COUNCIL OF WAR
A moment the two men eyed the captain. Malay voices sounded under the
awning. Forward, a laugh drifted on the heat-shimmering air. Briggs
cursed, and still came on.
A sorry spectacle he made, tousled, bleary-eyed, with pain-contracted
forehead where the devil’s own headache was driving spikes. Right hand
showed lacerations, from having struck the wheel. Heavy shoulders
sagged, head drooped. Angrily he blinked, his mood to have torn up the
world and spat upon the fragments in very spite.
“Well, lost your tongues, have you?” he snarled. “I’m used to being
answered on my own ship. You, Mr. Wansley, would do better reading your
’Bow-ditch’ than loafing. And you, doctor, I want you to mix me a stiff
powder for the damnedest headache that ever tangled my top-hamper. I’ve
had a drink or two, maybe three, already this morning. But that does no
good. Fix me up something strong. Come, stir a stump, sir! I’m going to
be obeyed on my own ship!”
“Yes, sir,” answered the doctor, keeping his tongue between his teeth,
as the saying is. He started aft, followed by Wansley. Briggs burst out
again:
“Insubordination, mutiny—that’s all I get, this voyage!” His fists
swung, aching for a target. “Look what’s happened! Against my orders
you, Mr. Wansley, try to take the _Fleece_ to sea. And run her
aground! By God, sir, I could have you disrated for that! I’d put you
in irons for the rest of the voyage if I didn’t need you on deck.
Understand me, sir?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Wansley, with exceeding meekness. Briggs was about
to flare out at him again, and might very well have come to fist-work,
when a hard, round little concussion, bowling seaward, struck his ear.
At sound of the shot, the captain swung on his heel, gripped the rail
and stared shoreward.
“What the hell is _that_?” demanded he, unable to conceal a sudden fear
that had stabbed through the thrice-dyed blackness of his venom.
“I rather think, sir,” answered Filhiol, blowing a ribbon of smoke on
the still morning air, “it’s trouble brewing. By Jove, sir—see that,
will you?”
His hand directed the captain’s reddened eyes far across the strait
toward the coastal hills, palm-crowded. Vaguely the captain saw a long,
dim line. At its forward end, just a speck against the greenery, a
triangle of other color was creeping on. Briggs knew it for the high
sail of a proa.
“H-m!” he grunted. Under the bushy blackness of his brows he stared
with blood-injected eyes. His muscles tautened. Suddenly he commanded:
“Mr. Wansley, my glass, sir!”
The doctor pursed anxious lips as Wansley departed toward the companion.
“Trouble, sir?” asked he.
“I’ll tell you when there’s trouble! How can I hear anythin’, with your
damned jaw-tackle always busy?”
The doctor shut up, clamwise, and leaned elbows on the rail, and so
they stood there, each peering, each listening, each thinking his own
thoughts.
Mr. Wansley’s return, brass telescope in hand, broke both lines of
reflection. Briggs snatched the glass, yearning to knock Wansley flat,
as he might have done a cabin-boy. Wansley peered at him with bitter
malevolence.
“You hell-devil!” muttered he. “You’ve murdered two of us already, an’
like as not you’ll murder all of us before you’re done. If the sharks
had you this minute—”
“By the Judas priest!” ejaculated Briggs, glass at eye. He swung it
left and right. “Now you lubberly sons of swabs _have_ got me on a
lee-shore with all anchors draggin’!”
“What is it, sir?” demanded Filhiol, calmly.
“What _is_ it?” roared the captain, neck and face scarlet. “After you
help run the _Silver Fleece_ on Ulu Salama bar, where that damned
war-party can close in on her, you ask me what it is! Holy Jeremiah!”
“See here, Captain Briggs.” The doctor’s voice cut incisively. “If
that’s a war-party, we’ve got no time to waste in abuse. Please let me
use that glass and see for myself.”
