty-looking stain, same as this. Maybe it will, some of these days, if he crosses my bows. Maybe it will at that!”
ON THEKITTIWINK
When Hal left Snug Haven, he bent his shoulders to the storm and with his suit-cases plowed through the gathering dusk toward Hadlock’s Cove.
Cold, slashing rain and boistering gusts left his wrath uncooled. Ugly, brutalized, he kept his way past the smithy—past Laura’s house, and so with glowering eyes on into the evening that caught and ravened at him.
The sight of Laura’s house filled him with an access of rage. That calm security of shaded windows behind the rain-scourged hedge seemed to typify the girl’s protection against him. He twisted his mouth into an ugly grin.
“Think you’re safe, don’t you?” he growled, pausing a moment to glower at the house. “Think I can’t get you, eh? I haven’t even begun yet!”
In the turmoil of his mind, no clear plan had as yet taken form. He knew only that he had a boat and full supplies, that from him the ocean held no secrets, that his muscles and his will had never yet known defeat, and that the girl was his if he could take her.
“She’ll turn me down cold and get away with it, will she?” he snarled. “She will—like hell!”
Forward he pushed again, meeting no one, and so passed Geyser Rock, now booming under the charges of the surf. He skirted a patch of woods, flailed by the wind, and beyond this turned through a stone wall, to follow a path that led down to the cove. On either side of the path stretched a rolling field, rich with tallgrasses, with daisies, buttercups, milfoil and devil’s paint-brush, drenched and beaten down in the dusk by the sweep of the storm.
Louder and more loud rose, fell, the thunders of the sea, as Hal approached the rocky dune at the far side of the field—a dune that on its other edge sank to a shingle beach that bordered the cove.
To eastward, this beach consolidated itself into the rocky headland of Barberry Point, around which the breakers were curving to hurl themselves on the shingle. The wind, however, was at this point almost parallel with the shore. Hal reckoned, as he tramped across the field, that with good judgment and stiff work he could get theKittiwinkto sea at once.
And after that, what? He did not know. No definite idea existed in that half-crazed, passion-scourged brain. The driving power of his strength accursed, took no heed of anything but flight. Away, away, only to be away!
“God!” he panted, stumbling up the dune to its top, where salt spray and stinging rain skirled upon him in skittering drives. He dropped his burdens, and flung out both huge arms toward the dark, tumbling void of waters, streaked with crawling lines of white. “God! that’s what I want! That’s what they’re trying to keep me away from! I’m going to have it now—by God, I am!”
He stood there a moment, his oilskin hat slapping about his face. At his right, three hundred yards away or so, he could just glimpse the dark outlines of Jim Gordon’s little store that supplied rough needs of lobstermen and fishers. Hal’s lip curled with scorn of the men he knew were gathered in that dingy, smoky place, swapping yarns and smoking pipes. They preferred that to the freedom of the night, the storm, the sea! At them he shook his fist.
“There’s not one of you that’s half the man I am!” he shouted. “You sit in there and run me down. I know! You’re doing it now—telling how gramp had to pay because I licked a bully, and how I’ve got to apologize! But you don’t dare come out into a night like this. I can outsail you and outfight you all—and to hell with you!”
His rage somehow a little eased, he turned to the task immediately confronting him. The beach sloped sharply to the surf. A litter of driftwood, kelp and mulched rubbish was swirling back and forth among the churning pebbles that with each refluent wave went clattering down in a mad chorus. Here, there, drawn up out of harm’s way, lay lobster-pots and dories. Just visible as a white blur tossing on the obscure waters, theKittiwinkrode at her buoy.
“Great little boat!” cried Hal. A vast longing swept over him to be aboard, and away. The sea was calling his youth, strength, daring.
Laura? And would he go without the girl? Yes. Sometime, soon perhaps, he would come back, would seize her, carry her away; but for now that plan had grown as vaguely formless as his destination. Fumes of liquor in his brain, of passion in his heart, blent with the roaring confusion of the tempest. All was confusion, all a kind of wild and orgiastic dream, culmination of heredity, of a spirit runamok.
Night, storm and wind shouted to the savage in this man. And, standing erect there in the dark, arms up to fleeing cloud and ravening gale, he howled back with mad laughter:
“Coming now! By God, I’m coming now!”
There was foam on his lips as he strode down the beach, flung the suit-cases into a dory—and with a run and a huge-shouldered shove across the shingle fairly flung the boat into the surf.
Waist-deep in chilling smothers of brine, he floundered, dragged himself into the dory that shipped heavy seas, and flung the oars on to the thole-pins. He steadied her nose into the surf, and with a few strong pulls got her through the tumble. A matter of two or three minutes, with such strength as lay in his arms of steel, brought him to the lee of theKittiwink’sstern. He hove the suit-cases to the deck of the dancing craft, then scrambled aboard and made the painter fast.
Again he laughed, exultingly. Now for the first time in his life his will could be made law. Now he stood on his own deck, with plenty of supplies below, and—above, about him—the unlimited power of the gale to drive him any whither he should choose.
He strode to the companionway, his feet sure on the swaying deck, his body lithely meeting every plunge, and slid back the hatch-cover. Down into the cabin he pitched the cases and followed them. He struck a match. It died. He cursed bitterly, tried again, and lighted the cabin-lamp. His eyes, with the affection of ownership, roved around the little place, taking in the berths, the folding-table, the stools. He threw the suit-cases into a berth, opened one and took out a square-face, which he uncorked and tipped high.
“Ah!” he sighed. “Some class!” He set the bottle in the rack and breathed deeply. “Nice little berths, eh? Laura—she’d look fine here. She’d fit great, as crew. And if she gave me any of her lip, then—”
His fist, doubled, swayed under the lamp-shine as he surveyed it proudly.
“Great little boat,” judged Hal. “She’ll outsail ’em all, and I’m the boy to make her walk!”
Huge, heavy, evil-faced, he stood there, swaying as theKittiwinkrode the swells. He cast open his reefer,took out pipe and tobacco, and lighted up. As he sucked at the stem, his hard lips, corded throat and great jaws gave an impression of brutal power, in no wise differing from that of old Alpheus Briggs, half a hundred years ago.
“Make me go to school and wear a blue ribbon,” he gibed, his voice a contrabass to the shrilling of the wind aloft in the rig, the groaning and creaking of the timbers. “Make me go round apologizing to drunken bums. Like—hell!”
A gleam of metal from the opened suit-case attracted his eyes. He took up the kris, and with vast approval studied it. The feel of the lotus-bud handle seemed grateful to his palm. Its balance joyed him. The keen, wavy blade, maculated with the rust of blood and brine, and with the groove where lay another stain whose meaning he knew not, held for him a singular fascination. Back, forth he slashed the weapon, whistling it through the air, flashing it under the lamp-light.
“Fine!” he approved, with thickened speech. “Glad I got it—might come handy in a pinch, what?”
He stopped swinging the kris, and once more observed it, more closely still. Tentatively he ran his thumb along the edge, testing it, then scratched with some inchoate curiosity at the poison crystallized in the groove.
“Wonder what that stuff is, anyhow?” said he. “Doesn’t look like the rest. Maybe it’s the blood of some P. I., like McLaughlin.Thatought to make a dirty-looking stain, same as this. Maybe it will, some of these days, if he crosses my bows. Maybe it will at that!”
