ALPHEUS BRIGGS, BUCKO
For a moment, Briggs and Scurlock confronted each other, separated
by the length of the gangway. Between them stretched silence; though
on the bund a cackle and chatter of natives offended the night. Then
Captain Briggs got sight of the kris. That sufficed, just as anything
would have sufficed. He put his two huge, hairy fists on his hips;
his neck swelled with rage born of samshu and a temper by nature the
devil’s own; he bellowed in a formidable roar:
“Drop that knife, Mr. Scurlock! What’s the matter with you, sir?”
A wise mate would have obeyed, with never one word of answer. But Mr.
Scurlock was very angry, and what very angry man was ever wise? He
stammered, in a burst of rage:
“I—a Malay son of a pup—he hove it at me, an’ I—”
“Hove it at you, did he, sir?”
“Yes, an’—”
Tigerish with drunken ferocity, Briggs sprang up the plank. A single,
right-hand drive to the jaw felled Scurlock. The kris jangled away and
came to rest as Scurlock sprawled along the planking.
“_Sir_, Mr. Scurlock!” fulminated Briggs—though not even in this blind
passion did he forget sea-etiquette, the true-bred Yankee captain’s
“touch of the aft” in dealing with an officer. No verbal abuse; just
the swinging fists now ready to knock Scurlock flat again, should he
attempt to rise. “Say _sir_ to me, Mr. Scurlock, or I’ll teach you how!”
“Sir,” mumbled the mate, half dazed. He struggled to a sitting posture,
blinking up with eyes of hate at the taut-muscled young giant who
towered over him, eager for another blow.
“All right, Mr. Scurlock, and don’t forget I got a handle to my name,
next time you speak to me. If any man, fore or aft, wants any o’ my
fist, let him leave off _sir_, to me!”
He kicked Scurlock heavily in the ribs, so that the breath went
grunting from him; then reached down a gorilla-paw, dragged him up
by the collar and flung him staggering into the arms of “Chips,” the
clipper’s carpenter—Gascar, his name was—who had just come up the
quarterdeck companion. Other faces appeared: Bevans, the steward, and
Prass, the bo’sun. Furiously Briggs confronted them all.
“Understand me?” he shouted, swaying a little as he stood there with
eager fists. “Where’s Mr. Wansley?”
“Asleep, sir,” answered Bevans. Wansley, second-mate, was indeed dead
to the world in his berth. Most of the work of stowing cargo had fallen
on him, for in the old clippers a second-mate’s life hardly outranked a
dog’s.
“What right has Mr. Wansley to be sleeping?” vociferated the captain,
lashing himself into hotter rage. “By God, you’re all a lot of lazy,
loafing, impudent swine!”
One smash of the fist and Bevans went staggering toward the forward
companion ladder, near the foot of which a little knot of seamen,
white, brown and yellow, had gathered in cheerful expectation of seeing
murder done.
Briggs balanced himself, a strange figure in his dandified silk and
polished boots, with his topi hat awry, head thrust forward, brows
scowling, massive neck swollen with rage and drink. Under the smudgy
gleam of the lantern on the mizzen, his crimson face, muffled in jetty
beard, and the evil-glowering eyes of him made a picture of wrath.
Briggs stooped, snatched up the kris that lay close by his feet, and
with a hard-muscled arm whistled its keen edge through air.
“I’ll keep order on my ship,” he blared, passionately, “and if I can’t
do it with my fists, by God, I’ll do it with this! The first man that
loosens his tongue, I’ll split him like a herring!”
“Captain Briggs, just a moment, sir!” exclaimed a voice at his left. A
short, well-knit figure in blue, advancing out of the shadows, ’round
the aft companion, laid a hand on the drunken brute’s arm.
“You keep out of this, doctor!” cried Briggs. “They’re a mutinous,
black lot o’ dogs that need lickin’, and I’m the man to give it to ’em!”
“Yes, yes, sir, of course,” Dr. Filhiol soothed the beast. “But as the
ship’s physician, let me advise you to go to your cabin, sir. The heat
and humidity are extremely bad. There’s danger of apoplexy, sir, if
you let these fellows excite you. You aren’t going to give them the
satisfaction of seeing you drop dead, are you, captain?”
Thrown off his course by this new idea, Briggs peered, blinked, pushed
back his topi and scratched his thick, close-curling poll. Then all at
once he nodded, emphatically.
“Right you are, doctor!” he cried, his mood swiftly changing. “I’ll go.
They shan’t murder me—not yet, much as they’d like to!”
“Well spoken, sir. You’re a man of sense, sir—rare sense. And on a
night like this—”
“The devil’s own night!” spat Briggs. “God, the breath sticks in my
throat!” With thick, violent fingers he ripped at his shirt, baring his
breast.
“Captain Briggs!” exclaimed Scurlock, now on his feet again. “Listen to
a word, sir, please.”
“What the damnation now, sir?”
