"Is this what you feared?" said the Scotchman. "Is this what you wanted
protection against? No; you're in league together to torture me, and
all this time you've been laughing up your sleeves at my expense!"
"At your expense?" growled Harrigan, rising in turn. "Is it at your
expense that I've been sittin' here breakin' me heart with singin' love
tunes for you an' the girl?"
She sprang up in an agony of fear.
"Go! Go!" she begged of McTee. "If you doubt me, go, and when you come
back calm, I will explain."
He brushed her to one side and made a step toward Harrigan.
"Love songs for _me?_" he repeated incredulously.
"Aye, love songs for you. Ye black swine, ye could not be happy till I
was brought in to be the piper while you an' Kate danced!"
"While I and Kate danced?" thundered McTee. "My God, man--"
He broke off short, and a cruel light of understanding was in his eyes.
"Harrigan," he said quietly, "did Kate tell you she loved me?"
"Ye fool! Why else am I sittin' here singin' for your sake? Would I not
rather be amusin' myself by takin' the hollow of your throat under my
thumbs--so?"
McTee laughed softly, and Kate could not meet his eye.
"Well?" he said.
"Yes, I lied to you."
She turned to Harrigan: "And to you. Don't you see? I found you on the
verge of a fight, and I knew that in it you would both be killed. What
else could I do? I hoped that for my sake you would spare each other.
Was it wrong of me, Dan? Angus, will you forgive me?"
Harrigan raised his arms high above his head and stretched like one
from whose wrists the manacles have been unlocked after a long
imprisonment.
"McTee, are ye ready? There's a weight gone off my
soul!"
"Harrigan, I've been a driver of men, but this girl has put me under
the whip. When I'm through with you, I'm coming back to her."
"It'll be your ghost that returns."
Kate hesitated one instant as if to judge which was the greatest force
toward evil. Then she dropped to her knees and caught the hands of
McTee, those strong, cruel hands.
"If you will not fight, I'll--I'll be kind to you, I'll be everything
you ask of me--"
"You're pleading for him?"
"No, no! For him and for you; for your two souls!"
"Bah! Mine was lost long ago, and I'll answer that there's a claim on
Harrigan filed away in hell. He's too strong to have lived clean."
"Angus, we're all alone here--on the rim of the world, you've said--and
in places like this the eye of God is on you."
He laughed brutally: "If He sees me, He'll look the other way."
"Have done with the chatter," broke in Harrigan. "Ah-h, McTee, I see
where my hands'll fit on your throat."
"Come," McTee answered without raising his voice; "there's a corner of
the beach where a current stands in close by the shore. You've been a
traveling man, Harrigan. When I've killed you, I'll throw your body
into the sea, and the tide will take you out to see the rest of the
world."
"Come," said Harrigan; "I'd as soon finish you there as here, and when
you're dead, I'll sit you up against a tree and come down every day to
watch you rot."
The girl fell to the ground between them with her face buried in her
arms, silent. The two men lowered their eyes for a moment upon her, and
then turned and walked down the hill, going shoulder to shoulder like
friends. So they came out upon the beach and walked along it until they
reached the point of which McTee had spoken.
It was a level, hard-packed stretch of sand which offered firm footing
and no rocks over which one of the fighters might stumble at a critical
moment.
"Tis a lovely spot," sighed Harrigan. "Captain, you're a jewel of a man
to have thought of it."
"Aye, this is no deck at sea that can heave and twist and spoil my
work."
"It is not; and the palms of my hands are almost healed. Had you
thought of that, captain?"
"As you lie choking, Harrigan, think of the girl. The minute I've
heaved you into the sea, I go back to her."
The hard breathing of the Irishman filled up the interval.
"I see one thing clear. It's that I'll have to kill you slow. A man
like you, McTee, ought to taste his death a while before it comes. Come
to me ar-rms, captain, I've a little secret to whisper in your ear.
Whisht! 'Twill not be long in the tellin'!"
McTee replied with a snarl, and the two commenced to circle slowly,
drawing nearer at every step. On the very edge of leaping forward,
Harrigan was astonished to see McTee straighten from his crouch and
point out to sea.
"The eye of God!" muttered the Scotchman. "She was right!"
Harrigan jumped back lest this should prove a maneuver to place him off
his guard, and then looked in the indicated direction. It was true; a
point of light, a white eye, peered at them from far across the water.
Then the shout of McTee rang joyously: "A ship!"
"The fire!" answered Harrigan, and pointed back to the hill, for Kate
had allowed the flames to fall in their absence.
All thought of the battle left them. They started back on the run to
build high their signal light, and when they came to the top of the
hill, they found Kate lying as they had left her. She started to her
knees at the sound of their footsteps and stretched out her arms to
them.