CHAPTER XLIFATE STRIKESHal tossed the kris into the berth, and was just about to reach for the bottle again when athump-thump-thumpingalong the hull startled his attention.“What the devil’s that, now?” he growled, stiffening. The sound of voices, then a scramble of feet on deck, flung him toward the companion-ladder. “Who’s there?”“He’s here, boys, all right!” exulted a voice above. “We got him this time, the—”Have you seen a bulldog bristle to the attack with bared teeth and throaty growl? So, now, Hal Briggs.“Got me, have you?” he flung up at the invaders. “More o’ that rotten gurry-bucket’s crew, eh? More o’ Bucko McLaughlin’s plug-uglies!”“Easy there,” sounded a caution, as if holding some one back from advancing on Hal. “He’s mebbe got a gun.”“T’ hell wid it!” shouted another. “He ain’t gonna lambaste half our crew an’ the ole man, an’ git away wid it! Come on, if there’s one o’ ye wid the guts of a man. We’ll rush the son of a pup!”Heavy sea-boots appeared on the ladder. Hal leaped, grabbed, flung his muscles into a backward haul—and before the first attacker realized what had happened, he landed on his back. One pile-driver fist to the jaw, and the invader quivered into oblivion, blood welling from a lip split to the teeth.“There’s one o’ you!” shouted Hal. “One more!” He laughed uproariously, half drunk with alcohol, wholly drunk with the strong waters of battle. “Looks like I’d have to make a job of it, and clean the bunch! Who’s next?”Only silence answered a moment. This swift attack and sudden loss seemed to have disconcerted Mac’s men. Hal kicked the fallen enemy into a corner, and faced the companionway. His strategic position, he realized, was almost impregnable. Only a madman would have ventured up to that narrow and slippery deck in the night, with an undetermined number of men armed, perhaps, with murderous weapons, awaiting him. Hal was no madman. A steady fighter, he, and of good generalship. In his heart he meant, as he stood there, to kill or cripple every one of those now arrayed against him. He dared take no chances. Tense as a taut spring, he crouched and waited.Then as he heard whisperings, furious gusts of mumbled words, oaths at the very top of the companion, an idea took him. He snatched up the unconscious man, thrust him up the ladder and struggled behind him with titanic force. His legs, massive pillars, braced themselves against the sides of the companion. Like a battle-ax he swung the vanquished enemy, beating about him with this human flail. With fortune, might he not sweep one or two assailants off into the running seas?He saw vague forms, felt the impact of blows, as his weapon struck. Came a rush. Overborne, he fell backward to the floor. Up he leaped, as feet clattered down the ladder, and snatched the kris.But he could not drive it home in the bulky, dark form leaping down at him. For, lightning-swift, sinewed arms of another man behind him whipped round his neck, jerked his head back, bore him downward.He realized that he was lost. He had forgotten the forward hatch, opening down into the galley; he hadforgotten the little passageway behind him. Now one of McLaughlin’s men, familiar with the build of theKittiwink, had got a strangling grip on him. A wild yell of triumph racketed through the cabin, as three more men dropped into that little space.Hal knew he must use strategy. Backward he fell: and as he fell, he twisted. His right hand still held the kris; his left got a grip on the other’s throat.That other man immediately grew dumb, and ceased to breathe, as the terrible fingers closed. Volleys of blows and kicks rained on Hal ineffectively. Still the fingers tightened; the man’s face grew horribly dusky, slaty-blue under the lamp-light, while his tongue protruded and his staring eyes injected themselves with blood.The arm round Hal’s neck loosened, fell limp. Hal flung the man from him, groveled up under the cross-cutting slash of blows, and bored in.The crash of a stool on his right wrist numbed his arm to the elbow; the stool, shattered, fell apart, and one leg made smithereens of the lamp-globe. The smoky flare redly lighted a horrible, fantastic war. Hal fought to snatch up the knife again; the others to keep him from it, to trample him, bash him in, smear his brains and blood on the floor. Scientific fighting went to pot. This was just jungle war, the war of gouge and bite, confused, unreal.All the boy knew was that he swayed, bent and recovered in the midst of terrible blows, and that one arm would not serve him. The other fist landed here, there; and now it had grown red, though whether from its own blood or from the wounds of foemen, who could tell? Strange fires spangled outward before Hal’s eyes; he tasted blood, and, clacking his jaws, set his teeth into a hand and through it.Something wrenched, cracked dully. Blasphemyhowled through the smoky air, voicing the anguish of a broken arm. A rolling, swaying, tumbling mass, the men trampled the fallen one, pulping his face. Broken glass gritted under hammering bootheels, as the shards of lamp-chimney were ground fine.Back, forth, strained the fighters, with each heave and wallow of the boat. The floor grew slippery. The folding-table, torn from its hinges, collapsed into kindling; and one of these sticks, aimed at Hal’s head, missed him, but struck the square-face.Liquor gurgled down; the smell of whisky added its fetor to the stench of oil, bilge, sweat and blood. The floor grew slippery, and crimson splashes blotched the cabin walls.“Kill—the son—of—” strainingly grunted some one.Hal choked out a gasping, husky laugh. Only one eye was doing duty now; but that one still knew the kris was lying in the corner by the starboard berth.He tugged, bucked, burst through, fell on the kris, grappled its knob and writhed up, crouching.He flung the blade aloft to strike. Everything was whirling in a haze of dust and dancing confusion, lurid under the flare. Grinning, bleeding faces, rage-distorted, gyrated before him. He swirled the kris at the nearest.A hand, vising his wrist, snapped the blade downward, drove it back. Hal felt a swift sting, a burning, lancinating pain in his right pectoral muscle. It seemed to pierce the chest, the lung itself.He dropped his arm, staring. The kris, smeared brightly red, thumped to the floor.“Got ’im, b’ God!” wheezed somebody.“Got him—yes, an’ now it won’t be healthy fer us, if we’re caught here, neither!” panted another.The men stood away from him, peering curiously.Hal confronted them, one arm limp. The other hand rested against the cabin bulkhead. He swayed, with the swaying of the boat; his head, sagging forward, seemed all at once very heavy. He felt a hot trickle down his breast.“You—you’ve got me, you—” he coughed, and, leaning his back against the bulkhead, got his free hand feebly to the wound. It came away horribly red. By the smoky, feeble flare, he blinked at it. The three hulking men still on foot—vague figures, with black shadows on bearded faces, with eyes of fear and dying anger—found no answer. One sopped at a cut cheek with his sleeve; another rubbed his elbow and growled a curse. On the cabin floor two lay inert, amid the trample of débris.“Nowyou’ve done it, Coombs,” suddenly spat the smallest of McLaughlin’s men. He shook a violent forefinger at the blood-smeared kris that had fallen near the ladder. “Now we got murder on our hands, you damn fool! We didn’t come here to kill the son of a dog. We only come to give him a damn good beatin’-up, an’ now see what you’ve went an’ done! We got to clear out, all of us! An’ stick, too; we got to fix this story right!”“What—what d’you mean?” stammered Coombs, he of the bleeding cheek. He had gone ashy pale. The whiteness of his skin make startling contrast with the oozing blood. “What story? What we gotta do?”“Get ashore an’ all chew it over an’ agree on how we wasn’t within a mile o’ here to-night. Fix it, an’ git ready to swear to it! If we don’t, we’ll all go up! Come along out o’ here! Quick!”“Aw, hell! If he dies, serves him right!” spoke up the third man. “They can’t touch us fer killin’ a skunk!”“You’ll soon find out if they can or not!” retorted the small man, livid with fear. “Out o’ here now!”“An’ not fix him up none? Not bandage him ner nothing?” put in Coombs. “Gosh!”“Bandage nothin’!” cried the small man. “Tully’s right. We got to be clearin’. ButIsay, set fire to her an’ burn her where she lays, an’ him in her, an’—”“Yes, an’ have the whole damn town here, an’ everythin’! You got a head on you like a capstan. Come on, beat it!”