The Blood Ship Part 14

If Boston meant to give me something to think about, he succeeded. He left me worried. Not about the treasure or mutiny at which he hinted; for the time being I put this subject out of my mind. I was concerned over his unexplained warning. What did it mean? Did some new danger threaten my friend?

I went in search of Newman, to give him the warning. He was not in his bunk, so I stepped into the port foc'sle, expecting to find him by Nils' side. Nils was dying--we had been expecting him to go at almost any hour for a week past--and Newman had been spending a goodly share of his watches below by the lad's side.

But he was not there now. The parson, and some of the squareheads of the port watch, were keeping sick vigil. Nils was very near the time when he must slip his cable; he lay quiet, eyes closed, hardly breathing, and his thin, white face seemed already composed into its death mold. Holy Joe sat holding the boy's hand; his head was bowed, and I judged he was praying. The others stared miserably at the floor, or ceiling, or at each other. Aye, the taste of bitter sorrow was in the air of the port foc'sle. I left without disturbing the silent watchers, but I wondered at their boldness. They should have been on deck. Mister Fitzgibbon did not give his men respite, even during the dog-watches.

I went poking about the odd corners of the fore deck, expecting to find my man tucked away somewhere smoking and meditating, for Newman was a solitary fellow, very fond of his own company in his free time. I laid the ill-success of my search to the dusk; it was past seven bells, and although there was still a glow in the western sky, on board ship it was quite dark and the sidelights had been out a half hour. Finally, I decided to lay off, waylay the n.i.g.g.e.r when he came for'ard from his trick at the wheel, and ask him myself what was the meaning of Boston's talk of "snitch."

Now it was no light undertaking for a foremast hand to trespa.s.s abaft the main mast in the _Golden Bough_. There was risk in it, risk of a beating, or worse. A man might lay aft in that ship to work, or in obedience to orders, but for no other reason. h.e.l.l-ship discipline.

So I slipped aft without making a noise, and avoided attracting to myself unwelcome attention from the p.o.o.p. I was barefoot, and I crept along the rail, keeping within the shadows on the lee deck. When I came abreast the roundhouse, I darted into the black shadow it threw upon the lee deck, and crouched there, composed to wait. My eyes were aft, upon the break of the p.o.o.p, and I was ready to take instant flight for'ard, did discovery threaten me.

After I had lain there a moment, I noticed the figure of a man standing motionless, flattened against the cabin wall, on my side of the deck.

He was so still he appeared to be lifeless, a part of the ship; I looked hard before I decided it was a man. It was too dark to make out his features, almost too dark to discern outline, but by the bigness of the blot he made against his background I was sure the man was Newman.

What he was doing in such a position I could not guess, but I was so sure of my man, I did not hesitate to move towards him. I even spoke his name, in an urgent whisper.

My hiss brought a prompt response, but not the one for which I was looking. To my surprise the fellow ran away from me; he slipped across the deck (padding noiselessly, for he was barefoot, like, myself) and, bending nearly double, scurried for'ard beside the weather rail.

I stared after him, undecided what to do. The man looked like Newman, but he did not act like him. I had half a mind to pursue his flitting figure.

Then all at once I discovered I must take cover myself. I heard the mate's voice, up on the p.o.o.p; he was hailing his tradesmen.

"We'll take a whirl for'ard," says he. "I'll give the b.u.ms a sweat at the braces so they won't think I'm asleep."

I had moved away from the shadow of the round-house, and was revealed, as I stood, to any eye looking over the p.o.o.p rail. I was in a ticklish position altogether. If braces were to be tightened, the lee of the roundhouse would be a poor hiding-place for me. In fact it would be no hiding-place at all. But get out of sight I must, and quickly, or suffer the unpleasant consequences of discovery.

I heard boots clumping on the p.o.o.p deck. There wasn't time for me to escape forward. So I darted aft and flattened myself against the cabin wall, in exactly the same position, and in very nearly the same spot, as that occupied by the fellow I had scared away. I was not a second too soon. Sails and Chips came down the port ladder, and paused on the main deck, almost within arm's reach of me, waiting for the mate to join them.

If they had glanced in my direction they must have seen me. But they were looking forward, and were also occupied with talk.

Said Chips, "But what's the game? He's working up trouble, that's plain. But what's he after this time?"

Said Sails, "He's after that fellow in the Greaser's watch, or I'm a d.a.m.n bad guesser. But, his game--well, ask me something easy. Did you ever know anybody to fathom his game?"

This I heard with one ear. At the same time my other ear was getting filled with different kind of talk. Aye, my post was between two conversations, and I found myself eavesdropping in two directions.

This wall I hugged was the forward wall of the sail-locker, which, in the _Golden Bough_, was a large room in the cabin s.p.a.ce, and as I stood, my starboard ear was but a few inches distant from the sail-locker door. This door was in two parts, and the upper half was barely ajar. Through this narrow slit I heard--I couldn't help hearing--the murmur of low-voiced talk. Two people were in the sail-locker, talking. Oh, aye, I had discovered Newman. I recognized his voice. I recognized the other voice--the lady's voice.

