Wide Courses Part 20

"Man! and I'm not wall-sided either. You must be a h.e.l.lion. But"--to Kieran's ears had come the sound of muttering in the crowd--"shall we get at it? We ought to make a good match of it. You may be a bit the bigger, but no matter. Three or four inches in height and sixty or seventy pounds, what's that? What d'you say?"--he turned to the crew--"he's big enough to pull a mast down on deck. Are the two of us to settle it here without interference? In the old days men fought so, the champions in front of the armies, and the winning man allowed to ride back unharmed to his comrades."

That picture, as the wily and eloquent pump-man painted it, impressed them. And he looked so frail beside the bosun! They drew well back now; all but one, the crafty carpenter, crony of the bosun and eager tool of the captain. There was that in the pump-man's eyes--the carpenter stepped to the big man's shoulder. "Listen to me. This man's no innercent. I've seen his picter somewheres."

"An' he'll see something of me in a minute, an' more than a picksher. Go away!" The boson shoved the carpenter aside.

"What I like about you, bosun"--Kieran, having shed his dungaree coat, stood now for a moment with a hand resting easily to either side of his waist--"and it sticks out all over you, is your love of a fight.

And"--under his breath this, so only the bosun could hear it--"I'm going to satisfy that love of yours to-day so you'll stop your ears up if ever again you hear a man even whisper fight. Yes"--drawing off his undershirt, cinching his trousers straps above his hips, and resuming his easy speech--"I do love a real fighting man. But your friends"--he waved his hand toward the crew--"they must all stand that side. I want no man between me and the rail this side, no man behind me. 'Tisn't fair." He turned to them. "Play me fair in that. I'm giving your man the slope of the hatch, and he's tall enough in all conscience without. So let no man stand behind me."

The arms and torso of the pump-man, as he stood there naked to the waist, amazed Noyes. It surprised them all. He had seemed only a medium-sized man under the concealing dungarees. Noyes saw now that he was a bigger man by fifteen or twenty pounds than he had had any idea of; and were he padded with twenty pounds more, he would still be in good condition. Not a lump anywhere; not a trace of a bulging muscle, except that when he flexed his arm or worked his shoulders by way of loosening them up he started little ripples that ran like mice from neck to loins under the skin; and when, with this shoulder movement, he combined a rapid leg motion, Noyes fancied he could trace the play of muscle clear to his heels. His skin, too, had the unspotted gleaming whiteness of high vitality.

"He's a reg'lar race horse--a tiger," burst out from one admirer in the crowd.

The bosun, also stripped of his upper garments, looked all of his great size, and, moving about, showed himself not altogether lacking in agility. Lively, indeed, he was for his immense bulk, although, compared to the pump-man in that, he was like a moose beside a panther. "It ain't goin' to be so one-sided after all," whispered some one loudly, and recalled the pump-man's leaping across the hatch that very morning. And now, as he ducked and turned, seeming never to lack breath for easy speech, there were others who were beginning to believe it would not be so one-sided either.

"Speaking of wind-jammers, I remember"--the bosun had rushed past him like a charging elephant--"hearing my old grandfather tell of seeing a three-decker manoeuvring once. She'd come into stays about the middle of the morning watch, he said, and maybe toward three bells in the second dogwatch they'd have her on the other tack. A ship of the old line she was, a terrible fighter, if only fighting was done from moorings; but there were little devils of frigates kept sailing 'round and 'round her.

What? Why don't I stand up? Stand up, is it? Why, man, I don't see where I've been hove-down yet. Hove-down, no, nor wet my rail yet. And is it you or I is fighting this end of it? Is it?"--a subtle threat with his left, one cunning feint of his right, one whip-like inboring of the left hand, and up came the bosun all-standing.

"You're easy luffed," jeered Kieran. "A moment ago you were drawing like a square-rigger before a quartering gale, and now you're shaking in the wind--yes, and likely to be aback, if you don't watch out."

The teeth locked in the bosun's head--so hard a jolt for so smoothly delivered a blow! He gazed amazed. Again a deceptive swing or two, a fiddling with one hand and the other, a moment of rapid foot-work, a quick side-step, and biff! Kieran's left went into the ribs--crack! and Kieran's right caught him on the cheek-bone and laid it open as if hit with a cleaver.

"Devil take it!" exploded Kieran, "I meant that for your jaw. It's this slippery tarpaulin." He slid his foot back and forth on the black-tarred canvas. "The cook's been dropping some of his slush on it, and you, bosun, didn't see to it that it was cleaned. You ought to look after those little things or the skipper'll be having you up to the bridge.

But, come now, just once more"--he curved his left forearm persuasively--"once more and--"

But having caught the flame in the eye that never once looked away from his, the bosun wanted no more of that long-range work. It must be close quarters thereafter, or he foresaw disgrace. He appealed to the men at his back. "He won't stand up like a man. He leaps around like a b.l.o.o.d.y monkey."

"That's right, bosun. Stand up to him there, you!" That was the carpenter's voice. And others followed. 'Twasn't so men'd been used to fightin' on oil-tankers. No, sir. "Stand to him breast to breast!" The carpenter led further clamorous voices.

"Aye, breast to breast be it." Kieran was standing at ease. "And yet you all been telling how he drove his fist through a pine plank the other day up on the New York water-front."

"Yes, an' I c'n drive it through you, if yer come close to me."