“We can’t go an’ leave our fellers here, can we?” demanded Coombs, while Hal, sliding down along the bulkhead, collapsed upon the blood-stained floor. He felt his life oozing out hotly, but now had no power even to raise a hand. Coombs peered down, his eyes unnaturally big. “We can’t leavethem! That’d be a dead give-away. An’ we hadn’t oughta leave a man bleed to death that way, neither.”“T’ hell with ’im!” shrilled the little man, more and more panic-stricken. “We should worry! Git hold o’ Nears an’ Dunning here, an’ on deck with ’em. We can git ’em ashore, an’ the others, too, in the dory. We can all git down to Hammill’s fish-shed an’ no one the wiser. Give us a hand here, you!”“I’m goin’ to stay an’ fix this here man up,” decided Coombs. “I reckon I stuck him, or he stuck himself because I gaffled onta his hand. Anyhow, I done it. You clear out, if you wanta. I ain’t goin’ to let that feller—”“You’re comin’ with us, an’ no double-crossin’!” shouted Tully, his bruised face terrible, one eye blackened and swollen. He bored a big-knuckled fist against Coombs’s nose. “If you’re caught here, we’realldone. You’re comin’ now, or, by the jumpin’ jews-harps, I’ll knock you cold myself, an’ lug you straight ashore!”“An’ I’ll help ye!” volunteered the little man, with a string of oaths. “Come on now, git busy!”Overborne, Coombs had to yield. The three men prepared to make good their escape and to cover all tracks. Not even lifting Hal into a berth, but leaving him sprawled face-downward on the floor, with blood more and more soaking his heavy reefer, they dragged the unconscious men to the companion, hauled them up and across the pitching, slippery deck, and dropped them like potato sacks into the dory that had brought them. Then they did likewise with the unconscious man Hal had used as a flail against them. In the dark and storm, all this took minutes and caused great exertion. But at last it was done; and now Tully once more descended to the cabin.He looked around with great care, blinking his one still serviceable eye, his torn face horrible by the guttering oil-flame that danced as puffs of wind entered the hatch.“What you doin’ down there, Tully?” demanded a voice from above. “Friskin’ him fer his watch?”“I’ll friskyouwhen I git you ashore!” Tully flung up at him. Coombs slid down into the cabin.“That’s all right,” said he, “but I ain’t trustin’ you much!”“Aw, go to hell!” Tully spat. He stooped and began pawing over the ruck on the floor. Here he picked up a cap, there a piece of torn sleeve. He even found a button, and pocketed that. His search was thorough. When it ended, nothing incriminating was left.“I reckon they won’t git much on usnow,” he grinned, and contemplatively worked back and forth a loosened tooth that hardly hung to the gum. “An’ if they try to lay it on us, they can’t prove nothin’. All of us swearin’ together can git by. There ain’t no witness excepthim,” with a jerk of the thumb at thegasping, unconscious form. “Nobody, unless he gits well, which he ain’t noways likely to.”He rolled Hal over, looked down with malice and hate at the pale, battered face, listened a moment to the laboring, slowrâleof the breath, and nodded with satisfaction. Even the bloody froth on Hal’s blue lips gave him joy.“You got what’s comin’ toyou, all right!” he sneered. “Got it proper. Thought you’d git funny with Mac an’ his gang, huh? Always butted through everythin’, did you? Well, this here was one proposition you couldn’t butt through. We was one too many feryou, all righto!”He turned, and saw Coombs with the kris in hand. Fear leaped into his face, but Coombs only gibed:“You’re a great one, ain’t you? Coverin’ up the story o’ what happened here an’ leavin’ that in a corner!”Fear gave way to sudden covetousness.“Gimme that there knife!” demanded Tully. “Thereisa souvenir! That there’s a krish. I can hide it O. K. Gimme it!”Coombs’s answer was to stoop, lay the kris down and set his huge sea-boot on it. A quick, upward wrench at the lotus-bud handle and the snaky, poisoned blade, maybe a thousand years old, snapped with a jangle of dissevered steel.“Here, you!” shouted Tully. But already Coombs had swung to the companion. One toss, and lotus-bud and shattered blade gyrated into the dark. The waves, white-foaming, received them; they vanished forever from the world of men.“On deck with you now!” commanded Coombs. “If we’re goin’ to do this at all, we’re goin’ to make a good job of it. You go first!”Tully had to obey. Coombs puffed out the light and—leavingHal Briggs in utter dark, bleeding, poisoned, dying—followed on up the ladder. The dory pushed away, laden with three unconscious men and three others by no means unscathed of battle. Toward the shore it struggled, borne on the hungry surges.Thus fled the men of McLaughlin’s crew—avenged. Thus, brought low by the cursèd thing that had come half-way ’round the world and waited half a hundred years to strike, Hal sank toward the great blackness.Lotus-bud, symbol of sleep, and poisoned blade—cobra-fang from the dim, mysterious Orient—now with their work well done, lay under waves of storm in a wild, northern sea.Above, in the black, storm-whipped sky, was the blind face of Destiny peering with laughter down upon the fulfilment of its prophecy?
FATE STRIKES
Hal tossed the kris into the berth, and was just about to reach for the bottle again when athump-thump-thumpingalong the hull startled his attention.
“What the devil’s that, now?” he growled, stiffening. The sound of voices, then a scramble of feet on deck, flung him toward the companion-ladder. “Who’s there?”
“He’s here, boys, all right!” exulted a voice above. “We got him this time, the—”
Have you seen a bulldog bristle to the attack with bared teeth and throaty growl? So, now, Hal Briggs.
“Got me, have you?” he flung up at the invaders. “More o’ that rotten gurry-bucket’s crew, eh? More o’ Bucko McLaughlin’s plug-uglies!”
“Easy there,” sounded a caution, as if holding some one back from advancing on Hal. “He’s mebbe got a gun.”
“T’ hell wid it!” shouted another. “He ain’t gonna lambaste half our crew an’ the ole man, an’ git away wid it! Come on, if there’s one o’ ye wid the guts of a man. We’ll rush the son of a pup!”
Heavy sea-boots appeared on the ladder. Hal leaped, grabbed, flung his muscles into a backward haul—and before the first attacker realized what had happened, he landed on his back. One pile-driver fist to the jaw, and the invader quivered into oblivion, blood welling from a lip split to the teeth.
“There’s one o’ you!” shouted Hal. “One more!” He laughed uproariously, half drunk with alcohol, wholly drunk with the strong waters of battle. “Looks like I’d have to make a job of it, and clean the bunch! Who’s next?”
Only silence answered a moment. This swift attack and sudden loss seemed to have disconcerted Mac’s men. Hal kicked the fallen enemy into a corner, and faced the companionway. His strategic position, he realized, was almost impregnable. Only a madman would have ventured up to that narrow and slippery deck in the night, with an undetermined number of men armed, perhaps, with murderous weapons, awaiting him. Hal was no madman. A steady fighter, he, and of good generalship. In his heart he meant, as he stood there, to kill or cripple every one of those now arrayed against him. He dared take no chances. Tense as a taut spring, he crouched and waited.
Then as he heard whisperings, furious gusts of mumbled words, oaths at the very top of the companion, an idea took him. He snatched up the unconscious man, thrust him up the ladder and struggled behind him with titanic force. His legs, massive pillars, braced themselves against the sides of the companion. Like a battle-ax he swung the vanquished enemy, beating about him with this human flail. With fortune, might he not sweep one or two assailants off into the running seas?
He saw vague forms, felt the impact of blows, as his weapon struck. Came a rush. Overborne, he fell backward to the floor. Up he leaped, as feet clattered down the ladder, and snatched the kris.
But he could not drive it home in the bulky, dark form leaping down at him. For, lightning-swift, sinewed arms of another man behind him whipped round his neck, jerked his head back, bore him downward.
He realized that he was lost. He had forgotten the forward hatch, opening down into the galley; he hadforgotten the little passageway behind him. Now one of McLaughlin’s men, familiar with the build of theKittiwink, had got a strangling grip on him. A wild yell of triumph racketed through the cabin, as three more men dropped into that little space.
Hal knew he must use strategy. Backward he fell: and as he fell, he twisted. His right hand still held the kris; his left got a grip on the other’s throat.