"Oh, Mary--little love--it doesn't seem to matter any more. When I am with you, it is just a hideous dream from which I have awakened." It was Newman speaking, and in a voice so tender, so vibrant with feeling, it was hard to believe the words came out of the mouth of the foc'sle's iron man. "But now I wish to live again. Ah, little love, I have been dead too long, dead to everything except pain and hate. But now that I know, now that we both know--oh, Mary, surely we have earned the right to live and love. G.o.d will not hold it against us, if I take you from that mad beast. G.o.d--I am beginning to believe in G.o.d again, Mary, when I am with you."

"I, too, wish to live--and in clean air," came in the lady's voice.

"Oh, Roy--five years--and the piling up of horrors--oh, I could not have stood it very much longer, Roy. But now--we can forget."

"That lad for'ard is all ready to slip his cable," came from the other direction, from Chips. "The steward says he's all set to go."

"He's been all set for a fortnight," was the other man's comment, "but he hangs on. Takes a lot to kill a squarehead. Most likely he'll be hanging on when we make port."

"Not if I know Fitz and--him," said Chips. "You don't think they'd leave evidence of that sort for a port doctor to squint at. Remember that Portagee, last voyage, and how he finished?"

"Aye, it was hard on the lady, that job was. But he--he's a devil, sure. No use standing out against him."

"Five years! My G.o.d, how have you been able to stand it, Mary?" said Newman. "Five years--and most of them spent at sea in this blood ship!"

"It has been my penance, Roy. It has seemed to me that in sailing with him, in lessening even a little bit the misery he causes those poor men, I have been atoning, in a little measure, for my lack of faith in you. Oh, it was my fault in the beginning, dearest. If only I had had faith in the beginning, if only I had trusted my heart instead of my eyes and ears. I might have known that time that Beulah was lying."

"Hush. How could you know? It was my stubborn, stupid pride. If I had not rushed away and left the field to him. And I never knew, or even guessed, until Beasley told me."

"If I was that big fellow, I'd just hop over the side and have it over with," came from Sails. "If the Old Man is after him, he's bound to get him, and making a quick finish himself would save a lot o' bother all around."

"What's it about, anyway?" says Chips.

"How do I know?" answered Sails. "I don't go poking my nose into Yankee Swope's business, you can bet your bottom dollar I don't. I take my orders, and let it go at that. Same as you. Same as the others. There's Fitz up there now, chinning with him, and I bet Fitz don't know much more of his game than you and me. He takes his orders just like we do."

"That's right. We ain't hired to think. Not in this ship," agreed Chips.

"Do you think, Roy, that Beulah--that she jumped--herself?" The lady's voice was trembling.

"I don't know, dear. I think maybe she did. But Beasley thought--oh, well, what does it matter now?"

"Beasley thought he did it. I knew--I felt it was him, oh, long, long ago. It would be like him, Roy. He has never dropped a hint that would incriminate himself, but I have known his guilt of the other thing--for which you suffered--ever since our marriage. When he dropped the mask, revealed himself in his true character--oh, I knew he must be guilty. And I was helpless."

"My G.o.d, five years!" muttered Newman. "How could you stand it?"

"It was not so hard, except at first," said the lady. "Too much horror numbs, you know. And one thing made it endurable--he has spared me the intimacy of marriage. It is true, dearest; I am as much a maid as I was five years ago. He is that kind of a man, Roy. It is not women he l.u.s.ts for, it is--oh, it is blood. There is something horrible in his mind, a diseased spot, an unnatural quirk, that drives him to abominable cruelties. It is some tigerish instinct he possesses; it makes him kill and destroy, it makes him inflict pain. Oh, Roy, it is his pleasure--to inflict pain."

"Lynch doesn't like it," said Sails, in reply to some question I had missed hearing.

"Little good not liking it will do him," was Chips' opinion. "He'll do what the Old Man wants him to do, just like the rest of us."

"Has he ever used you--as victim?" said Newman, a new, hard note in his voice.

"No, no, not in that way," answered the lady. "It is to the crew he does that. He has never hurt me physically."

"But mentally, eh?" remarked Newman, "He enjoys refinements of cruelty, also? Mental torture, when he finds a mind intelligent enough to appreciate subtleties? That is it?"

"Yes, that is it," said the lady. "It was horrible at first. But afterwards, when I had found my work, I did not mind him very much. He let me go on playing doctor to the crew because he thought it hurt me to see and handle those poor creatures. Oh, it did hurt! But the work, the being useful--it has saved me, Roy, it has kept me sane."

"He's a good man, none better," said Chips, still talking about Lynch, "but he's too soft for a bucko's job in this wagon."

"Five years; good G.o.d! The prison was heaven compared to what you have lived through. Oh, my poor darling! And he--the vile brute----"

"No, no, not that att.i.tude! You have promised--" exclaimed the lady.

"He's not soft," Sails disputed with Chips. "He's as hard as they're made. But he's a square-shooter, Lynch is, and the rest o' us ain't.

That makes the difference. Now we got good reasons to do anything the skipper says, we being what we are, and him being what he is, and we knowing he can turn us up, and will, if we don't suit. But Jim Lynch--not Swope, or any other man, has a hold on him."

"No man, maybe," says Chips. "But in the other quarter, now. If Lynch ain't soft there, I'm a soldier."

"Who ain't a bit soft in that quarter?" Sails demanded. "I'm mighty sorry for her, same as you are, same as everyone is, save Fitz. If it wasn't that Swope has me body and soul, I'd side with Lynch, b'Gawd, in anything he wanted to start."