“We’ve lost the tide, sir. The comprador sent word aboard at four
bells, he couldn’t hold his sampan men much longer. We should be
standin’ downstream now, sir.” Scurlock spoke with white, shaking lips,
rubbing his smitten jaw. Hate, scorn, rage grappled in his soul with
his invincible New England sense of duty, of efficiency, of getting the
ship’s work done. “If they’re goin’ to tow us down to-night, by joycus,
sir, we’ve got to get under way, and be quick about it!”
Briggs dandled the kris. Its wavy blade, grooved to hold the dried
curaré-poison that need do no more than scratch to kill, flung out
vagrant high-lights in the gloom.
“For two cents I’d gut you, Mr. Scurlock,” he retorted. “_I’m_ master
of this ship, and she’ll sail when _I’m_ ready, sir, not before!”
“Captain, they’re only trying to badger-draw you,” whispered Filhiol
in the bucko’s ear. “A man of your intelligence will beat them at
their own game.” Right well the doctor knew the futility of trying to
get anything forward till the captain’s rage and liquor should have
died. “Let these dogs bark, sir, if they will. You and I are men of
education. I propose a quiet drink or two, sir, and then a bit of
sleep—”
“What the devil do you mean by that, sir?” flared Briggs, turning on
him. “You mean I’m not able to take my ship out of this devil’s ditch,
to-night?”
“Farthest from my thought, captain,” laughed the doctor. “Of course you
can, sir, if you want to. But this mutinous scum is trying to force
your hand. You’re not the man to let them.”
“I should say _not_!” swaggered the captain, with a blasphemy, while
low-voiced murmurs ran among the men,—dim, half glimpsed figures by
the mizzen, or in the waist. “Not much! Come, doctor!”
He lurched aft, still swinging the kris. Ardently Filhiol prayed he
might gash himself therewith, but the devil guards his own. With savage
grimace at Scurlock, the physician whispered: “Name o’ God, man, let
him be!” Then, at a discreet distance, he followed Briggs.
Scurlock nodded, with murder in his eyes. Gascar and Bevans murmured
words that must remain unwritten. Under the awning at the foot of the
forward companion, white men from the fo’c’sle and Malays from the
deck-house buzzed in divers tongues. Briggs, the while, was about to
enter the after companion when to his irate ear the sound of a droning
chant, somewhere ashore, came mingled with the dull thudding of a drum,
monotonous, irritating as fever pulses in the brain of a sick man.
Briggs swerved to the starboard quarter rail and smote it mightily
with his fist, as with bloodshot eyes he peered down at the smoky,
lantern-glowing confusion of the bund.
“The damned Malays!” he shouted. “They’ve started another of their
infernal sing-songs! If I could lay hands on that son of a whelp—”
He shook the kris madly at a little group about a blazing flare; in
the midst squatted an itinerant ballad-singer. Tapping both heads of a
small, barrel-like drum, the singer whined on and on, with intonations
wholly maddening to the captain.
For a moment Briggs glared down at this scene, which to his fuddled
senses seemed a challenge direct, especially devil-sent to harry him.
“Look at that now, doctor, will you?” Briggs flung out his powerful
left hand toward the singer. “Want to bet I can’t throw this knife
through the black dog?”
He balanced the kris, ready for action, and with wicked eyes gauged the
throw. Filhiol raised a disparaging hand.
“Don’t waste a splendid curio on the dog, captain,” smiled he, masking
fear with indifference. Should Briggs so much as nick one of the Malays
with that envenomed blade, Filhiol knew to a certainty that with fire
and sword Batu Kawan would take complete vengeance. He knew that before
morning no white man would draw life’s breath aboard the _Silver
Fleece_. “You’ve got a wonderful curio there, sir. Don’t lose it, for a
mere nothing.”
“Curio? What the devil do _I_ care for Malay junk?” retorted Briggs,
thick-tongued and bestial. “The only place I’d like to see this
toothpick would be stickin’ out of that swine’s ribs!”
“Ah, but you don’t realize the value of the knife, sir,” wheedled
Filhiol. “It’s an extraordinarily fine piece of steel, captain, and the
carving of the lotus bud on the handle is a little masterpiece. I’d
like it for my collection.” He paused, struck by inspiration. “I’ll
play you for the knife, sir. Let’s have that drink we were speaking
of, and then a few hands of poker. I’ll play you anything I’ve got—my
watch, my instrument case, my wages for the voyage, whatever you
like—against that kris. Is that a go?”
“Sheer off!” mocked Briggs, raising the blade. The doctor’s eye judged
distance. He would grapple, if it came to that. But still he held to
craft:
“This is the first time, captain, I ever knew you to be afraid of a
good gamble.”
“Afraid? Me, afraid?” shouted the drunken man. “I’ll make you eat those
words, sir! The knife against your pay!”