"Close to you? Is this close enough to you?" No more side-stepping, no more swift shifting--just a straight step in, and they were clinched.

With arms wrapped around the body of the other, each an inside and outside hold, and fingers locked in the small of the other's back, they were at it. One tentative tug and haul and the bosun began to see that he would need all his strength for this man. Another long-drawn tug and he began to fear the outcome. Again, and in place of his foe coming to him, it was his own waist he felt drawn forward. Slowly he felt his head falling back, and gradually his shoulders followed. In toward Kieran came the hollow of the big man's back, and the big man knew he had met his master; and, bitterest of all, this man poured galling words into his ear as he bore him back; gibing words, in so low a voice that they reached no further than the ear for which they were intended.

"Your own favorite c.u.mberland grip--where's the whale strength of you now, Bruiser Bill--your buffalo rush, hah? It's my weakness to make a show of you here on this deck--you, my Bruising Bill, the boastful lump of muscle that you are. Just muscle, no more. And now where are you--where, I say?"

The long, smooth muscles of Kieran's back were gathering and swelling.

His waist, contrasted with the splendid development under his shoulders, looked slim as a corseted girl's; and not Noyes alone was noting them.

Every muscle in the smooth-skinned body--it seemed as if he drew them from his very toes for service in that hug.

The bosun's breath was coming in labored gasps, yet still that terrible man kept holding him close, drawing his waist to him and increasing his pressure as he drew. "You've the tonnage and engine-room of a battleship," jeered Kieran, "but you've only the steam of an East River tug. And a low-pressure tug at that. And what little steam you had is gone. You've a big engine but no boiler. And you know what use an engine is without a boiler, don't you? Well, that's you, son--your steam's gone."

The swimming head kept falling backward toward the ground. And for Kieran, as he felt his enemy weaken, the purple lights were flashing again. The call of battle was ringing in his ears; came back to him the memory of more careless days, when he lived for this kind of thing.

After all, what was life but a means whereby to give one's spirit play?

And yet again--and yet--was he no more than a brute himself? What was the use? What good would it all do? And suddenly he loosed his grip, and the inert body of the bosun rolled down the tarpaulined hatch and onto the steel deck.

Noyes found himself gasping, almost as if he were in the fight himself.

Then he noted that Kieran had raised his hand and was addressing the crew. "Holdup! You said the fight would settle it. Mind your words now--fair play for one against you all. Fair play, I say," and they might have scattered before this blazing, fighting pump-man in the full l.u.s.t of his power but for the carpenter, who poised a hammer to throw.

"What! you would!" yelled Kieran. A leap, a pa.s.s, and his fist smashed into the lowering face. Over keeled the carpenter, a tall man, like a falling spar.

"Put that man in irons!" Noyes jumped at the voice. The captain was leaning over the rail beside him.

IV

"Irons?" The pump-man's head went into the air. For a moment he stood poised on the hatch like a statue. "Irons?" His face paled and hardened and his arms stiffened; but instantaneously, as half a dozen reached out to seize him, he ducked and twisted and side-stepped, and two, who could not be avoided, he knocked swiftly out of his way. He cracked a fist into one face, then the other. There was no malice in it; they simply barred his way to freedom. He leaped from combing to combing of the open hatches. It was thirty feet to the bottom of any one of these empty tanks, and those who followed did so at creeping speed.

He was clear of the mob. A light bound and he was on the ship's rail beside the after-rigging.

The captain, leaning as far out as the chart deck would allow, shook a raging arm at Kieran. "You'll a.s.sault, you'll batter my men right and left, will you, you crazy mutineer?"

"Don't call me a mutineer, captain--I've disobeyed no order."

"You are a mutineer. I declare you one now. And you'll go into irons."

"You'll never put me in irons."

"You'll go into irons or you'll go over the side."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Don't call me a mutineer, captain--I've disobeyed no order"]

"Well, maybe I'll go over the side. But before I go, if I have to go, I'll have a word to say. You've been trying to break my nerve from the beginning. I know your kind that bully and starve your crew, and won't have a man on your ship that you can't bully and starve. And so you set your bully bosun to do me--do me to death, if he had to. And when he's not clever enough nor able enough, you'd put me in irons--in irons here on the high seas--out here where no law can get you!"

The first officer was now on the deck beneath the pump-man. "You'd better come down, Kieran. It will be the safest way in the end."

"Mr. Brown, you're a good officer, and I don't want to cross you, but you're not going to put me in irons."

The ship was rolling gently. Kieran rested one hand lightly, by way of balance, on a stay, and kicked his shoes overboard. "A step nearer, Mr.

Brown, and I go after the shoes."

"But it's five miles to the Florida sh.o.r.e, Kieran, and alive with sharks. You'd never make it. Come on now."

"No. Five miles or fifty, I'll have a try at it."

Noyes now laid a warning hand on the captain's arm. "Are you going to insist on putting that man in irons?"

"I am. And stand clear of me, you."

"If you try to, he'll jump overboard."

"And if he does, what of it?"

"If he does, there'll be a bad time ahead for you."

"There will? There's liable to be a bad time for you right now. Do you know you have no rights on this ship unless I say so? Don't you know I can put you in irons, too--that's marine law--if I feel like it?"

"I know what maritime law is. And that's the devil of it when there's a brute on the bridge. You can put me in irons if you want to, but I don't think you will."