SCURLOCK GOES ASHORE
Sweltering though the cabin was, it seemed to Dr. Filhiol a blessèd
haven of refuge from the probabilities of grevious harm that menaced,
without. With a deep breath of relief he saw Briggs lay the kris on the
cabin table. Himself, he sat down at that table, and while Briggs stood
there half-grinning with white teeth through black beard, took up the
knife.
He studied it, noting its keen, double edge, its polished steel, the
deft carving of the lotus-bud handle. Then, as he laid it down, he
offered:
“It’s a genuine antique. I’ll go you a month’s wages against it.”
“You’ll do nothin’ of the kind, sir!” ejaculated Briggs, and took it up
again. “The voyage, you said, and it’s that or nothing!”
The doctor bit his close-razored lip. Then he nodded. Filhiol was
shrewd, and sober; Briggs, rash and drunk. Yes, for the sake of getting
that cursed knife out of the captain’s hands, Filhiol would accept.
“Put it out of harm’s way, sir, and let’s deal the cards,” said he.
“It’s poisoned. We don’t want it where we might get scratched, by
accident.”
“Poisoned, sir?” demanded Briggs, running a horny thumb along the
point. His brows wrinkled, inquisitively. No fear showed in that
splendidly male, lawless, unconquered face.
“For God’s sake, captain, put that devilish thing away!” exclaimed the
doctor, feigning to shudder; though all the while a secret hope was
whispering:
“Heaven send that he may cut himself!” Aloud he said: “I’ll play no
game, sir, with that kris in sight. Put it in your locker, captain, and
set out the drink. My throat’s afire!”
“Poisoned, eh?” grunted the captain again, still with drunken obstinacy
testing the edge. “All damned nonsense, sir. After that’s been run into
the Oregon pine of my mizzen, a couple of inches—”
“There’s still enough left to put you in a shotted hammock, sir, if
you cut yourself,” the doctor insisted. “But it’s your own affair. If
you choose to have Mr. Scurlock take the _Silver Fleece_ back to Long
Wharf, Boston, while you rot in Motomolo Straits—”
With a blasphemy, Briggs strode to his locker. The doctor smiled
cannily as Briggs flung open the locker, tossed in the kris and, taking
a square-shouldered bottle, returned to the table. This bottle the
captain thumped down on the table, under the lamp-gleam.
“Best Old Jamaica,” boasted he. “Best is none too good, when I win my
doctor’s entire pay. For it’s as good as mine already, and you can lay
to that!”
Speaking, he worried out the cork. He sniffed at the bottle, blinked,
peered wonderingly at the label, and sniffed again.
“Hell’s bells!” roared Briggs, flaring into sudden passion.
“What’s the matter, sir?”
“Old Jamaica!” vociferated the captain. “It _was_ Old Jamaica, but now
smell o’ that, will you?”
Filhiol sniffed, tentatively. In a second he knew some one had been
tampering with the liquor, substituting low-grade spirits for Brigg’s
choicest treasure; but he merely shrugged his shoulders, with:
“It seems like very good rum, sir. Come, let’s mix our grog and get the
cards.”
“Good rum!” gibed Briggs. “Some thieving son of Satan has been at my
Jamaica, and has been fillin’ the square-face up with hog-slop, or I
never sailed blue water! _Look_ at the stuff now, will you?”
He spilled out half a glass of the liquor, tasted it, spat it upon the
floor. Then he dashed the glass violently to the boards, crashing it to
flying shards and spattering the rum all about. In a bull-like roar he
shouted:
“Boy! You, there, boy!”
A moment, and one of the doors leading off the main cabin opened, on
the port side. A pale, slim boy appeared and advanced into the cabin,
blinking up with fear at the black-bearded vision of wrath.
“Yes, sir? What is it, sir?” asked he, in a scared voice.
Briggs dealt him a cuff that sent him reeling. The captain’s huge hand,
swinging back, overset the bottle, that gurgled out its life-blood.
“What _is_ it?” shouted Briggs. “You got the impudence to ask me what
it is? I’ll learn you to step livelier when I call, you whelp! Come
here!”
“Yes, sir,” quavered the boy. Shaking, he sidled nearer. “What—what do
you want, sir?”
“What do I _want_?” the captain howled; while Filhiol, suddenly pale
with a rage that shook his heart, pressed lips hard together, lest some
word escape them. “You swab! Catechisin’ me, are you? Askin’ _me_ what
I want, eh? If I had a rope’s-end here I’d show you! Get out, now. Go,
tell Mr. Scurlock I want him. Jump!”
