Mr. Wicker's Window Part 27

The shark, in one long powerful movement, had turned and gone under the dolphin, which now raced upward from the dim, lightless depths of the sea to the surface where it hoped to escape. The shark turned on its back with a motion at once lazy and sickening in its a.s.surance of its prey. Its soft greenish-white belly glimmered slimily in the sea, its frightful jaws open as it came almost languidly up through the water, certain of snapping its adversary in half.

But in that one moment when it turned belly uppermost, its eyes were unable to watch its goal, and in that moment the dolphin made a desperate leap from the water and a sea bird soared into the air.

The sea bird had no more than wheeled to sight the shark below, when a scream from the air above it made it instantly drop and shift to one side as a hawk, talons spread and eyes red with hatred, plunged down from a great height, its beak open to seize and to rend.

The sea bird, veering away on the wind, became a fly, but the hawk instantly vanished to be replaced by a bat, which darted after the fly with such velocity that it was the current of air from its wings that drove the fly closer to the pirate ship.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

With a despairing effort, the fly flew directly into the smoke of the battle, and at that moment a mouse hid in a corner near an overturned cask shaking in all its limbs, its pointed teeth chattering with fright. Finally regaining its breath, it ventured to look around the corner. All seemed serene to the mouse, who saw no shadow of danger, although sounds of battle still ebbed and flowed on the deck below it, crisscrossed by shouts and orders, screams and groans, as the pirates and the sailors of the _Mirabelle_ doggedly fought on. The mouse wished to retake its own shape and continue its work with the magic knife which had been interrupted, it thought, too soon to have done any good. At last it decided to run along the deck near Claggett Chew's cabin. From there it hoped to reach the side of the ship nearest to the _Mirabelle_.

As it slipped from its hiding place and began its run, it realized too late its mistake, and panic almost overcame it. For a cat had been crouched behind it and now gave a mighty pounce. One outstretched paw came down on the mouse's tail, but the mouse wrenched it free and desperate and panting, dashed into the first opening it saw.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

This proved to be no less than Claggett Chew's cabin, the door of which had been left open so that Osterbridge Hawsey could watch the fight with the least possible discomfort. He sat, somnolent, in a comfortable chair, his long legs stretched out before him, smoking a clay pipe. His attention wandering, as it so often did, he failed to see the mouse who ran under his legs into the shadow beneath them.

The frantic mouse now determined, in the seconds left to it for decision, to attempt a bold move. In a flash--in fact, as a black cat with angry yellow-slitted eyes put its head around the door jamb--a jade-green parakeet with red and yellow breast feathers hopped onto Osterbridge Hawsey's ankle, and with a speed tempered by its most engaging ways, sidled up Osterbridge Hawsey's outstretched leg.

The yellow-eyed cat made a dash with both clawing paws outstretched to fall upon the bird, but the parakeet fluttered into the air out of reach and came down higher up on Osterbridge Hawsey's knee.

Osterbridge, startled from his daydream, shooed away the cat and got up precipitously enough to give it a kick which sent it miaowling from the cabin. Osterbridge, vastly pleased to see his green parakeet again, was wreathed in smiles.

"Ah, now!" he exclaimed, holding out a condescending finger, "Pet.i.t Monsieur back again! How too simply enchanting! Just when poor Osterbridge was _so_ bored and had no one to talk to! Well, my pretty--" and both Osterbridge and the parakeet c.o.c.ked their heads at one another--"and where have _you_ been, I wonder?"

Osterbridge examined the little bird perched on his finger and his eyes were thoughtful. "It is true, you have a tiny mark at the side of your jaw--if parakeets have jaws, my friend. But there is no such thing as magic. Not the kind of magic whereby a human can be something else!"

He broke into peals of high laughter. "What a joke if it were possible! Now what could _I_ be, eh?"

He looked fondly at the bird and the bird looked back at him, daring to open its beak and emit a small but clear "Haw!"