“Use nothing!” shouted Briggs. “What? Call me a liar, do you? I tell
you it _is_ a war-party with five—eight—twelve—well, about sixteen
boats and a proa, I make it; and you stand there and call me a liar!”
“I call you nothing, sir,” retorted the physician, his face impassive.
In spite of anger, Filhiol comprehended that he and Briggs represented
the best brain-power on the clipper. Under the urge of peril these two
must temporarily sink all differences and stand together. “You say
there’s a war-party coming out. I place myself at your orders.”
“Same here, sir,” put in Mr. Wansley. “What’s to be done, sir?” Urgent
peril had stifled the fires of hate.
“Call Mr. Prass and Mr. Crevay,” answered the captain, sobered. “You,
doctor, mix me up that powder, quick. Here, I’ll go with you. You’ve
got to stop this damned headache of mine! Look lively, Mr. Wansley! Get
Bevans, too, and Gascar!”
In five minutes the war-council was under way on the after-deck.
Already the doctor’s drug had begun to loosen the bands of pain
constricting the captain’s brow. Something of Briggs’s normal fighting
energy was returning. The situation was already coming under his strong
hand.
Careful inspection through the glass confirmed the opinion that a
formidable war-fleet was headed toward Ulu Salama bar. The far, vague
sound of chanting and of drums clinched matters.
“We’ve got to meet ’em with all we’ve got,” said Briggs, squinting
through the tube. “There’s a few hundred o’ the devils. Our game is to
keep ’em from closing in. If they board us—well, they aren’t goin’ to,
that’s all.”
“I don’t like the look o’ things forrard, sir,” put in Crevay, now
bo’sun of the clipper, filling the position that Prass had vacated in
becoming second mate. “Them Malays, sir—”
“That’s the hell of it, I know,” said Briggs. He spoke rationally,
sobered into human decency. “If we had a straight white crew, we could
laugh at the whole o’ Batu Kawan. But our own natives are liable to run
_amok_.”
“We’d better iron the worst of ’em, sir, an’ clap hatches on ’em,”
suggested Crevay. “There’s seventeen white men of us, an’ twenty
natives. If we had more whites, I’d say shoot the whole damn lot o’
Malays an’ chuck ’em over to the sharks while there’s time!” His face
was deep-lined, cruel almost as the captain’s.
Silence followed. Gascar nodded approval, Bevans went a trifle pale,
and Wansley shook his head. Prass turned his quid and spat over the
rail; the doctor glanced forward, squinting with eyes of calculation.
Under the brightening sun, each face revealed the varying thoughts that
lay in each man’s heart. Filhiol was first to speak.
“Those Malays are valuable to us,” said he. “They make excellent
hostages, if properly restrained in the hold. But we can’t have them at
large.”
“We can, and must, all of ’em!” snapped Briggs. His eye had cleared and
once more swept up the situation with that virile intelligence which
long had made him a leader of men. His nostrils widened, breathing the
air of battle. His chest, expanding, seemed a barrier against weakness,
indecision. The shadow of death had blotted out the madness of his
orgy. He stood there at the rail, erect, square-jawed, a man once more.
A man that even those who most bitterly hated him now had to respect
and to obey.
“We need ’em all,” he repeated, with the resonance of hard decision.
“We’re short-handed as it is. We need every man-jack of them, but
not to fight. They won’t fight for us. We daren’t put so much as a
clasp-knife in their murderin’ hands. But they can work for us, and,
by the Judas priest, they shall! Our pistols can hold ’em to it. Work,
sweat, damn ’em—sweat the yellow devils, as they never sweat before!”
“How so, captain?” asked the doctor.
“It’ll be an hour before that fleet lays alongside. There’s a good
chance we can kedge off this damned bar. Twenty natives at the poop
capstan, with you, Mr. Bevans—and I guess I’ll let the doctor lend a
hand, too—standing over ’em with cold lead—that’s the game.” Briggs
laughed discordantly. “How’s your nerve, Mr. Bevans? All right, sir?”