That other man immediately grew dumb, and ceased to breathe, as the terrible fingers closed. Volleys of blows and kicks rained on Hal ineffectively. Still the fingers tightened; the man’s face grew horribly dusky, slaty-blue under the lamp-light, while his tongue protruded and his staring eyes injected themselves with blood.
The arm round Hal’s neck loosened, fell limp. Hal flung the man from him, groveled up under the cross-cutting slash of blows, and bored in.
The crash of a stool on his right wrist numbed his arm to the elbow; the stool, shattered, fell apart, and one leg made smithereens of the lamp-globe. The smoky flare redly lighted a horrible, fantastic war. Hal fought to snatch up the knife again; the others to keep him from it, to trample him, bash him in, smear his brains and blood on the floor. Scientific fighting went to pot. This was just jungle war, the war of gouge and bite, confused, unreal.
All the boy knew was that he swayed, bent and recovered in the midst of terrible blows, and that one arm would not serve him. The other fist landed here, there; and now it had grown red, though whether from its own blood or from the wounds of foemen, who could tell? Strange fires spangled outward before Hal’s eyes; he tasted blood, and, clacking his jaws, set his teeth into a hand and through it.
Something wrenched, cracked dully. Blasphemyhowled through the smoky air, voicing the anguish of a broken arm. A rolling, swaying, tumbling mass, the men trampled the fallen one, pulping his face. Broken glass gritted under hammering bootheels, as the shards of lamp-chimney were ground fine.
Back, forth, strained the fighters, with each heave and wallow of the boat. The floor grew slippery. The folding-table, torn from its hinges, collapsed into kindling; and one of these sticks, aimed at Hal’s head, missed him, but struck the square-face.
Liquor gurgled down; the smell of whisky added its fetor to the stench of oil, bilge, sweat and blood. The floor grew slippery, and crimson splashes blotched the cabin walls.
“Kill—the son—of—” strainingly grunted some one.
Hal choked out a gasping, husky laugh. Only one eye was doing duty now; but that one still knew the kris was lying in the corner by the starboard berth.
He tugged, bucked, burst through, fell on the kris, grappled its knob and writhed up, crouching.
He flung the blade aloft to strike. Everything was whirling in a haze of dust and dancing confusion, lurid under the flare. Grinning, bleeding faces, rage-distorted, gyrated before him. He swirled the kris at the nearest.
A hand, vising his wrist, snapped the blade downward, drove it back. Hal felt a swift sting, a burning, lancinating pain in his right pectoral muscle. It seemed to pierce the chest, the lung itself.
He dropped his arm, staring. The kris, smeared brightly red, thumped to the floor.
“Got ’im, b’ God!” wheezed somebody.
“Got him—yes, an’ now it won’t be healthy fer us, if we’re caught here, neither!” panted another.
The men stood away from him, peering curiously.Hal confronted them, one arm limp. The other hand rested against the cabin bulkhead. He swayed, with the swaying of the boat; his head, sagging forward, seemed all at once very heavy. He felt a hot trickle down his breast.
“You—you’ve got me, you—” he coughed, and, leaning his back against the bulkhead, got his free hand feebly to the wound. It came away horribly red. By the smoky, feeble flare, he blinked at it. The three hulking men still on foot—vague figures, with black shadows on bearded faces, with eyes of fear and dying anger—found no answer. One sopped at a cut cheek with his sleeve; another rubbed his elbow and growled a curse. On the cabin floor two lay inert, amid the trample of débris.
“Nowyou’ve done it, Coombs,” suddenly spat the smallest of McLaughlin’s men. He shook a violent forefinger at the blood-smeared kris that had fallen near the ladder. “Now we got murder on our hands, you damn fool! We didn’t come here to kill the son of a dog. We only come to give him a damn good beatin’-up, an’ now see what you’ve went an’ done! We got to clear out, all of us! An’ stick, too; we got to fix this story right!”
“What—what d’you mean?” stammered Coombs, he of the bleeding cheek. He had gone ashy pale. The whiteness of his skin make startling contrast with the oozing blood. “What story? What we gotta do?”
“Get ashore an’ all chew it over an’ agree on how we wasn’t within a mile o’ here to-night. Fix it, an’ git ready to swear to it! If we don’t, we’ll all go up! Come along out o’ here! Quick!”
“Aw, hell! If he dies, serves him right!” spoke up the third man. “They can’t touch us fer killin’ a skunk!”
“You’ll soon find out if they can or not!” retorted the small man, livid with fear. “Out o’ here now!”
“An’ not fix him up none? Not bandage him ner nothing?” put in Coombs. “Gosh!”
“Bandage nothin’!” cried the small man. “Tully’s right. We got to be clearin’. ButIsay, set fire to her an’ burn her where she lays, an’ him in her, an’—”
“Yes, an’ have the whole damn town here, an’ everythin’! You got a head on you like a capstan. Come on, beat it!”
“We can’t go an’ leave our fellers here, can we?” demanded Coombs, while Hal, sliding down along the bulkhead, collapsed upon the blood-stained floor. He felt his life oozing out hotly, but now had no power even to raise a hand. Coombs peered down, his eyes unnaturally big. “We can’t leavethem! That’d be a dead give-away. An’ we hadn’t oughta leave a man bleed to death that way, neither.”
“T’ hell with ’im!” shrilled the little man, more and more panic-stricken. “We should worry! Git hold o’ Nears an’ Dunning here, an’ on deck with ’em. We can git ’em ashore, an’ the others, too, in the dory. We can all git down to Hammill’s fish-shed an’ no one the wiser. Give us a hand here, you!”
“I’m goin’ to stay an’ fix this here man up,” decided Coombs. “I reckon I stuck him, or he stuck himself because I gaffled onta his hand. Anyhow, I done it. You clear out, if you wanta. I ain’t goin’ to let that feller—”
“You’re comin’ with us, an’ no double-crossin’!” shouted Tully, his bruised face terrible, one eye blackened and swollen. He bored a big-knuckled fist against Coombs’s nose. “If you’re caught here, we’realldone. You’re comin’ now, or, by the jumpin’ jews-harps, I’ll knock you cold myself, an’ lug you straight ashore!”
“An’ I’ll help ye!” volunteered the little man, with a string of oaths. “Come on now, git busy!”
Overborne, Coombs had to yield. The three men prepared to make good their escape and to cover all tracks. Not even lifting Hal into a berth, but leaving him sprawled face-downward on the floor, with blood more and more soaking his heavy reefer, they dragged the unconscious men to the companion, hauled them up and across the pitching, slippery deck, and dropped them like potato sacks into the dory that had brought them. Then they did likewise with the unconscious man Hal had used as a flail against them. In the dark and storm, all this took minutes and caused great exertion. But at last it was done; and now Tully once more descended to the cabin.
He looked around with great care, blinking his one still serviceable eye, his torn face horrible by the guttering oil-flame that danced as puffs of wind entered the hatch.
“What you doin’ down there, Tully?” demanded a voice from above. “Friskin’ him fer his watch?”
“I’ll friskyouwhen I git you ashore!” Tully flung up at him. Coombs slid down into the cabin.
“That’s all right,” said he, “but I ain’t trustin’ you much!”
“Aw, go to hell!” Tully spat. He stooped and began pawing over the ruck on the floor. Here he picked up a cap, there a piece of torn sleeve. He even found a button, and pocketed that. His search was thorough. When it ended, nothing incriminating was left.
“I reckon they won’t git much on usnow,” he grinned, and contemplatively worked back and forth a loosened tooth that hardly hung to the gum. “An’ if they try to lay it on us, they can’t prove nothin’. All of us swearin’ together can git by. There ain’t no witness excepthim,” with a jerk of the thumb at thegasping, unconscious form. “Nobody, unless he gits well, which he ain’t noways likely to.”