"Haw yourself!" returned Osterbridge in high good humor. He leaned back in his chair.

"Now, all this is a most _engaging_ train of thought," he pursued. "If I could change myself, _what_ should I be?"

He fell to musing, and as he did so the dreaded shadow Chris had antic.i.p.ated fell across the doorway. A moment later Claggett Chew, limping from an old wound and a newly received bruise, stood in the entrance.

Osterbridge Hawsey yawned. "Ah--there you are at last, Claggett," he said, "Battle all over? It still sounds _rather_ ferocious, to me. But of course I am no expert. Heaven forbid!" Osterbridge ended, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling with his vague smile.

As Claggett Chew did not reply, Osterbridge looked back at him. The pirate's eyes were fixed on the parakeet, and his twitching fingers played with the steel-tipped whip. Claggett Chew's voice when it came was as sharp and as cold as a dagger in a dead man.

"I will have that bird, Osterbridge," he said.

Osterbridge's expression did not change but his eyes did, and they became almost as icy as Claggett Chew's.

"Oh no, you will not, Claggett," he said, and his high-pitched voice managed to be saturated with sarcasm. "This is the one thing that is keeping me from _unutterable_ boredom, while you go into your interminable fight." He paused to give Claggett Chew a cutting look.

"You know how I feel about piracy--too terribly degrading, though I can see it has its excitement and rewards. But it _is_ unnecessary--"

Claggett Chew's eyes had a way of not blinking. They held a crocodile fixity. His tone, when he spoke again, did not vary. "I am not a trader, Osterbridge. Nor shall I bandy words with you on this subject.

Give me that bird, or I shall take it from you!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Osterbridge Hawsey rose with a slow grace from his chair, his hand curled gently but protectingly around his parakeet.

"Claggett," he said in his thin voice that cut now with the unexpected thinness of paper, "I am sorry to say such a thing to you, but your fever during the weeks just past has undoubtedly altered your brain.

You are a madman, Claggett." Osterbridge Hawsey removed himself with deliberation from the proximity of the doorway, placing himself on the other side of the cabin table over which hung the swinging lamp. He did not turn his back to Claggett Chew nor take his eyes from him.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Kindly leave the room, Claggett," he went on, in too quiet a voice to be otherwise than poisonous, "until you are more yourself. Your conduct and tone are unbecoming to a gentleman," Osterbridge said, with his head held high in disdainful dignity.

They were an extraordinary sight. The shaven-headed, clay-faced pirate looming so high and so huge in the doorway that he filled it altogether, his clothes torn, filthy and stained from the battle and from careless weeks at sea. His companion was a travesty of his onetime elegance, dirty lace ruffles spotted by forgotten meals, his velvet coat marked by chairbacks and soiled from months of constant wear, his hair unwashed and sleazily caught back, no longer curled with a fine exact.i.tude. Both men had been housed together for too long. Long ago they had exhausted all topics of conversation, their two difficult personalities had for months been festering, each at the sight of the other.

Now Claggett Chew ground out between his clenched teeth: "You are a fool, Osterbridge. Have always been one and will so remain. Do you defy me and do not give up that bird, as h.e.l.l is my witness I shall s.n.a.t.c.h it from you with this whip, and nothing shall stop me!"

Osterbridge reached behind him with his right hand, holding the parakeet in an increasingly uncomfortable and tightening grip in his left. On the wall behind him hung his rapier in its scabbard, delicately incised and showing the fine workmanship of its French origin. With a quick, deft movement, Osterbridge's fingers had found the hilt and drawn the rapier out, his face snarling, his eyes expressionless. They were fixed on Claggett Chew who had not moved from where he leaned against the side of the doorway.

Osterbridge Hawsey's voice was almost more frightening when he spoke again than Claggett Chew's, as he slowly brought the rapier to his side with quiet calculated gestures.

