A Man to His Mate Part 23

PEGGY SIMMS

"Caught with the goods!" said Lund. "Two tries at mutiny in one day, my lads. You want to git it into your boneheads that I'm runnin' this ship from now on. I can sail it without ye and, by G.o.d, I'll set the bunch of ye ash.o.r.e same's you figgered on doin' with me if you don't sit up an'

take notice! The rifles an' guns"--he glanced at the orderly display of weapons in racks on the wall--"are too vallyble to chuck over, but here go the sh.e.l.ls, ev'ry last one of them. So that nips _that_ little plan, Deming."

He turned back the slip to display the contents.

"Open a port, Rainey, an' heave the lot out."

Rainey did so while the hunters gazed on in silent chagrin.

"There's one thing more," said Lund, grinning at them. "If enny of you saw a man hurtin' a dog, you'd probably fetch him a wallop. But you don't think ennything of scarin' the life out of a half-baked kid an'

markin' up his hide like a patchwork quilt. Thet kid's stayin' aft after this. One of you monkey with him, an' you'll do jest what he's bin doin', wish you was dead an' overboard."

He turned on his heel and walked to the door, Rainey following.

"Burial of the skipper at dawn," said Lund. "All hands on deck, clean an' neatly dressed to stand by. An' see yore behavior fits the occasion.

Deming, you'll turn out, too. No malingerin'."

It was plain that the news of the captain's death was known to them.

They showed no surprise. Rainey was sure that Tamada had not mentioned it. It had leaked out through the grape-vine telegraphy of all ships.

Doubtless, he thought, the after-cabin and its doings was always being spied upon.

"Will you take the service ter-morrer?" Lund asked Rainey when they were back in the cabin. "Bein' as yo're an eddicated chap?"

"Why--I don't know it. Is there a prayer-book aboard? I thought the skipper always presided."

"I'm only deputy-skipper w'en it comes down to that," said Lund. "It ain't my ship. I'm jest runnin' it under contract with my late partner.

The ship belongs to the gal. And yo're top officer now, in the regular run. As to a prayer-book, there ain't sech an article aboard to my knowledge. But I'd like to have it go off shipshape. For Simms' sake as well as the gal's. I reckon he used his best jedgment 'bout puttin' back after me on the floe. I might have done the same thing myself."

Rainey doubted that statement, and set it down to Lund's generosity.

Many of his late words and actions had displayed a latent depth of feeling that he had never credited Lund with possessing. He could not help believing that, in some way, the girl had brought them to the surface.

"I thought I saw a Bible in the safe," he said, "when we were looking for the sh.e.l.ls. There may be a prayer-book. I suppose there have been occasions for it. The mate died at sea last trip."

"There may be," returned Lund. "That's where Simms 'ud keep it. He warn't what you'd call a religious man. We'll take a look afore we turn in."

There were offices to be performed for the dead captain that the girl, with all her willingness, could not attempt. Lund did not mention them, and Rainey vacillated about disturbing her until he saw Tamada go through the cabin with folded canvas and a flag. The j.a.panese tapped on the door, which was instantly opened to him. He had been expected.

There was no doubt that Tamada, with his medical experience, was best fitted for the task, but it seemed to Rainey also that the girl had deliberately ignored their services and that, despite her involuntary admiration of Lund's fight against odds, or in revulsion of it, she reckoned them hostile to her sentiments. Lund roused him by talking of the burial-service for Simms.

"You're a writer," he said. "What's the good of knowin' how to handle words if you can't fake up some sort of a service? One's as good as another, long as it sounds like the real thing.

"I reckon there's a G.o.d," he went on. "Somethin' that started things, somethin' that keeps the stars from runnin' each other down, but, after He wound up the clock He made, I don't figger He bothers much about the works.

"Luck's the big thing that counts. We're all in on the deal. Some of us git the deuces an' treys, an' some git the aces. If yo're born lucky things go soft for you. But, if it warn't for luck, for the chance an'

the hope of it, things 'ud be upside down an' plain anarchy in a jiffy.

If it warn't the pore devil's idea that his luck has got to change for the better, mebbe ter-morrer, he'd start out an' cut his own throat, or some one else's, if he had ginger enough."

"It's hardly all luck, is it?" asked Rainey. "Look at you! You're bigger than most men, stronger, better equipped to get what you want."

"h.e.l.l!" laughed Lund. "I was lucky to be born that way. But you've got to fudge up some sort of a service to suit the gal. You've got that Bible. It ought to be easy. Simms wouldn't give a whoop, enny more'n I would. When yo're dead yo're through, so far's enny one can prove it to you. A dead body's a nuisance, an' the sooner it's got rid of the better. But if it's goin' to make the livin' feel enny better for spielin' off some fine words, why, hop to it an' make up yore speech."

Peggy Simms saved Rainey by producing a prayer-book, bringing it to Lund, her face pale but composed enough, and her shadowed eyes calm as she gave it to him.

"I reckon Rainey here 'ud read it better'n me," he said. "He's a scholar."