He rolled Hal over, looked down with malice and hate at the pale, battered face, listened a moment to the laboring, slowrâleof the breath, and nodded with satisfaction. Even the bloody froth on Hal’s blue lips gave him joy.
“You got what’s comin’ toyou, all right!” he sneered. “Got it proper. Thought you’d git funny with Mac an’ his gang, huh? Always butted through everythin’, did you? Well, this here was one proposition you couldn’t butt through. We was one too many feryou, all righto!”
He turned, and saw Coombs with the kris in hand. Fear leaped into his face, but Coombs only gibed:
“You’re a great one, ain’t you? Coverin’ up the story o’ what happened here an’ leavin’ that in a corner!”
Fear gave way to sudden covetousness.
“Gimme that there knife!” demanded Tully. “Thereisa souvenir! That there’s a krish. I can hide it O. K. Gimme it!”
Coombs’s answer was to stoop, lay the kris down and set his huge sea-boot on it. A quick, upward wrench at the lotus-bud handle and the snaky, poisoned blade, maybe a thousand years old, snapped with a jangle of dissevered steel.
“Here, you!” shouted Tully. But already Coombs had swung to the companion. One toss, and lotus-bud and shattered blade gyrated into the dark. The waves, white-foaming, received them; they vanished forever from the world of men.
“On deck with you now!” commanded Coombs. “If we’re goin’ to do this at all, we’re goin’ to make a good job of it. You go first!”
Tully had to obey. Coombs puffed out the light and—leavingHal Briggs in utter dark, bleeding, poisoned, dying—followed on up the ladder. The dory pushed away, laden with three unconscious men and three others by no means unscathed of battle. Toward the shore it struggled, borne on the hungry surges.
Thus fled the men of McLaughlin’s crew—avenged. Thus, brought low by the cursèd thing that had come half-way ’round the world and waited half a hundred years to strike, Hal sank toward the great blackness.
Lotus-bud, symbol of sleep, and poisoned blade—cobra-fang from the dim, mysterious Orient—now with their work well done, lay under waves of storm in a wild, northern sea.
Above, in the black, storm-whipped sky, was the blind face of Destiny peering with laughter down upon the fulfilment of its prophecy?
CHAPTER XLIIIN EXTREMISIt would be difficult to tell how long the wounded boy lay there, but after a certain time, some vague glimmering of consciousness returned. No light came back. Neither was motion possible to him. His understanding now was merely pain, confusion and a great roaring wind and wave. Utter weakness gripped his body; but more than this seemed to enchain him. By no effort of his reviving will could he move hand or foot; and even the slow breath he took, each respiration a stab of agony, seemed for some reason a mighty effort.Though Hal knew it not, already thecuraréwas at work, thecuraréwhose terrible effect is this: that it paralyzes every muscle, first the voluntaries, then those of the respiratory centers and of the heart itself. Yet he could think and feel.Curarédoes not numb sensation or attack the brain. It strikes its victims down by rendering them more helpless than an infant; and then, fingering its way to the breath and to the blood, closes on those a grip that has one outcome only.Hal Briggs, who had so gloried in the strength and swift control of all his muscles, who had so wrought evil and violent things, trusting to his unbeatable power, now lay there, chained, immobile, paralyzed.He thought, after a few vain efforts to move:“I must be badly cut to be as weak as this. I must be bled almost to death. I’m going to die. That’s certain!”Still, he was not afraid. The soul of him confronteddeath, unterrified. Even while his laboring heart struggled against the slow instillation of thecuraré, and even while his lungs caught sluggishly at the air, his mind was undaunted.He wanted light, but there was none. A velvet dark enveloped everything—a dark in which the creaking fabric of theKittiwinkheaved, plunged till it rolled his inert body back against the shell of the craft, then forward again.“I got some of them, anyhow,” he reflected, with strange calmness. “They didn’t get away without a lot of punishment. If they hadn’t knifed me, I’d have cleaned up the whole bunch!”A certain satisfaction filled his thoughts. If one must die, it is good to know the enemy has taken grievous harm.Still, what, after all, did it matter? He felt so very languid, so transfixed with that insistent pain in the right lung! Even though he had killed them all, would that have recompensed him for the failure of all his cherished plans, for the loss of the life that was to have meant so wildly much to him?He felt a warm oozing on his breast, and knew blood was still seeping. His lips tasted salty, but he could not even spit away the blood on them.Curaréis of a hundred different types. This, which he had received, had numbed his muscles beyond any possibility of waking them to action. A few vain efforts convinced him he could not move. So there he lay, suffering, wondering how any loss of blood—so long as life remained—could so paralyze him.His thoughts drifted to Snug Haven, to his grandfather, to Ezra, to Laura, but now in more confusion. He realized that he was fainting and could do nothing to prevent it. A humming, different from the storm-wind, welled up in his ears. He felt that he was sinkingdown, away. Then all at once he ceased alike to think, to feel.When next he came to some vague consciousness, he sensed—millions of miles away—a touch on his shoulder, a voice in his ears. He knew that voice; and yet, somehow, he could not tell whose voice it was. He understood that his head was being raised. Very dimly, through closed eyelids that he could not open, he perceived the faint glimmer of a light.“Hal!” he heard his name. And then again: “Hal!”The futile effort to move, to answer, spent his last forces. Once more the blackness of oblivion received him mercifully.“Hal! Oh, God! Hal, speak to me!Answer me!” Laura’s voice trembled, broke as she pleaded. “Oh—they’ve killed you!They’ve killed you!”With eyes of terror she peered down at him. In her shaking hand the little electric search-lamp sent its trembling beam to illuminate the terrible sight there on the cabin floor. The girl could get only broken impressions—a pale, wan face; closed eyes that would not open; a fearful welter of blood on throat and chest.“Look at me! Speak to me! You aren’t dead—look at me! It’s Laura! Hal—Hal!”Her words were disjointed. For a moment presence of mind left her. For a moment, she was just a frightened girl, suddenly confronted by this horrible thing, by the broken, dying body of the man she had so loved. And while that moment lasted she cried out; she gathered Hal to her breast; she called to him and called again, and got no answer.But soon her first anguish passed. She whipped back her reason and forced herself to think. The prescience she had felt of evil had indeed come true. Thefurtive, dark figures that from her window she had seen slinking toward Hadlock’s Cove, had indeed sought Hal just as she had felt that they were seeking him. And the numb grief that, after she had seen Hal passing down the road, had still chained her at that upper window peering out into the darkening storm, had all at once given place to action.What strategies she had had to employ to escape from the house! What a battle with the tempest she had fought, with wind and rain tearing at her long coat, the pocket of which had held the flashlight! Ay, and that battle had been only a skirmish compared to the launching of a dory, the mad struggle through the surf. All thought of danger flung to the wings of heaven, all fear of Hal abandoned, and of losing her good name in case of being seen by any one, so she had battled her way to him—to warn him, to save him.Laura, suddenly grown calm with that heroic resolution which inspires every true woman in the moment of need, let the boy’s head fall back and mustered her thoughts. She realized the essential thing was go for help, at once. Strong as she was, and nerved with desperation, she knew the task of dragging Hal up the companionway, of getting him into her dory, of carrying him ashore in the gale-beaten surf surpassed her powers.So she must leave him, even though he should die alone there.But, first, she could at least give him some aid. She peered about her, flicking the electric beam over the trampled confusion. What could she use for bandages? A smashed suit-case yawned wide, its contents slewed about. She caught up a shirt, tore it into broad strips and, laying the flashlight in the berth, bent to her work.