"I have had enough of your ordering, Claggett. You may order your scurvy men about as you wish--half-wits, rascals, thieves and murderers who know no better than to do your bidding, knowing they may well die by your hands as by some other. But you have met your match.

I, Osterbridge Hawsey, shall not give in to a madman and a murdering pillager. How I ever came to join you or your pirates G.o.d alone knows, but you shall not govern me! Nor shall you have one object that is my own! _En garde!_" he cried, whisking out the rapier.

As he did so--such is the force and training of habit--his left hand automatically came up in the first position of the fencer and the duelist, and as it came up and the fingers slackened about the parakeet, the long whip lashed out and curled around Osterbridge Hawsey's hand. The parakeet ducked into encircling fingers, Osterbridge Hawsey let out a piercing scream, more of rage than of pain, and opened his hand. The parakeet, liberated, flew straight into the face of the man with the whip, pecking at it with its sharp beak, scratching at it with his pin-like claws, and beating its wings in such confusing fury that the pirate bobbed his head. At the same time the big man stepped backward, throwing up his left arm in an attempt either to catch the bird or drive it off.

But the bird's attack lasted for only a moment. Then, as Claggett Chew's fingers grasped at it, the parakeet was off over his shoulder and lost in the din and obscurity of the battle. Behind it it heard the cries of hatred and rage as the pirate and Osterbridge Hawsey faced one another in the cabin to fight with whip and sword amid the crash of overturned tables and chairs and the splintering crack of the lamp and the windowpanes.

CHAPTER 34

Safe on the _Mirabelle_, Chris, exhausted and increasingly conscious of the pain of the whiplash, took his own shape with sighs of thankfulness and looked about him. A wind was rising, rocking the interlocked ships, and he could plainly see that the crew of the _Mirabelle_ had done enormous damage to the _Vulture_ and its attacking men. Cannon shots from the opening sally, and at such close range, had broken two of its three masts, and the decks of the _Vulture_ were a clutter and tangle of lines, sails and splintered spars. The fact that the men of the _Mirabelle_ were in better physical shape than the pirates stood them in good stead, for their agility and strength had carried them through the battle even against the wilier and more murderous knowledge of Claggett Chew's men. The pirates, Chris could see, were turning back, and those who still fought were one and all wounded or grazed, and losing ground with every pa.s.sing moment.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Chris had been so terrified and panicstricken by his own personal danger and fight for life that it took him a few minutes to catch his breath and grasp the situation from where he stood on the Captain's bridge. Wondering if he still had the strength to force a leak in the _Vulture's_ hull, as he had begun to do, he felt in the leather pouch at his neck for the knife. At the bottom of the pouch his fingernails. .h.i.t a gritty substance, and into his head came an echo of Mr. Wicker's words: "Remember the leather pouch!"

Taking out the knife, the folded balloon, and the map of where the Jewel Tree had been, Chris, leaning against the side of the _Mirabelle_, shook out the grainy stuff into the palm of one hand.

It looked like ground-up lava. Gray-black, almost a powder, it had a faintly sulphurous smell. As he turned it speculatively in his hand, wondering how he was supposed to use it, a few grains sifted between Chris's fingers and fell over the side into the sea.

Instantly, as soon as they touched the water, several infinitesimal flames started up, burning on the waves as hardily as if they had fallen onto dry gra.s.s, and their heat produced a st.u.r.dy mist which rose in heavy spirals from every grain.

Then Chris knew what it was for. Shaking every particle carefully back into the bag, he hurried to find Captain Blizzard.

"Sir!" he cried as soon as he was within earshot, "the pirates are bested, and we can make a safe escape if you will give an order to set loose the grappling irons and lines and bid our men raise sail!" He looked eagerly at Captain Blizzard. "The pirates look pretty tired now, but the _Vulture_ might pursue us if I didn't know a way to stop her!"

The Captain looked thoughtfully at Chris and hesitated not at all.