The Cup of Fury Part 68

He searched the hold first, expecting that Nicky would naturally plant his explosives there. That indeed was his scheme, but Mamise had found among her tumbled wits one little idea only, and that was to delay Nicky as long as possible.

She suggested to him that before he began to lay his train of wires he ought to get a general view of the string of ships. The best point was the top deck, where they were just about to hoist the enormous rudder to the stern-post.

Nicky accepted the suggestion, and Mamise guided him through the labyrinth. They had met Jake at the base of the falsework, and he came along, leaving his bundle. Nicky carried his suit-case with him. He did not intend to be separated from it. Jake was always glad to be separated from work.

They made the climb, and Nicky's artistic soul lingered to praise the beautiful day for the beautiful deed. In a frenzy of talk, Mamise explained to him what she could. She pointed to the great hatchway for the locomotives and told him:

"The ship would have been in the water now if it weren't for that big hatch. It set us--the company back ninety days."

"And now the ship goes to be in the sky in about nine minutes. Come along once."

"Look down here, how deep it is!" said Mamise, and led him to the edge. She was ready to thrust him into the pit, but he kept a firm grip on a rope, and she sighed with regret.

But Davidge, looking up from the depth of the well, saw Nicky and Mamise peering over the edge. His face vanished.

"Who iss?" said Nicky. "Somebody is below dere. Who iss?"

Mamise said she did not know, and Jake had not seen.

Nicky was in a flurry. The fire in Davidge's eyes told him that Davidge was looking for him. There was a dull sound in the hitherto silent ship of some one running.

Nicky grew hysterical with wrath. To be caught at the very outset of his elaborate campaign was maddening. He opened his suit-case, took out from the protecting wadding a small iron death-machine and held it in readiness. A n.o.ble plan had entered his brain for rescuing his dream.

Nuddle, glancing over the side, recognized Davidge and told Nicky who it was that came. When Davidge reached the top deck, he found Nicky smiling with the affability of a floorwalker.

"Meester Davitch--please, one momend. I holt in my hant a little machine to blow us all high-sky if you are so unkind to be impolite.

You move--I srow. We all go up togedder in much pieces. Better it is you come with me and make no trouble, and then I let you safe your life. You agree, yes? Or must I srow?"

Davidge looked at the bomb, at Nicky, at Nuddle, then at Mamise. Life was sweet here on this high steel crag, with the cheers of the crowds about the stands coming faintly up on the delicious breeze. He knew explosives. He had seen them work. He could see what that handful of lightning in Nicky's grasp would do to this mountain he had built.

Life was sweet where the limpid river spread its indolent floods far and wide. And Mamise was beautiful. The one thing not sweet and not beautiful was the triumph of this sardonic Hun.

Davidge pondered but did not speak.

With all the superiority of the Kultured German for the untutored Yankee, Nicky said, "Vell?"

Perhaps it was the V that did it. For Davidge, without a word, went for him.

CHAPTER VI

The most tremendous explosives refuse to explode unless some detonator like fulminate of mercury is set off first. Each of us has his own fulminate, and the snap of a little cap of it brings on our cataclysm.

It was a pity, seeing how many Germans were alienated from their country by the series of its rulers' crimes, and seeing how many German names were in the daily lists of our dead, that the word and the accent grew so hateful to the American people. It was a pity, but the Americans were not to blame if the very intonation of a Teutonism made their ears tingle.

Davidge prized life and had no suicidal inclinations or temptations.

No imaginable crisis in his affairs could have convinced him to self-slaughter. He was brave, but cautious.

Even now, if Nicky Easton, poising the bombsh.e.l.l with its appalling threat, had murmured a sardonic "Well?" Davidge would probably have smiled, shrugged, and said:

"You've got the bead on me, partner. I'm yours." He would have gone along as Nicky's prisoner, waiting some better chance to recover his freedom.

But the mal-p.r.o.nunciation of the shibboleth strikes deep centers of racial feeling and makes action spring faster than thought. The Sicilians at vespers asked the Frenchmen to p.r.o.nounce "cheecheree,"

and slew them when they said "sheesheree." So Easton snapped a fulminate in Davidge when his Prussian tongue betrayed him into that impertinent, intolerable alien "Vell?"

Davidge was helpless in his own frenzy. He leaped.

Nicky could not believe his eyes. He paused for an instant's consideration. As a football-player hesitates a sixteenth of a second too long before he pa.s.ses the ball or punts it, and so forfeits his opportunity, so Nicky Easton stood and stared for the length of time it takes the eyes to widen.

That was just too long for him and just long enough for Davidge, who went at him football fashion, hurling himself through the air like a vast, sprawling tarantula. Nicky's grip on the bomb relaxed. It fell from his hand. Davidge swiped at it wildly, smacked it, and knocked it out of bounds beyond the deck. Then Davidge's hundred-and-eighty-pound weight smote the light and wickery frame of Nicky and sent him collapsing backward, staggering, wavering, till he, too, went overboard.

Davidge hit the deck like a ball-player sliding for a base, and he went slithering to the edge. He would have followed Nicky over the hundred-foot steel precipice if Mamise had not flung herself on him and caught his heel. He was stopped with his right arm dangling out in s.p.a.ce and his head at the very margin of the deck.

In this very brief meanwhile Jake Nuddle, who had been panic-stricken at the sight of the bomb in Nicky's hand, had been backing away slowly. He would have backed into the abyss if he had not struck a stanchion and clutched it desperately.

And now the infernal-machine reached bottom. It lighted on the huge blade of the ship's anchor lying on a wharf waiting to be hoisted into place. The sh.e.l.l burst with an all-rending roar and sprayed rags of steel in every direction. The upward stream caught Nicky in midair and shattered him to shreds.

Nuddle's whole back was obliterated and half a corpse fell forward, headless, on the deck. Davidge's right arm was ripped from the shoulder and his hat vanished, all but the brim.

Mamise was untouched by the bombardment, but the downward rain of fragments tore her flesh as she lay sidelong.

The bomb, exploding in the open air, lost much of its efficiency, but the part of the ship nearest was crumpled like an old tomato-can that a boy has placed on a car track to be run over.

The crash with its reverberations threw the throngs about the speakers' stands into various panics, some running away from the volcano, some toward it. Many people were knocked down and trampled.

Larrey and his men were the first to reach the deck. They found Davidge and Mamise in a pool of blood rapidly enlarging as the torn arteries in Davidge's shoulder spouted his life away. A quick application of first aid saved him until the surgeon attached to the shipyard could reach him.

Mamise's injuries were painful and cruel, but not dangerous. Of Jake Nuddle there was not enough left to a.s.sure Larrey of his identification. Of Nicky Easton there was so little trace that the first searchers did not know that he had perished.

Davidge and Mamise were taken to the hospital, and when Davidge was restored to consciousness his first words were a groan of awful satisfaction:

"I got a German!"

When he learned that he had no longer a right arm he smiled again and muttered:

"It's great to be wounded for your country."

Which was a rather inelegant paraphrase of the cla.s.sic "_Dulce et decorum_," but caught its spirit admirably.

Of Jake Nuddle he knew nothing and forgot everything till some days later, when he was permitted to speak to Mamise, in whose welfare he was more interested than his own, and the story of whose unimportant wounds harrowed him more than his own.

Her voice came to him over the bedside telephone. After an exchange of the inevitable sympathies and regrets and tendernesses, Mamise sighed:

"Well, we're luckier than poor Jake."

"We are? What happened to him?"