"God has sent you back to me!"
"A ship!" thundered McTee for answer, and he flung a great armful of
wood upon the blaze. It rose with a rush, leaping and crackling, but
all three kept at their work until the pile of wood was higher than
their heads. Only when the supply of dry fuel was exhausted did they
pause to look out to sea. In place of the one eye of white there were
three lights, one of white, one of red, and one of green--the lights of
a ship running in toward land.
In a moment the moon slipped up above the eastern waters, and right
across that broad white circle moved a ship with the smoke streaming
back from her funnel. Unquestionably the captain had seen the signal
fire and understood its meaning.
They waited until the red light became fairly stationary, showing that
the steamer had been laid-to. Then they ran for the beach and took up
their position on the line between the glow of their fire and the
position of the ship, guessing that in this way they would be on the
spot where the ship's boat would be most likely to touch the shore.
"McTee," said Harrigan, "it may be half an hour before that boat
reaches the beach. Is there any reason why both of us should go aboard
it?"
"Harrigan, there is none! Stand up to me."
"If you do this," broke in Kate, "I will bring the sailors who come
ashore to the spot where the dead man lies, and I'll tell how he died."
They looked at her, knowing that she could be trusted to fulfill that
threat. The moon lay on the beauty of her face; never had she seemed so
desirable. They looked to each other, and each seemed doubly hateful to
the other.
"Kate, dear," said Harrigan hastily, "I see the boat come tossin' there
over the water. Speak out like a brave girl. Neither of us will leave
the other in peace as long as we have a hope of you. Choose between us
before we put a foot in that boat, and if you choose McTee, I'll give
you God's blessin' an' say no more nor ever raise my hand against ye.
McTee, will ye do the like?"
"For the sake of the day of the fight and the wreck I will. If she
chooses you now, I'll raise no hand against you."
A shout came faintly across the rush and ripple of the breakers.
"Speak out," said Harrigan.
"Hallo!" she screamed in answer to the hail from the boat, and then
turning to them: "I choose neither of you!"
"McTee," growled Harrigan, "I'm thinkin' we've both been fools."
"Think what you will, I'll have her; and if you cross me again, I'll
finish you, Harrigan."
"McTee, ten of your like couldn't finish me. But look! There's the girl
wadin' out to the boat. Let's steady her through the waves."
They ran out and, catching her beneath the shoulders, bore her safe and
high through the small rollers. When they were waist-deep, the boat
swung near. A lantern was raised by the man in the bows, and under that
light they saw the four men at the oars, now backing water to keep
their boat from washing to the beach. The sailors cheered as the two
men swung Kate over the gunwale and then clambered in after her. The
man at the bows all this time had kept his lantern high above his head
with a rigid arm, and now he bellowed: "Black McTee!"
"Right!" said McTee. "And you?"
"Salvain--put back for the ship, lads--Pietro Salvain. D'you mean to
say you've forgotten me?"
"Shanghai!" said McTee, as light broke on his memory. "What a night
that was."
"But you--"
"The _Mary Rogers_ took a header for Davy Jones's locker; first mate
drunk and ran her on a reef; all hands went under except the three of
us; we drifted to this island."
"Black McTee shipwrecked! By God, if we get to port with our old tramp,
I'll get a farm and stick to dry land."
"Your ship?"
"The _Heron_, four thousand tons, White Henshaw, skipper."
"White Henshaw?" cried McTee in almost reverent tones.
"The same. Old White still sticks to his wheel. He's as hard a man as
you, McTee, in his own way."
They were pulling close to the freighter by this time, and Salvain gave
quick orders to lay the boat alongside. In another moment they stood on
the deck, where a tall man in white clothes advanced to meet them.
"Good fishing, sir," said Salvain. "We've picked up three shipwrecked
people, with Angus McTee among them."
"Black McTee!" cried the other, and even in the dim light he picked out
the towering form of the Scotchman.
"It took a wreck to bring us together, Captain Henshaw," said McTee,
"but here we are, I've combed the South Seas for ten years for the sake
of meeting you."
"H-m!" grunted Henshaw. "We'll drink on the strength of that. Come into
the cabin."
They trooped after him, Salvain and the three rescued, and stood in the
roomy cabin, the captain and the first mate dapper and cool in their
white uniforms, the other three marvelously ragged. Barefooted, their
hair falling in jags across their foreheads, their muscles bulging
through the rents in their shirts, McTee and Harrigan looked battered
but triumphant. Kate Malone might have been the prize which they had
safely carried away. She was even more ragged than her companions, and
now she withdrew into a shadowy corner of the cabin and shook the long,
loose masses of her hair about her shoulders.