Harrigan Part 23

"You ain't got much reason for standing in with White Henshaw?" he purred.

"H'm," grunted the Irishman, and waited.

"Sure, you ain't," went on Hovey soothingly, "because McTee has raised h.e.l.l between you. They say McTee tried his d.a.m.nedest to break you?"

The last question was put in a different manner; it came suddenly like a surprise blow in the dark.

"Well?" queried Harrigan. "What of it?"

"He tried all the way from Honolulu?"

"He did."

"Did he try his fists?"

"He did."

Jerry Hovey cursed with excitement.

"And?"

"I carried him to his cabin afterward," said Harrigan truthfully.

"Would you take on McTee again? Black McTee?"

"If I had to. Why?"

"Oh, nothin'. But McTee has started White Henshaw on your trail. Maybe you know what Henshaw is? The whole South Seas know him!"

"Well?"

"You'll have a sweet h.e.l.l of a time before this boat touches port, Harrigan."

"I'll weather it."

"Yes, this trip, but what about the next? If Henshaw is breakin' a man, he keeps him on the ship till the man gives in or dies. I know!

Henshaw'll get so much against you that he could soak you for ten years in the courts by the time we touch port. Then he'll offer to let you off from the courts if you'll ship with him again, and then the old game will start all over again. You may last one trip--other men have--one or two--but no one has ever lasted out three or four shippings under White Henshaw. It can't be done!"

He paused to let this vital point sink home. Only the same dull silence came in reply, and this continued taciturnity seemed to irritate Hovey.

When he spoke again, his voice was cold and sharp.

"He's got you trapped, Harrigan. You're a strong man, but you'll never get his rope off your neck. He'll either hang you with it or else tie you hand and foot an' make you his slave. I _know!_"

There was a bitter emphasis on the last word that left no doubt as to his meaning, and Harrigan understood now the light of that steady, gray-blue eye which made the habitual smile of good nature meaningless.

"Ten years ago I shipped with White Henshaw. Ten years ago I didn't have a crooked thought or a mean one in my brain. Today there's h.e.l.l inside me, understand? h.e.l.l!" He paused, breathing hard.

"There's others on this ship that have been through the same grind, some of them longer than me. There's others that ain't here, but that ain't forgotten, because me an' some of the rest, we seen them dyin' on their feet. Maybe they ain't dropped into the sea, but they're just the same, or worse. You'll find 'em loafin' along the beaches. They take water from the natives, they do."

He went on in a hoa.r.s.e whisper: "On this ship I've seen 'em busted. An'

Henshaw has done the bustin'. This is a coffin ship, Harrigan, an'

Henshaw he's the undertaker. He don't bring 'em to Davy Jones's locker--he does worse--he brings 'em to h.e.l.l on earth, a h.e.l.l so bad that when they go below, they don't notice no difference. Harrigan, me an' a few of the rest, we know what's been done, an' some of us have thought wouldn't it be a sort of joke, maybe, if sometime what Henshaw has done to others was done to himself, what?"

The sweat was standing out on Harrigan's face wet and cold. It seemed to him that through the darkness he could make out whole troops of those broken men littering the decks. He peered through the dark at the bos'n, and made out the hint of the gray-blue eyes watching him again as the cat watches the mousehole, and the heart of Harrigan ached.

"Hovey, are you bound for the loincloth an' the beaches, like the rest?"

"No, because I've sold my soul to White Henshaw; but you're bound there, Harrigan, because you can never sell your soul. I looked in your eyes and seen it written there like it was in a book."

He gripped the Irishman by the shoulder.

"There's some say this is the last voyage of White Henshaw, but me an'

some of the rest, we know different. He can't leave the sea, which means that he won't take us out of h.e.l.l. Now, talk straight. You stood up to McTee; would you stand up to Henshaw?"

Harrigan muttered after a moment of thought: "I suppose this is mutiny, bos'n?"

"Aye, but I'm safe in talkin' it. White Henshaw trusts me, he does, because I've sold my soul to him. If you was to go an' tell him what I've said, he'd laugh at you an' say you was tryin' to incite discontent. What's it goin' to be, Harrigan? Will you join me an' the rest who can set you free an' make a man of you, or will you stay by McTee and White Henshaw and that devil Campbell?"

"How could you set me free?"

"One move--altogether--in the night--we'd have the ship for our own, an' we could beach her and take to the sh.o.r.e at any place we pleased."

Harrigan repeated: "One move--altogether--in the night! I don't like it, bos'n. I'll stand up to my man foot to foot an' hand to hand, but for strikin' at him in the dark--I can't do it."

He caught the sound of Hovey's gritting teeth.

"Think it over," persisted the bos'n. "We need you, Harrigan, but if you don't join, we'll help McTee and Henshaw and Campbell to make life h.e.l.l for you."

"I've thought it over. I don't like the game. This mutiny at night--it's like hittin' a man who's down."

"That's final?"

"It is."

"Then G.o.d help you, Harrigan, for you ain't the man I took you for."

CHAPTER 20

He rose and left Harrigan to the dark, which now lay so thick over the sea that he could only dimly make out the black, wallowing length of the ship. After a time, he went into the dingy forecastle and stretched out on his bunk. Some of the sailors were already in bed, propping their heads up with brawny, tattooed arms while they smoked their pipes. For a time Harrigan pondered the mutiny, glancing at the stolid faces of the smokers and trying to picture them in action when they would steal through the night barefooted across the deck--some of them with bludgeons, others with knives, and all with a thirst for murder.

Sleep began to overcome him, and he fought vainly against it. In a choppy sea the bows of a ship make the worst possible bed, for they toss up and down with sickening rapidity and jar quickly from side to side; but when a vessel is plowing through a long-running ground swell, the bows of the ship move with a sway more soothing than the swing of a hammock in a wind. Under these circ.u.mstances Harrigan was lulled to sleep.

He woke at length with a consciousness, not of a light shining in his face, but of one that had just been flashed across his eyes. Then a guarded voice said: "He's dead to the world; he won't hear nothin'."

Peering cautiously up from under the shelter of his eyelashes, he made out a bulky figure leaning above him.