Woven with the Ship Part 23

Tears for you, d.a.m.n you! You've got to die, an' I'll die with you!

You'll have the company of a better man to h.e.l.l, where you belong!"

The old man's voice rose almost to a scream as he recounted the ideas which had goaded him to this madness. The torrential sentences of the grim indictment fairly burst from his lips with ever-increasing force and fury. Revere heard him in a daze of surprise, at first scarcely comprehending the man's meaning; yet, after all, his words explained many things. As soon as the lieutenant found voice he protested.

"Barry, I swear to you----"

"Silence! It's too late to swear!"

Revere was brave; he fain would not die without a struggle for his life. Indeed, he had not divined the manner of his death; but before he could spring forward, Barry, as if he understood what he was about to do, said, ruthlessly,--

"Stand where you are! If you move, I'll kick you to death like a dog!"

He could easily have done it, as the advantage of position was with him. Rather anything than that, thought Revere, shuddering at the brutality of it. A prisoner, he could do nothing. The man was mad. If he chose to carry out his purpose, whatever it might be, the young man was helpless.

"Very well, Barry," he said, instantly accepting the situation, and summoning all his resolution to meet the inevitable, though his cheeks and lips were white, "you saved my life once, you may take it back now. I wish I could die standing, but if I cannot, why kneeling is as good a way as any for a man to meet his Maker. You tell me to say a prayer. Here it is. May G.o.d have mercy on your soul and on my soul, and may He keep the child. That's all."

Not moving from his position, the old man began kicking at the stanchions. The one on the right was defective, and gave way and fell at the first blow. A shiver seemed to run through the ship; Richard, for the first time, divined what was about to happen. He looked forward and aft. The effective supports were all gone; some rotten ones remained, outwardly intact, but bound to go under almost any pressure; the few sound ones left had been carefully sawed almost through. Why had he not noticed it? The whole ship, therefore, practically rested on a single stout stanchion toward which Barry had already turned. It was a splendid piece of timber, and Barry had put it in himself a year before. When that came down, the ship would crash into ruins and bury them beneath it.

As the prop upon the right had fallen, the hope leaped into his mind that he might get away through the gap; but Barry reached down and grasped him by the collar with one hand the instant the way was open, and held him firmly while he turned his attention to the other stanchion. It was hopeless for Revere to attempt anything.

Strange as it may seem, there was a certain admiration for the sailor in Revere's mind, even in that frightful moment. He realized that the attack upon him was not inspired by any petty cause. Given the belief of the sailor, it was natural; he respected him for his desire to stop what he believed to be base treachery; and Revere could have loved him for his willingness to sacrifice himself to prevent what he conceived to be a crime against the life of the admiral, the happiness of Emily, and the existence of the ship.

"Barry," said Revere, calmly,--he was quite master of himself now,--as the old man struck the last sound support a heavy blow with his foot, "I must tell you, not because I am afraid to die, or because I fear you, but to acquit myself of evil purpose in your mind, that my engagement with that other woman is broken; that not an hour ago, in my mother's presence, the admiral promised to give me his granddaughter to be my wife."

"The ship?" cried Barry, hoa.r.s.ely, as he felt his vengeance slipping away from him, the cause itself being taken.

"I offered to buy it myself and leave it standing until it fell."

Men do not often lie in the very presence of death, and truth spoke in the younger man's voice,--truth so clear that it pierced the tortured soul of the jealous, mad, broken sailor. But, like many another man convinced against his will, he refused to accept these statements. It was a device, a cunning attempt to stay his hand and gain a life. He would not heed.

"I don't believe you, d.a.m.n you!" he said, kicking furiously at the stanchion.

The last blow loosened it. Under the tremendous pressure from above, the stick began slowly, very slowly, to slide on its wooden shoe. Its motion was scarcely perceptible, yet it moved. Barry released his hold on it, took a single backward step, and Revere rose to his feet. Barry instantly grappled him with both hands. Revere was as a child in that iron grasp. He did not struggle. He would preserve his dignity in the face of death, and to attempt to escape would have been futile, anyway. The two faces confronted one another, the sailor's convulsed with anguish and rage, the officer's pale, but smiling a little; both equally determined.

Forward and aft the rotten or sawed supports were giving way in quick succession. Above them the ship was trembling and shivering from stem to stern. A strange creaking was heard. A moaning cry, swelling into a deep groan of anguish that had a sound of despair unspeakable in it.

The death-song of the ship! It was coming down on the ways! Moving toward the water at last!