“Oh, God!” she whispered, as she laid bare thewound; but though she felt giddy, she kept on. The sagging dead weight of Hal’s body almost overbore her strength. She held it up, however, and very tightly bound him, up around the massive neck, over the back, across the high-arched, muscular chest. She knotted her bandages, and let Hal sink down again.Then she smoothed back his drabbled hair. She bent and kissed him; snatched the light, turned and fled up the companion, clambered down into the dory, and cast loose.All the strength of her young arms had to strain their uttermost. Passionately she labored. The wounded man no longer was the brute who had so cruelly sought to wrong her. He was no longer the untamed savage, the bully, the thief. No, in his helplessness he had gone swiftly back to the boy she had known and loved—just Hal, her boy.The storm-devils, snatching at her, seemed incarnate things that fought her for his life. The wind that drove her away from the shingle-beach and toward the rocks below Jim Gordon’s store, the lathering crests that spewed their cold surges into the dory as it heaved high and swung far down, seemed shouting: “Death to Hal!”Laura, her hair down and flying wild, pulled till wrists and arms seemed breaking. For a few minutes she thought herself lost; but presently, when breath and strength were at the ragged edge, she began to hear the loud, rattling clamor of pebbles on the shingle. A breaker caught the dory, flung it half round, upset it. Into the water, strangling, struggling, Laura plunged. The backwash caught her, tugged at her. She found footing, lost it, fell and choked a cry in cold brine.The next breaker heaved her up. She crawled through wrack and weed, over jagged stones, and fell exhausted on a sodden windrow of drift.For a minute she could move no further, but had to lie under the pelting rain, with the dark hands of ocean clutching to drag her back. But presently a little strength revived. She crawled forward once more, staggered to her feet, and, falling, getting up again, won to the top of the dune.Off to her left, dim through the shouting night, the vague light-blurs of old man Gordon’s windows were fronting the tempest. The girl struggled forward, sobbing for breath. Not all the fury of the North Atlantic, flung against that shore, had turned her from her task.Astonished beyond words, the lobstermen and fishers eyed her with blank faces as she burst in the door. Under the light of tin reflectors, quids remained unchewed, pipes unsmoked. Bearded jaws fell. Eyes blinked.The girl’s wet, draggled hair, her bloodless face and burning eyes stunned them all.“Quick, quick!” she implored. “Hal Briggs—”“What’s he done now, girl?” cried old Sy Whittaker, starting up. “He ain’t hurtyou, has he? If hehas—”“He’s been stabbed, aboard theKittiwink! He’s bleeding to death there!”Chairs scraped. Excitement blazed.“What’s that, Laura?” cried Gordon. “Stabbed? Who done it?”“Oh, no matter—go, quick—go,go!”“Damn funny!” growled a voice from behind the stove. “Gal goin’ aboard night like this, an’ him stabbed. Looks mighty bad!”“You’ll look a damn sight wuss if you say that agin, or anythin’ like it!” shouted the old storekeeper with doubled fist. “Hal Briggs ain’t worryin’ me none, but this here is Laura, old man Maynard’s gal,an’ by the Jeeruzlem nobody ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ about her! Tell me, gal,” he added, “is he hurt bad?”She caught him by the arm. He had to hold her up.“Dying, Jim! Bleeding to death! Oh, for the love of God—hurry,hurry!”Around them the rough, bearded men jostled in pea-coats, slickers, sou’westers. The tin reflectors struck harsh lights and shadows from rugged faces of astonishment.“Who could o’ done it?” began Shorrocks, the blacksmith. “They’d oughta be ketched, an’—”“Never you mind about that!” cried Gordon. He caught from a nail a formless old felt hat and jammed it on his head; he snatched up a lighted lantern standing on the counter, and with a hobnailed clatter ran for the door.“Everybody out!” he bellowed. “Everybody out now, to help Laura!”Into the storm he flung himself. All hands cascaded toward the door.“You stay here, gal!” advised Asahel Calkins, lobsterman. “Ain’t no night fer you!”“I can’t stay! Let me go, too!” she pleaded. They made way for her. With the men she ran. Two or three others had lanterns, but these made no more than tiny dancing blurs of light in the drenching dark. Along a path, then into the field and up to the storm-scourged dune they stumbled, pantingly, bucking the gale. The lanterns set giant legs of shadows striding up against the curtain of the rain-drive, as the men pressed onward. Snapping, Laura’s skirts flailed.Over the dune they charged, and scuffled down to the dories. Disjointed words, cries, commands whipped away. Strong hands hustled a dory down. Laura was clambering in already, but Jim Gordon pulled her back.“No, gal, no!” he ordered sternly. His voice flared on the wind as he shoved her into the arms of Shorrocks. “You, Henry, look out for her. Don’t let her do nothin’ foolish!”He set his lantern in the dory, impressed Calkins and another into his service, and scrambled aboard. A dozen hands ran the dory out through the first breakers. Oars caught; and as the men came up the beach, dripping in the vague lantern-light, the dory pulled away.To Laura, waiting with distracted fear among the fishermen, it seemed an hour; yet at the most hardly fifteen minutes had passed before the little boat came leaping shoreward in white smothers. Out jumped Gordon. Laura ran to him, knee-deep in a breaker.“Is he—dead?” she shivered, with clacking teeth.“Nope. Ain’t much time to lose, though, an’ that’s a fact. He’s cutsome, looks like! Goddy mighty, but there must o’ been some fight out there!”He turned to the dory. With others, he lifted out a heavy body, wrapped in sailcloth, horribly suggestive of a burial at sea. Laura gripped her hands together for self-mastery.“Oh, hurry, hurry!” she entreated.“We’ll do all we kin, gal,” some one answered, “but we ain’t no real amb’lance-corpse. It’s goin’ to be a slow job, gittin’ him home.”“Here, Laura, you carry a lantern an’ go ahead, ’cross the field,” commanded Gordon, with deep wisdom. Only to give her something to do, something to occupy her mind, was kindness of the deepest. Into her hand old Calkins thrust a lantern.“All ready!” cried he. “H’ist anchor, an’ away!”Seven or eight men got hold, round the edges of the sailcloth, and so, swinging the inert Hal as in a cradle, they stumbled to the road, with Laura going on ahead.To the right they turned, toward Snug Haven.Now Laura walked beside them. Once in a while she looked at the white face half seen in its white cradle, now beginning to be mottled with crimson stains.But she said no other word. Strong with the calm that had reasserted itself, she walked that night road of storm and agony.Thus was Hal Briggs borne back to his grandfather’s house.In the cabin at Snug Haven old Captain Briggs—having finished his letter to Hal and put that, too, in the safe—had now come to the last task of all, the sacrifice that, so he faithfully believed, was to remove the curse of Dengan Jouga from his boy.A strange lassitude weighed down upon the old man, the weariness that comes when a long journey is almost done and the lights of home begin to shine out through “the evening dews and damps.” The captain felt that he had come at last to journey’s end. He sat there at his desk, eying the revolver, a sturdy, resolute figure; an heroic figure, unflinchingly determined; a figure ennobled by impending sacrifice, thoughtful, quiet, strong. His face, that had been lined with grief, had grown quite calm. The light upon it seemed less from his old-time cabin-lamp than from some inner flame. With a new kind of happiness, more blessed than any he had ever known, he smiled.“Thank God!” he murmured, with devout earnestness. “It won’t be long now afore I’m with the others that have waited for me all this time up there on Croft Hill. I’m glad to go. It isn’t everybody than can save the person they love best of anything in the world, by dying. I thought God was hard with me, but after all I find He’s very good. He’ll understand. He’d ought to know, Himself, what dying means to save something that must be saved!”Once more he looked at Hal’s picture. Earnestly and simply, he kissed it. Then he laid it on the desk again.“Good-by,” said he. “Maybe you won’t ever understand. Maybe you’ll blame me. Lots will. I’ll be called a coward. You’ll have to bear some burden on account of me, but this is the only way.”His expression reflected the calm happiness which comes with realization that to die for one beloved is a better and more blessèd thing than life. Never had old Captain Briggs felt such joy. Not only was he opening the ways of life to Hal, but he was cleansing his own soul. And all at once he felt the horror of this brooding curse was lifting—this curse which, during fifty years, had been reaching out from the dark and violent past.He breathed deeply and picked up the revolver.“God, Thou art very good to me,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t understand the way till it was shown me. But now I understand.”Toward his berth he turned, to lie down there for the last time. As he advanced toward it he became vaguely conscious of some confusion outside. A sound of voices, gusty and faint through the wind, reached him. These came nearer, grew louder.Listening, he paused, with a frown. Of a sudden, feet clumped on the front steps. Heavily they thudded across the porch. And with sharp insistence his electric door-bell trilled its musicalbrrr!“What’s that, now?” said the captain. Premonitions of evil pierced his heart. As he hesitated, not knowing what to do, the front door boomed with the thudding of stout fists. A heavy boot kicked the panels. A voice bawled hoarsely:“Briggs! Ahoy, there, cap’n! Let us in! Fer God’s sake, let us in!”