Sea-etiquette was returning. Confidence brightened.
“Nerve, sir? All right!”
“Ever shoot a man dead in his tracks?”
“I have, sir.”
“Good! Then you’ll do!” Briggs slapped Bevans on the shoulder. “I’ll
put you and the doctor in charge of the natives. First one that raises
a hand off a capstan-bar, drill him through the head. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” said Bevans. The doctor nodded.
“That’s settled! To work! We won’t want the natives at large, though,
till we get the kedge over. We’ll keep ’em in the ’midships deck-house
for a while yet. Doctor, you stand at the break and shoot the first
son of a hound that sticks his nose out. Mr. Wansley, muster all the
white men aft for instructions. Mr. Prass, take what men you need and
get up all the arms and ammunition. First thing, get out that stand of
rifles in my cabin. Here’s two keys. One is my private locker-key, and
the other the key to the arms-locker. In my locker you’ll find a kris.
In the other, three revolvers. Bring those.” The captain’s words came
crisp, sharp, decisive. “Bring up the six navy cutlasses from the rack
in the cabin. Mr. Gascar will help you. Mr. Gascar, how many axes have
you got in your carpenter’s chest?”
“Four, sir, and an adz.”
“Bring ’em all. Tell the cook to boil every drop of water he’s got
room for on the galley range. Get the marline spikes from the bo’sun’s
locker and lay ’em handy. Cast loose the signal-gun lashed down there
on the main deck. We’ll haul that up and mount it at the taffrail.
God! If they want war, they’ll get it, the black scuts!”
“We’re short of round-shot for the gun, sir,” said “Chips.” “I misdoubt
there’s a dozen rounds.”
“No matter. Solid shot isn’t much good for this work. Get all the
bolts, nuts and screws from your shop—all the old iron junk you can
ram down her throat. How’s powder?”
“Plenty, sir.”
“Good! We’ve got powder enough, men enough and guts enough. To your
work. Mr. Crevay!”
“Yes, sir?” A lank, bony man, Crevay, with fiery locks and a slashed
cheek where a dirk had once ripped deep. An ex-navy man he, and of
fighting blood.
“I’m goin’ to have you serve the gun when ready. You and any men you
pick,” the captain told him, while the others departed each on his own
errand, tensely, yet without haste or fear. “Meanwhile, I’ll put you in
charge of kedgin’ us off. Cast loose and rig the kedge-anchor, lower it
away from that davy there to the long-boat, and sink it about a hundred
fathom off the starb’d quarter. With twenty Malays at the capstan-bars,
we ought to start the _Fleece_. If not, we’ll shift cargo from forrard.
Look alive, sir!”
“Yes, sir!” And Crevay, too, departed, filled with the energy that
comes to every man when treated like a man and given a man’s work to do.
As by a miracle, the spirit of the _Silver Fleece_ had changed.
Discipline had all come back with a rush; the battling blood had
risen. No longer, for the moment, were the captain’s heavy crimes and
misdemeanors held against him. Briggs stood for authority, defense in
face of the peril of death. His powerful body and stern spirit formed a
rallying-point for every white man aboard. And even those who had most
poisonously grisled in their hearts against the man, now ran loyally to
do his bidding.
Forgotten was the cause of all this peril—the stealing of Kuala
Pahang, in drunken lust. Forgotten the barbarities that had driven
Mr. Scurlock and the boy ashore. Forgotten the brutal cynicism that
had refused to buy their liberty at the price of giving up the girl.
Of all these barbarities, no memory seemed now to survive. The deadly
menace of twenty Malays already growling in the waist of the ship, and
of the slow-advancing line of war-canoes, banished every thought save
one—battle!
Once more Captain Alpheus Briggs had proved himself, in time of crisis,
a man; more than a man—a master of men.
Thus, now, swift preparations had begun to play the game of war in
which no quarter would be asked or given.