Fascinated, Revere turned his face upward and watched the shivering frame above his head, murmuring, as he did so, Emily's name. The huge bulk seemed to rise in the air for a second. To his distorted vision it appeared to sway back and forth, up and down, yet it had scarcely begun to move.

Ah! was it upon them?

It all happened in a few seconds. In another it would be over. Revere closed his eyes.

At that instant a scream fraught with terrible agony broke upon the ears of the two men.

"The ship is falling!" cried Emily's voice, high-pitched, shrill with mortal terror. "Richard! What are you doing? Oh, G.o.d! Captain Barry, save him!"

"Would that she might have been spared this!" flashed into Revere's mind. He would have called to her had not something happened instantly.

The voice awakened the dormant reason in the old man's being. She loved this boy; perhaps he had told the truth.

"Save him! save him!"

The words rang in his ears. He had never disobeyed a command of hers.

He would not now. Too late! There was a terrible grating sound; the last stanchion was grinding in its wooden shoe; it was sliding faster!

In another moment the ship would be upon them! He had turned his head as the first cry had met his ear, and had seen in one swift glance Emily and another woman not a hundred feet away. Emily was bending forward, her hands outstretched, struggling. She would have run to them under the ship had not the other woman held her firmly, protectingly. Both girls were white as death.

Barry seized Revere by the collar and threw him violently far from him. The young man pitched downward and fell headlong on the gra.s.s in the direction of the two women. The ground sloped abruptly away toward the water on that side of the ship. In that same instant the sailor threw up two great arms and caught the impending ship. He took the place of the quivering, buckling, sliding oaken timber. For a second he stood there in mighty majesty, a pillar of strength and resolution, a tower of flesh and blood, sustaining a ship-of-the-line, a human stanchion, magnificent in the frenzied, awful expression of a power superhuman. Rigid, unbreakable, indomitable, he sh.o.r.ed up the ship,--Atlas holding the world!

"Go!" he gasped.

Revere, who had risen instantly, stepped toward him as if to a.s.sist him.

"Go! Can't hold----"

It had come. Angry at the momentary check, the ship fell upon the man as an avalanche falls upon the mountain. Beneath it the mighty knees were bowing, the stubborn back bending, the great arms trembling.

Revere sprang backward and slipped far down the slope.

As he fell he caught sight of burning eyes from a face white as the sea-froth, of lips set and bloodless, of jaws clinched, of sweat standing upon a bronzed forehead--picture impressed upon his soul forever!

There was a mighty roaring, detonating crash and all was over.

Crushed were the mighty arms, beaten down the ma.s.sive shoulders, broken the iron knees. The life of the man went out in the fall, and the blood of his heart rippled along the blocks of the keel. With a concussion like the discharge of a battery, the mighty war-monster collapsed into a shapeless ma.s.s of timber, burying beneath it the man who had loved it best. The ship that had been his own was nothing but a heap of ruins above his still heart.

A cloud of dust rose and hung over the wreck in the quiet air.

War was to have been the trade of that ship-of-the-line. Blood should have run upon her white decks, death she should have dealt out and received, great battles should have made her famous, heroic men should have written her name eternally on the red pages of her country's history. Now it was finished; and yet, in the ending at least, there had been a slight fulfilment of her destiny--to kill.

No struggle could have been more superb than the quiet one just over; no effort more magnificent, no conflict more terrible, than that between the man and the ship. No ship had ever claimed a n.o.bler victim than Barry, after all, and no fate could have been more fitting than that which had come to man and ship together in the end.

The old war-vessel had lived through the still ages of peace, had survived the long period of decay, had endured the disintegrating a.s.saults of time, only to accomplish her manifest purpose of destruction as she fell.

And the hand that had loved her was the hand that had laid her low!

With dreadful feelings in their hearts, the three stood looking at the ruins of the ship.

"Barry! Captain Barry!" screamed Emily, wildly. "Where is he?"

"There!" gasped Revere, hoa.r.s.ely.

"And is there no hope?"

"None. He is gone forever. My G.o.d, wasn't it terrible? He held up the ship!"

"Grandfather!" cried the girl, distraught. "Let us run to him."

The old man still sat on the porch, staring at what had been the object of his gaze for so many years. There was a peaceful, yet sorrowful, look upon his face. He had seen the ship fall; he realized that his hour had come. He was fronting death and he knew it, yet he was as calm as he had been when he had fronted death many times years before. They gathered about him, understanding, helpless.