IN EXTREMIS
It would be difficult to tell how long the wounded boy lay there, but after a certain time, some vague glimmering of consciousness returned. No light came back. Neither was motion possible to him. His understanding now was merely pain, confusion and a great roaring wind and wave. Utter weakness gripped his body; but more than this seemed to enchain him. By no effort of his reviving will could he move hand or foot; and even the slow breath he took, each respiration a stab of agony, seemed for some reason a mighty effort.
Though Hal knew it not, already thecuraréwas at work, thecuraréwhose terrible effect is this: that it paralyzes every muscle, first the voluntaries, then those of the respiratory centers and of the heart itself. Yet he could think and feel.Curarédoes not numb sensation or attack the brain. It strikes its victims down by rendering them more helpless than an infant; and then, fingering its way to the breath and to the blood, closes on those a grip that has one outcome only.
Hal Briggs, who had so gloried in the strength and swift control of all his muscles, who had so wrought evil and violent things, trusting to his unbeatable power, now lay there, chained, immobile, paralyzed.
He thought, after a few vain efforts to move:
“I must be badly cut to be as weak as this. I must be bled almost to death. I’m going to die. That’s certain!”
Still, he was not afraid. The soul of him confronteddeath, unterrified. Even while his laboring heart struggled against the slow instillation of thecuraré, and even while his lungs caught sluggishly at the air, his mind was undaunted.
He wanted light, but there was none. A velvet dark enveloped everything—a dark in which the creaking fabric of theKittiwinkheaved, plunged till it rolled his inert body back against the shell of the craft, then forward again.
“I got some of them, anyhow,” he reflected, with strange calmness. “They didn’t get away without a lot of punishment. If they hadn’t knifed me, I’d have cleaned up the whole bunch!”
A certain satisfaction filled his thoughts. If one must die, it is good to know the enemy has taken grievous harm.
Still, what, after all, did it matter? He felt so very languid, so transfixed with that insistent pain in the right lung! Even though he had killed them all, would that have recompensed him for the failure of all his cherished plans, for the loss of the life that was to have meant so wildly much to him?
He felt a warm oozing on his breast, and knew blood was still seeping. His lips tasted salty, but he could not even spit away the blood on them.Curaréis of a hundred different types. This, which he had received, had numbed his muscles beyond any possibility of waking them to action. A few vain efforts convinced him he could not move. So there he lay, suffering, wondering how any loss of blood—so long as life remained—could so paralyze him.
His thoughts drifted to Snug Haven, to his grandfather, to Ezra, to Laura, but now in more confusion. He realized that he was fainting and could do nothing to prevent it. A humming, different from the storm-wind, welled up in his ears. He felt that he was sinkingdown, away. Then all at once he ceased alike to think, to feel.
When next he came to some vague consciousness, he sensed—millions of miles away—a touch on his shoulder, a voice in his ears. He knew that voice; and yet, somehow, he could not tell whose voice it was. He understood that his head was being raised. Very dimly, through closed eyelids that he could not open, he perceived the faint glimmer of a light.
“Hal!” he heard his name. And then again: “Hal!”
The futile effort to move, to answer, spent his last forces. Once more the blackness of oblivion received him mercifully.
“Hal! Oh, God! Hal, speak to me!Answer me!” Laura’s voice trembled, broke as she pleaded. “Oh—they’ve killed you!They’ve killed you!”
With eyes of terror she peered down at him. In her shaking hand the little electric search-lamp sent its trembling beam to illuminate the terrible sight there on the cabin floor. The girl could get only broken impressions—a pale, wan face; closed eyes that would not open; a fearful welter of blood on throat and chest.
“Look at me! Speak to me! You aren’t dead—look at me! It’s Laura! Hal—Hal!”
Her words were disjointed. For a moment presence of mind left her. For a moment, she was just a frightened girl, suddenly confronted by this horrible thing, by the broken, dying body of the man she had so loved. And while that moment lasted she cried out; she gathered Hal to her breast; she called to him and called again, and got no answer.
But soon her first anguish passed. She whipped back her reason and forced herself to think. The prescience she had felt of evil had indeed come true. Thefurtive, dark figures that from her window she had seen slinking toward Hadlock’s Cove, had indeed sought Hal just as she had felt that they were seeking him. And the numb grief that, after she had seen Hal passing down the road, had still chained her at that upper window peering out into the darkening storm, had all at once given place to action.
What strategies she had had to employ to escape from the house! What a battle with the tempest she had fought, with wind and rain tearing at her long coat, the pocket of which had held the flashlight! Ay, and that battle had been only a skirmish compared to the launching of a dory, the mad struggle through the surf. All thought of danger flung to the wings of heaven, all fear of Hal abandoned, and of losing her good name in case of being seen by any one, so she had battled her way to him—to warn him, to save him.
Laura, suddenly grown calm with that heroic resolution which inspires every true woman in the moment of need, let the boy’s head fall back and mustered her thoughts. She realized the essential thing was go for help, at once. Strong as she was, and nerved with desperation, she knew the task of dragging Hal up the companionway, of getting him into her dory, of carrying him ashore in the gale-beaten surf surpassed her powers.
So she must leave him, even though he should die alone there.
But, first, she could at least give him some aid. She peered about her, flicking the electric beam over the trampled confusion. What could she use for bandages? A smashed suit-case yawned wide, its contents slewed about. She caught up a shirt, tore it into broad strips and, laying the flashlight in the berth, bent to her work.
“Oh, God!” she whispered, as she laid bare thewound; but though she felt giddy, she kept on. The sagging dead weight of Hal’s body almost overbore her strength. She held it up, however, and very tightly bound him, up around the massive neck, over the back, across the high-arched, muscular chest. She knotted her bandages, and let Hal sink down again.
Then she smoothed back his drabbled hair. She bent and kissed him; snatched the light, turned and fled up the companion, clambered down into the dory, and cast loose.
All the strength of her young arms had to strain their uttermost. Passionately she labored. The wounded man no longer was the brute who had so cruelly sought to wrong her. He was no longer the untamed savage, the bully, the thief. No, in his helplessness he had gone swiftly back to the boy she had known and loved—just Hal, her boy.
The storm-devils, snatching at her, seemed incarnate things that fought her for his life. The wind that drove her away from the shingle-beach and toward the rocks below Jim Gordon’s store, the lathering crests that spewed their cold surges into the dory as it heaved high and swung far down, seemed shouting: “Death to Hal!”
Laura, her hair down and flying wild, pulled till wrists and arms seemed breaking. For a few minutes she thought herself lost; but presently, when breath and strength were at the ragged edge, she began to hear the loud, rattling clamor of pebbles on the shingle. A breaker caught the dory, flung it half round, upset it. Into the water, strangling, struggling, Laura plunged. The backwash caught her, tugged at her. She found footing, lost it, fell and choked a cry in cold brine.