The lad ducked another blow, ran to the cabin-door and sprang for
the stairs. Ill-fortune ran at his side. He missed footing, sprawled
headlong up the companion stairway.
With a shout of exultation, Briggs caught up from a corner a long,
smooth stick, with a polished knob carved from a root—one of the clubs
known in the Straits as “Penang-lawyers,” by reason of their efficacy
in settling disputes. He grabbed the writhing boy, now frantically
trying to scrabble up the stairs, in a clutch that almost crunched
the frail shoulder bones. Up the companion he dragged him—the boy
screaming with terror of death—and hurled him out on deck, fair
against the wheel.
The boy collapsed in a limp, groaning heap. Briggs laughed wildly, and,
brandishing the Penang-lawyer, advanced out upon the dim-lit planking.
An arm thrust him back.
“You ain’t goin’ to hit that there boy!” shouted a voice—William
Scurlock’s. “Not while I’m alive, you ain’t!”
A wrench and the club flew over the rail. It splashed in the dark, slow
waters of the Timbago.
Briggs gulped. He whirled, both fists knotted. Then, swift as a cobra,
he sprang and struck.
Scurlock dodged. The captain’s fist, finding no mark, drove against
one of the spokes of the wheel with a crash that split the hickory. As
Briggs had never cursed before, now he cursed. For a second or two he
nursed his damaged hand.
The brief respite sufficed. Scurlock snatched up the boy. He started
forward, just as the doctor appeared at the top of the companion.
“Captain Briggs, sir!” cried Filhiol, in a shaking voice. Still he was
hoping against hope to keep the peace. “Are you hurt, sir?”
“To hell with you!” roared Briggs, now forgetting sea-etiquette—surest
indication of the extremity of his drunken passion. He lurched after
the retreating Scurlock. “Back, here, you bloody swine! Drop that brat,
and I’ll show you who’s boss!”
Scurlock laughed mockingly and quickened his stride. Mad with the rage
that kills, Briggs pursued, a huge, lunging figure of malevolence and
hate. Before he could lay grips on Scurlock, the mate wheeled. He let
the fainting boy slide down on deck, whipped out a clasp-knife, snicked
open the blade. Holding it low, to rip upward, he confronted Briggs
under the glimmer of the mizzen-lantern.
Now this was raw mutiny, and a hanging matter if Scurlock drew one
drop of the captain’s blood. But that Scurlock cared nothing for the
noose was very plain to see. Even the crimson rage of Briggs saw death
knocking at the doors of his life. Barehanded, he could not close for
battle. He recoiled, his bloodshot eyes shuttling for some handy weapon.
“Damn you, if I had that kris—” he panted.
“But you ain’t, you lousy bucko!” mocked Scurlock. “An’ you turn your
back on me, to go for it, if you dare!”
Briggs sprang for the rail. He snatched at a belaying-pin, with wicked
blasphemies. The pin stuck, a moment. He wrenched it clear, and
wheeled—too late.
Already Scurlock had snatched up the boy again. Already he was at the
gangway. Down it he leaped, to the bund. With the unconscious boy still
in the crook of his left arm, he shoved into the scatter of idling
natives. Then he turned, raised a fist of quivering hatred, and flung
his defiance toward the vague, yellow-clad figure now hesitating at the
top of the gangway, pin in hand:
“I’m through with you, you rum-soaked hellbender! He’s through, too,
the boy is. We’ll take our chances with the Malays an’ the plague.”
Scurlock’s voice, rising out of the softly-lit tropic evening, died
suddenly.
“Come back, Mr. Scurlock, and bring that boy!” cried the doctor, from
the rail.
“I’ve got nothin’ against you, sir,” answered Scurlock. “But against
_him_. God! If I come back, it’ll only be to cut his black heart out
an’ throw it to the sharks. We’re done!”
A moment Briggs stood drunkenly peering, half minded to pursue, to
match his belaying-pin against the mate’s dirk. Gurgling in his
throat—for excess of rage had closed upon all speech—he panted, with
froth upon his black beard, while dim figures along the rail and on
shore waited great deeds. Then all at once he laughed—a horrible,
deep-throated laugh, rising, swelling to mighty and bestial merriment;
the laugh of a gorilla, made man.
“The Malays and the plague,” he thickly stammered. “—He’s said it—let
’em go! They’re good as dead already, and hell take ’em!”
He swung on his heel, then strode back unsteadily to the companion.
Down it he lunged. Still laughing, he burst into the heat and reek of
the cabin.
“Come on, doctor,” cried he, “our cards, our cards!”