“Done!” said the doctor, stretching out his hand. Briggs took it in
a grip that gritted the bones of Filhiol, then for a moment stood
blinking, dazed, hiccoughing once or twice. His purpose, vacillant,
once more was drawn to the singer. He laughed, with a maudlin catch of
the breath.
“_Does_ that gibberish mean anything, doctor?” asked he.
“Never mind, sir,” answered Filhiol. “We’ve got a game to play, and—”
“Not just yet, sir! That damned native may be laying a curse on me, for
all I know. Mr. Scurlock!” he suddenly shouted forward.
“Aye, aye, sir,” answered the mate’s voice, through the gloom.
“Send me a Malay—one that can talk United States!”
“Yes, sir!” And Scurlock was heard in converse with the brown men in
the waist. Over the rail the captain leaned, staring at the singer and
the crowd, the smoky torches, the confused crawling of life in Batu
Kawan; and as he stared, he muttered to himself, and twisted at his
beard with his left hand—his right still gripped the kris.
“You damned, outrageous blackguard!” the doctor thought. “If I ever get
you into your cabin, God curse me if I don’t throw enough opium into
you to keep you quiet till we’re a hundred miles at sea!”
Came the barefoot slatting of a Malay, _pad-pad-padding_ aft, and the
sound of a soft-voiced: “Captain Briggs, sar?”
“You the man that Mr. Scurlock sent?” demanded Briggs.
“Yas, sar.”
“All right. Listen to that fellow down there—the one that’s singing!”
Briggs laid a hand on the Malay, jerked him to the rail and pointed a
thick, angry finger. “Tell me what he’s sayin’! Understand?”
“Yas, sar.”
The Malay put both lean, brown hands on the rail, squinted his gray
eyes, impassive as a Buddha’s, and gave attentive ear. To him arose the
droning words of the long-drawn, musical cadences:
_Arang itou dibasouh dengan ayer
Mawar sakalipoun tiada akan poutih._
_Satahoun houdjan di langit ayer latout masakan tawar?_
_Sebab tiada tahon menari dikatakan tembad._
_Tabour bidjian diatas tasik tiada akan toumbounh—_
On, on wailed the chant. At last the Malay shook his head, shrugged
thin shoulders under his cotton shirt, and cast an uneasy glance at
Briggs, looming black-bearded and angry at his side.
“Well, what’s it all about?” demanded the captain, thudding a fist on
the rail. “Sayin’ anythin’ about me, or the _Silver Fleece_? If he is—”
“No, sar. Nothin’ so, sar.”
“Well, what?”
“He sing about wicked things. About sin. He say—”
“_What_ does he say, you cinder from the Pit?”
“He say, you take coal, wash him long time, in water of roses, coal
never get white. Sin always stay. He say, rain fall long time, one
year, ocean never get fresh water. Always salty water. Sin always stay.
He say one small piece indigo fall in one jar of goat-milk, spoil all
milk, make all milk blue. One sin last all life, always.” The Malay
paused, trying to muster his paucity of English. Briggs shook him
roughly, bidding him go on, or suffer harm.
“He say if sky will go to fall down, no man can hold him up. Sin always
fall down. He say, good seed on land, him grow. Good seed on ocean, him
never grow. He say—”
“That’ll do! Stow your jaw, now!”
“Yas, sar.”
“Get out—go forrard!”
The Malay salaamed, departed. Briggs hailed him again.
“Hey, you!”
“Yes, sar?” answered the brown fellow, wheeling.
“What’s your name—if pigs have names?”
“Mahmud Baba, sar,” the Malay still replied with outward calm. Yet to
call a follower of the Prophet “pig” could not by any invention of the
mind have been surpassed in the vocabulary of death-inviting insult.
“My Mud Baby, eh? Good name—that’s a slick one!” And Briggs roared
into a laugh of drunken discord. He saw not that the Malay face was
twitching; he saw not the stained teeth in grimaces of sudden hate.
Gloom veiled this. “I’ll remember that,” he went on. “My Mud Baby. Well
now, Mud Baby, back to your sty!”
“Captain Briggs,” the doctor put in, fair desperate to get this brute
below-decks ere blood should flow. “Captain, if you were as anxious as
I am for a good stiff game of poker and a stiffer drink, you wouldn’t
be wasting your breath on Malay rubbish. Shall we mix a toddy for the
first one?”
“Good idea, sir!” Briggs answered, his eyes brightening. He
clapped Filhiol on the shoulder, so that the man reeled toward the
after-companion.
Down the stairway they went, the doctor cursing under his breath,
Briggs clumping heavily, singing a snatch of low ribaldry from a Bombay
gambling-hell. They entered the cabin. To them, as the door closed,
still droned the voice of the minstrel on the bund:
_Sebab tiada tahon menari dikatakan tembad,
Tabour bidjian diatas tasik tiada akan toumbounh._
One drop of indigo spoils the whole jar of milk;
Seed sown upon the ocean never grows.