The next breaker heaved her up. She crawled through wrack and weed, over jagged stones, and fell exhausted on a sodden windrow of drift.
For a minute she could move no further, but had to lie under the pelting rain, with the dark hands of ocean clutching to drag her back. But presently a little strength revived. She crawled forward once more, staggered to her feet, and, falling, getting up again, won to the top of the dune.
Off to her left, dim through the shouting night, the vague light-blurs of old man Gordon’s windows were fronting the tempest. The girl struggled forward, sobbing for breath. Not all the fury of the North Atlantic, flung against that shore, had turned her from her task.
Astonished beyond words, the lobstermen and fishers eyed her with blank faces as she burst in the door. Under the light of tin reflectors, quids remained unchewed, pipes unsmoked. Bearded jaws fell. Eyes blinked.
The girl’s wet, draggled hair, her bloodless face and burning eyes stunned them all.
“Quick, quick!” she implored. “Hal Briggs—”
“What’s he done now, girl?” cried old Sy Whittaker, starting up. “He ain’t hurtyou, has he? If hehas—”
“He’s been stabbed, aboard theKittiwink! He’s bleeding to death there!”
Chairs scraped. Excitement blazed.
“What’s that, Laura?” cried Gordon. “Stabbed? Who done it?”
“Oh, no matter—go, quick—go,go!”
“Damn funny!” growled a voice from behind the stove. “Gal goin’ aboard night like this, an’ him stabbed. Looks mighty bad!”
“You’ll look a damn sight wuss if you say that agin, or anythin’ like it!” shouted the old storekeeper with doubled fist. “Hal Briggs ain’t worryin’ me none, but this here is Laura, old man Maynard’s gal,an’ by the Jeeruzlem nobody ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ about her! Tell me, gal,” he added, “is he hurt bad?”
She caught him by the arm. He had to hold her up.
“Dying, Jim! Bleeding to death! Oh, for the love of God—hurry,hurry!”
Around them the rough, bearded men jostled in pea-coats, slickers, sou’westers. The tin reflectors struck harsh lights and shadows from rugged faces of astonishment.
“Who could o’ done it?” began Shorrocks, the blacksmith. “They’d oughta be ketched, an’—”
“Never you mind about that!” cried Gordon. He caught from a nail a formless old felt hat and jammed it on his head; he snatched up a lighted lantern standing on the counter, and with a hobnailed clatter ran for the door.
“Everybody out!” he bellowed. “Everybody out now, to help Laura!”
Into the storm he flung himself. All hands cascaded toward the door.
“You stay here, gal!” advised Asahel Calkins, lobsterman. “Ain’t no night fer you!”
“I can’t stay! Let me go, too!” she pleaded. They made way for her. With the men she ran. Two or three others had lanterns, but these made no more than tiny dancing blurs of light in the drenching dark. Along a path, then into the field and up to the storm-scourged dune they stumbled, pantingly, bucking the gale. The lanterns set giant legs of shadows striding up against the curtain of the rain-drive, as the men pressed onward. Snapping, Laura’s skirts flailed.
Over the dune they charged, and scuffled down to the dories. Disjointed words, cries, commands whipped away. Strong hands hustled a dory down. Laura was clambering in already, but Jim Gordon pulled her back.
“No, gal, no!” he ordered sternly. His voice flared on the wind as he shoved her into the arms of Shorrocks. “You, Henry, look out for her. Don’t let her do nothin’ foolish!”
He set his lantern in the dory, impressed Calkins and another into his service, and scrambled aboard. A dozen hands ran the dory out through the first breakers. Oars caught; and as the men came up the beach, dripping in the vague lantern-light, the dory pulled away.
To Laura, waiting with distracted fear among the fishermen, it seemed an hour; yet at the most hardly fifteen minutes had passed before the little boat came leaping shoreward in white smothers. Out jumped Gordon. Laura ran to him, knee-deep in a breaker.
“Is he—dead?” she shivered, with clacking teeth.
“Nope. Ain’t much time to lose, though, an’ that’s a fact. He’s cutsome, looks like! Goddy mighty, but there must o’ been some fight out there!”
He turned to the dory. With others, he lifted out a heavy body, wrapped in sailcloth, horribly suggestive of a burial at sea. Laura gripped her hands together for self-mastery.
“Oh, hurry, hurry!” she entreated.
“We’ll do all we kin, gal,” some one answered, “but we ain’t no real amb’lance-corpse. It’s goin’ to be a slow job, gittin’ him home.”
“Here, Laura, you carry a lantern an’ go ahead, ’cross the field,” commanded Gordon, with deep wisdom. Only to give her something to do, something to occupy her mind, was kindness of the deepest. Into her hand old Calkins thrust a lantern.
“All ready!” cried he. “H’ist anchor, an’ away!”
Seven or eight men got hold, round the edges of the sailcloth, and so, swinging the inert Hal as in a cradle, they stumbled to the road, with Laura going on ahead.
To the right they turned, toward Snug Haven.Now Laura walked beside them. Once in a while she looked at the white face half seen in its white cradle, now beginning to be mottled with crimson stains.
But she said no other word. Strong with the calm that had reasserted itself, she walked that night road of storm and agony.
Thus was Hal Briggs borne back to his grandfather’s house.
In the cabin at Snug Haven old Captain Briggs—having finished his letter to Hal and put that, too, in the safe—had now come to the last task of all, the sacrifice that, so he faithfully believed, was to remove the curse of Dengan Jouga from his boy.
A strange lassitude weighed down upon the old man, the weariness that comes when a long journey is almost done and the lights of home begin to shine out through “the evening dews and damps.” The captain felt that he had come at last to journey’s end. He sat there at his desk, eying the revolver, a sturdy, resolute figure; an heroic figure, unflinchingly determined; a figure ennobled by impending sacrifice, thoughtful, quiet, strong. His face, that had been lined with grief, had grown quite calm. The light upon it seemed less from his old-time cabin-lamp than from some inner flame. With a new kind of happiness, more blessed than any he had ever known, he smiled.
“Thank God!” he murmured, with devout earnestness. “It won’t be long now afore I’m with the others that have waited for me all this time up there on Croft Hill. I’m glad to go. It isn’t everybody than can save the person they love best of anything in the world, by dying. I thought God was hard with me, but after all I find He’s very good. He’ll understand. He’d ought to know, Himself, what dying means to save something that must be saved!”
Once more he looked at Hal’s picture. Earnestly and simply, he kissed it. Then he laid it on the desk again.
“Good-by,” said he. “Maybe you won’t ever understand. Maybe you’ll blame me. Lots will. I’ll be called a coward. You’ll have to bear some burden on account of me, but this is the only way.”
His expression reflected the calm happiness which comes with realization that to die for one beloved is a better and more blessèd thing than life. Never had old Captain Briggs felt such joy. Not only was he opening the ways of life to Hal, but he was cleansing his own soul. And all at once he felt the horror of this brooding curse was lifting—this curse which, during fifty years, had been reaching out from the dark and violent past.
He breathed deeply and picked up the revolver.
“God, Thou art very good to me,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t understand the way till it was shown me. But now I understand.”
Toward his berth he turned, to lie down there for the last time. As he advanced toward it he became vaguely conscious of some confusion outside. A sound of voices, gusty and faint through the wind, reached him. These came nearer, grew louder.
Listening, he paused, with a frown. Of a sudden, feet clumped on the front steps. Heavily they thudded across the porch. And with sharp insistence his electric door-bell trilled its musicalbrrr!
“What’s that, now?” said the captain. Premonitions of evil pierced his heart. As he hesitated, not knowing what to do, the front door boomed with the thudding of stout fists. A heavy boot kicked the panels. A voice bawled hoarsely:
“Briggs! Ahoy, there, cap’n! Let us in! Fer God’s sake, let us in!”