"If you will," asked the girl. She seemed to have outworn her first sorrow, to have obtained a grip of herself that, with the dignity of her bereavement, the very control of her undoubted grief, set up a barrier between her and Lund. Rainey was conscious of this fence behind which the girl had retreated. She was polite, but she did not ask this service as a favor, as a friendly act. Refusal, even, would not have visibly affected her, he fancied. There was an invisible armor about her that might be added to at any moment by a shield of silent scorn. Somehow, if s.e.x had, for a swift moment, brought her and Lund into any contact, that same s.e.x, showing another aspect, set them far apart.

Lund showed that he felt it, running his splay fingers through his beard in evident embarra.s.sment, while Rainey took the book silently, looking through the pages for the ritual of "Burial at Sea."

Arrangements had been made on deck long before dawn. A section of the rail had been removed and a grating arranged that could be tipped at the right moment for the consignment of the captain's body to the deep.

The sea was running in long heaves, and the sun rose in a clear sky. The ocean was free from ice, though the wind was cold. Here and there a berg, far off, caught the sparkle of the sun and, to the north, parallel to their course, the peaks of the Aleutian Isles, broken b.u.t.tresses of an ancient seabridge, showed sharply against the horizon.

At four bells in the morning watch all hands had a.s.sembled, save for Tamada and Hansen, who appeared bearing the canvas-enveloped, flag-draped body of Simms, his sea-shroud weighted by heavy pieces of iron. Peggy Simms followed them, and, as the crew, with shuffling feet and throats that were repeatedly cleared, gathered in a semicircle, she arranged the folds of the Stars and Stripes that Hansen attached to a light line by one corner.

Whatever Lund affected, the solemnity of the occasion held the men. They uncovered and stood with bowed heads that hid the bruised faces of the hunters. Lund's own damaged features were lowered as Rainey commenced to read. Only Deming's face, gray from the effort of coming on deck and the pain in his arm, held the semblance of a sneer that was largely bravado.

A hunter had his arm tucked in that of his comrade with the broken ribs.

A seaman was told off to the wheel and the schooner was held to the wind with all sheets close inboard, rising and falling on an almost level keel.

"_And the body shall be cast into the sea._"

At the words Lund and Hansen tilted the grating. There was a slight pause as if the body were reluctant to start on its last journey, and then it slid from the platform and plunged into the sea, disappearing instantly under the urge of the weights, with a hissing aeration of the water. The flag, held inboard by the line, fluttered a moment and subsided over the grating. The girl turned toward them, her head up.

"Thank you," she said, and went below.

"That's over," said Lund, letting out whatever emotions he might have repressed in a long breath. "Now, then, trim ship! Watch-off, get below.

We're goin' to drive her for all she's worth."

He took the wheel himself as the men jumped to the sheets and soon Lund was getting every foot of possible speed out of the schooner. He was as good a sailor as Simms, inclined to take more chances, but capable of handling them.

The girl kept below and seldom came out of her cabin, Tamada serving her meals in there. Rainey could see Lund's resentment growing at this att.i.tude that seemed to him normal enough, though it might present difficulty later if persisted in. But the morning that they headed up through Sequam Pa.s.s between the spouting reefs of Sequam and Amlia Islands, she came on deck and went forward to the bows, taking in deep breaths of the bracing air and gazing north to the free expanse of Bering Strait. Rainey left her alone, but Lund welcomed her as she came back aft.

"Glad to see you on deck again, Miss Peggy," he said. "You need sun and air to git you in shape again."

His glance held vivid admiration of her as he spoke, a glance that ran over her rounded figure with a frank approval that Rainey resented, but to which the girl paid no attention. She seemed to have made up her mind to a change of att.i.tude.

"How far have we yet to go?" she asked.

"A'most a thousan' miles to the Strait proper," said Lund. "The Nome-Unalaska steamer lane lies to the east. Runs close to the Pribilofs, three hundred miles north, with Hall an' St. Matthew three hundred further. Then comes St. Lawrence Isle, plumb in the middle of the Strait, with Siberia an' Alaska closin' in."

He was keen to hold her in conversation, and she willing to listen, a.s.senting almost eagerly when he offered to point out their positions on the chart, spread on the cabin table. Lund talked well, for all his limited and at times luridly inclined vocabulary, whenever he talked of the sea and of his own adventures, stating them without brag, but bringing up striking pictures of action, full of the color and savor of life in the raw. From that time on Peggy Simms came to the table and talked freely with Lund, more conservatively with Rainey.

The newspaperman was no experienced a.n.a.lyst of woman nature, but he saw, or thought he saw, the girl watching Lund closely when he talked, studying him, sometimes with more than a hint of approbation, at others with a look that was puzzled, seeming to be working at a problem. The giant's liking for her, boyish at times, or swiftly changing to bolder appraisal, grew daily.

The girl, Rainey decided, was humoring Lund, seeking to know how with her feminine methods she might control him, keep him within bounds. Her coldness, it seemed, she had cast aside as an expedient that might prove too provoking and worthless.

And Rainey's valuation of her resources increased. She was handling her woman's weapons admirably, yet when he sometimes, at night, under the cabin lamp, saw the smoldering light glowing in Lund's agate eyes, he knew that she was playing a dangerous game.